Hugo! (23 page)

Using the information he got from Santeliz, Chávez responded that
the rebels were in control of Maracay and the governor of Zulia was a
prisoner. We have tanks on the way from Valencia, he added, and control
of that city, too. "This is just beginning," Chávez boasted. It was a
false bravado: He knew the revolt was collapsing. Desperate for air support,
he was able to reach Jesús Urdaneta in Maracay. But the news was
not good. Compadre, send me air support, Chávez said. Urdaneta told
him the airplanes had left, "but they are going to fire on you. We've lost
control of the base."

Losing patience, Pérez instructed Ochoa to inform Chávez that
if he did not surrender, the bombing would commence. Ochoa called
Chávez for the third time. He told him the F-16s were going to bomb the
museum in ten minutes if he did not give up. In reality, Ochoa was not
anxious to bomb the museum, which was surrounded by the sprawling
23 de Enero barrio of high-rise apartments. Any bombing would kill and
injure scores of civilians.

It was close to 7 A.M. Chávez hung up. A few minutes later he
spoke with Santeliz again. He was ready to surrender. He wasn't anxious
for a bloody showdown, either, especially one he had little chance
of winning.

I had perceived that the plan wasn't going anywhere. There was
no contact with any unit. I didn't know what was happening,
only that the president had recovered the symbolic position of
power, that the tanks had arrived to Miraflores supporting the
president, that the air force [rebels were] tied down to ground,
and that we had lost the situation of neutrality in the air and that
the F-16s were coming against us.

How can you continue operating so dispersed, so disarticulated,
without knowing what was happening in Maracay,
in Maracaibo, not even in Caracas? It was impossible to fight
blindly. It would have been a disaster for us and for the people,
a battle with the high-caliber arms we had [at the museum] in
La Planicie, surrounded by barrios, and without a chance of
achieving our objective. You can keep fighting when you have
a chance of achieving your objective, but to fight hopelessly, to
die or kill, isn't right.

Chávez told Santeliz his conditions for
surrendering. The government
had to respect the lives of the rebels and the people in the barrios.
It also had to allow him to visit strategic spots around the city to tell his
cohorts it was time to end the struggle. Santeliz agreed, and Chávez
hung up.

He prepared to turn himself in. He instructed his troops to line
up and hand over their weapons. Then he hugged the officers, saluted
the soldiers, and got ready to leave. He kept his own pistol, assault rifle,
and hand grenades. He figured the loyalists had orders to kill him; he
wanted to protect himself. After Santeliz arrived about 8 A.M., the two
left quickly. They spent about two hours driving around Caracas so
Chávez could tell his cohorts that the rebellion was over. At each stop,
he gave a short speech. He said the men had fought valiantly in the
name of Bolívar, but it was not possible to attain their objectives at the
moment. He called on them to lay down their arms.

Chávez and Santeliz arrived at the Defense Ministry about 10 A.M. A
crowd of soldiers was out front awaiting his arrival. As he went inside
and entered an elevator, some saluted him. He took it as tacit approval of
his actions. He reached the fifth-floor office of Ochoa Antich, who was
still at Miraflores, saluted an officer, and said he had come to surrender.
He handed over his pistol, assault rifle, hand grenades, and radio, and
sat down on a couch. He asked a soldier to get him a cup of coffee and
some cigarettes. He was nervous. He was also depressed. "Surrendering
is worse than death. When I gave up, I told my men, I would have preferred
death, that is, I broke into pieces and I was breaking into pieces."

As he dragged on a cigarette, he listened to the generals and other
officers in the room debate how to finish off the last of the resistance.
Some were shouting orders into the telephone. They wanted to end it
by noon. Chávez learned some of the details of what was happening
around the country. Arias had left Zulia to fly to Caracas to take part
in the negotiations. Acosta Chirinos had given up at La Carlota.
But Urdaneta was still fighting in Maracay, refusing to abandon the
struggle. Chávez remembered his words ten years earlier when they
had founded the EBR, which he repeated the day before they launched
the coup: "If we fail, I'm not giving up. I'll fight to the death." Now
Urdaneta had cut the telephone lines in Maracay, apparently determined
to keep his word.

The generals in Ochoa Antich's office were shouting into the
telephones for the fighter jets to begin bombing the military base at
Maracay. Chávez protested. How can you bomb them if we have surrendered?
he said. He asked if he could call Urdaneta to tell him to lay
down his arms. But the telephone lines were cut. He asked if he could
fly to Maracay to speak to Urdaneta personally. The generals ruled
that out, too: So many aircraft were in the skies, they would probably
be shot down. Chávez had another idea: Could he go on a radio station
and issue a call for his comrades to lay down their arms? He even
knew which one to use, Radio Apolo, a local station in Maracay popular
among soldiers in the barracks.

The officers thought it was a good idea. They even suggested using
television, too. They checked with Ochoa, who consulted with Pérez.
The president agreed. But he insisted Chávez write out what he was
going to say and that the television stations tape it so officials could
censor anything they didn't like before it aired. Pérez also wanted
Chávez presented as a prisoner in handcuffs and out of uniform.
Ochoa sent the word back to Fort Tiuna. But Chávez refused to write
out his statement. He insisted he was only going to call for his comrades
to surrender. The authorities thought there was too little time to
tape it, anyway. The situation in Maracay was critical. The message
had to go out live. Ochoa allowed them to proceed. He didn't have
time to inform Pérez.

As the military heads summoned the press corps and television
stations, Chávez thought about General Manuel Noriega when the
Americans captured him after the December 1989 invasion of Panama.
Noriega was unshaven and wore a wrinkled T-shirt. He looked like
a felon. It was precisely the appearance Chávez wanted to avoid. I'm
going to appear with dignity, he thought to himself. He went into a
bathroom, washed his face, and straightened his uniform. He even put
on his red paratrooper beret. The officers didn't make him change out
of his camouflage combat uniform as Pérez had ordered. Chávez then
walked into a room full of reporters and looked into a bank of television
cameras. Repeating a version of the short speech he delivered earlier, he
spoke in a confident tone for seventy-two seconds:

First of all, I want to say good morning to all the people of
Venezuela. This Bolivarian message is directed to all the courageous
soldiers who are in the paratrooper regiment in Aragua
and the tank regiment in Valencia. Comrades: Unfortunately, for
now, the objectives we had set for ourselves were not achieved in
the capital city. That is, those of us here in Caracas did not seize
power. Where you are, you performed very well, but now is the
time to reflect. New opportunities will arise and the country has
to head definitively toward a better future.

So listen to what I have to say, listen to the Comandante
Chávez, who is sending you this message. Please, reflect and put
down your arms, because in truth, the objectives that we set for
ourselves at a national level are not within our grasp. Comrades,
listen to this message of solidarity. I am grateful for your loyalty,
for your courage, for your selfless generosity. Before the country
and before you, I accept responsibility for this Bolivarian military
movement. Thank you very much.

He walked out of the room and back to Ochoa's office. He was
depressed. He thought he was a failure. "I was very broken up and I felt
very defeated. That is, I thought I had carried out the fiasco of the century.
Besides surrendering and the plan not working, I had to call on the
others to give up. Santeliz sat down on my right side and shook my hand.
'That was great, man, what you said!' I told him, 'What do you mean
good, if I called for surrendering?' 'You said,
'for now.'
I didn't realize it.
It just slipped out. I remember I told him, 'Maybe they will erase that.'
'No, that already came out. That was live.' "

Chávez's appearance was a bombshell. The gallant young officer in
the dashing red beret instantaneously captivated millions of people who
had never heard of him and were wondering who'd led the stunning
rebellion. Chávez started by invoking the sacred national icon of Simón
Bolívar. Then he did something almost inconceivable in a country where
seemingly everyone dodged accountability: He took responsibility for a
failure. "I accept responsibility for this Bolivarian military movement."

He also indicated the rebellion wasn't over yet. Two words —
por ahora
,
for now — sounded to many people like a pledge that the rebels would be
back someday. They had not achieved their objectives
"por ahora."
The
two words instantly turned into the most popular slogan on the streets. In
time they became part of Venezuelans' permanent lexicon.

Chávez appeared out of nowhere, giving a face to a faceless rebellion.
For years many Venezuelans had been waiting for someone to
come to their rescue, a modern-day Bolívar who would avenge the
crooked politicians and set the country on a path to prosperity. Now, it
seemed, their man had arrived. "Hugo Chávez entered our hearts that
day and never left," stated
Lisa Sullivan, a longtime
Maryknoll Catholic
missionary from the United States who was married to a Venezuelan
and lived in a barrio in Barquísimeto.

Ochoa Antich had made a terrible miscalculation, one he would
regret for years to come. "The most serious mistake was to allow Hugo
Chávez, instead of being presented as a military felon who had betrayed
the institutions and had been defeated, to be presented in a way as a
hero who had risen up against an unjust government that was corrupt,
which wasn't true. Rather, it was a constitutional government that had
made mistakes like all governments but was classified within what was
the democratic evolution of Venezuela . . . It was a political mistake to
allow him to go on live. I never imagined it would have the political
impact it did."

In Maracay rebel soldiers were tuned in to the television in the
barracks when Chávez came on. They summoned Urdaneta, who was
stunned and angry as he watched. He didn't want to surrender. But he
knew he had no choice. He soon gave up. The attempted coup d'état
was over. It was barely noon. An hour later Arias landed in Caracas, only
to learn that Chávez had already surrendered and called on the others
to lay down their arms. A decade in the making, the Bolivarian uprising
had come and gone in twelve hours.

Not everyone was cheering Chávez and the rebels. The
oligarchy
and most foreign governments were horrified. Venezuela's Congress
convened an emergency session that morning. The politicians blasted
Chávez and unleashed a stream of fiery rhetoric about the need to
defend democracy.

In one of the most dramatic speeches of the day, a prominent
Democratic Action congressman named
David Morales Bello declared,
"Death to the
golpistas
!" Outside Venezuela, the sentiment was not
much different. President George H. W. Bush praised Pérez as one of
the great democratic leaders of the hemisphere. "To have this outrageous,
illegal military coup should certainly be condemned by all countries,
not just in our hemisphere," he said. Even Cuba's Fidel Castro,
who had never heard of Chávez but was later to become his mentor,
joined in the criticism and defended Pérez.

One Venezuelan politician took a different tack. Former president
Rafael
Caldera, himself an architect of the
Punto Fijo
system, all but
endorsed the coup. He rejected the notion that the rebels were attacking
democracy. Instead, he said, it was Venezuela's practice of democracy that
had failed the people. He
blamed Pérez and his neo-liberal economic
program for the troubles with the armed forces. He noted that the masses
were not pouring into the streets to defend democracy the way they had
recently in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, the Southern Cone of South
America, and Tiananmen Square in China. Chávez's brief appearance
was the speech of the day, but Caldera's was a solid second.

It is difficult to ask people to self-immolate for freedom and
democracy when they think freedom and democracy are not
capable of feeding them and stopping the exorbitant rise in the
cost of living. When it has not been able to put a stop to the terrible
round of corruption that has eroded the institutional legality
of the country, as everyone has seen with their own eyes. This is
something that cannot be hidden.

Caldera's speech resuscitated his fading political career overnight.
Nearly two years later he abandoned the party he founded, COPEI, ran
with the support of a splinter party, and was reelected president. He
broke the AD-COPEI grip on Miraflores for the first time. Another politician
who gave a speech that day along the same lines,
Aristóbulo Istúriz
of the Radical Cause, was elected mayor of Caracas — the first black
to hold that post.

In just over a minute, Chávez had given one of the most remarkable
performances in Venezuelan history. "Many specialists have analyzed
those words," a leading Venezuelan journalist wrote a decade
later. "Never before did so few words have so much influence on the
opinion of Venezuelans and the future of events." Chávez became an
instant hero. Days after the coup attempt, the most popular costume
for children during Carnival celebrations was an imitation of his military
fatigues and red beret. By October a best-selling book came out
depicting Chávez and the others as courageous avengers of injustice
and defenders of democracy. Its title was
La Rebelión de los Angeles
—
The Rebellion of the Angels
.