Hugo! (49 page)

That night Ortega and Carmona announced they were extending
the general strike — this time indefinitely. It seemed illogical. Who
would indefinitely extend a fading strike? They called on people
to attend a march the next morning from the
Parque del Este to the
PDVSA offices in Chuao, where the march would culminate with a rally.
Secretly, they had another idea. They would announce it the next day
at the rally as a
"spontaneous" decision prompted by the crowd's enthusiasm.
They planned to change the route and descend on Miraflores
Palace to force the president to resign.

Earlier in the day
Brigadier General Néstor González González
had become the latest active military officer to demand Chávez's
resignation.
Speaking to reporters and a bank of television cameras at a news
conference staged at a hotel in Caracas, González González said, "Mr.
President, you have betrayed the country. Respect the armed forces."
Then he laid down an ultimatum: "The military high command has to
say to the president, Mr. President, you are the cause of all this. It's time
you stepped down. The military high command will have to take this
stand, because if they don't, someone else will for them." As he finished
and got up to leave, a reporter said, "General, do you mean a coup?"
González González slipped on his military cap, let a small tight smile
emerge from his lips, said nothing, and left.

González's statements had a specific purpose. Chávez was scheduled
to fly to
Costa Rica the next afternoon for a summit of the Organization
of American States. The plotters needed him in Venezuela for their
plan to work. Sufficiently alarmed by the march and the insurrectionary
calls by González, Chávez canceled the trip.

By some accounts the government was already getting wind of the
secret plan to change the route of the march. They had infiltrated the
meeting where Carmona and the other leaders discussed it. Publicly,
Defense Minister José Vicente Rangel called the decision to extend the
strike indefinitely "insurrectionist." The opposition was looking to take
down the government.

In Washington, DC, meanwhile, a State Department official who
did not want to be named told reporters he believed Chávez's days as
president were numbered. "It's really difficult to see him holding on
until February 2007" when his term was due to expire, the official said.

After Carmona and Ortega announced the march for the next day,
the media went into overdrive
promoting it. They ran makeshift ads
every ten minutes. "Venezuelans, everyone to the streets, Thursday at
ten in the morning," one boomed. "Let's march together for Venezuela,
from the Parque del Este to Chuao. Bring your flag. For liberty and
democracy. Venezuela won't surrender. No one is going to defeat us."
Another said, "Not One Step Back! Out! Leave now!"

That Thursday morning, April 11,
Aristóteles Aranguren turned on his
television. The light-skinned, freckle-faced schoolteacher at a private
middle-class school was as disenchanted with Chávez as anyone. He
couldn't get out of his mind Chávez's famous statement about Venezuela
and Cuba heading for the same "sea of happiness." Aranguren had traveled
to Cuba twice. He thought he knew what kind of sea the Cubans
were swimming in. It was more like they were drowning. He remembered
walking the streets of Old Havana and seeing people begging
for clothes, soap, toothpaste, anything. He remembered the bare apartments
with empty refrigerators. He didn't want any part of it.

As he flicked on his television about 10:30 A.M., he saw people
massing at the
Parque del Este and heading toward Chuao. It was an
impressive showing. By some counts it eventually grew to half a million
people — maybe even more. It appeared to be the largest protest march
in Venezuela since the overthrow of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958.
Aranguren slipped on his blue jeans and sneakers, grabbed a textbook
to read on the subway, and dashed out the door.

When he arrived at Parque del Este, it was like stepping into a huge
outdoor fiesta. People were jubilant. They waved small Venezuelan flags
or had their faces painted with its colors — red, yellow, and blue. They
blew whistles or carried signs that said VETE, get out. Parents pushed
children in strollers or walked hand in hand. Complete strangers
hugged one another.

Pedro Carmona was shaking hands and smiling. He had emerged
as a key figure in the opposition. A diminutive man with a bald head, he
would soon be described in the international media as "mild-mannered."
He was an economist with a postgraduate degree from Brussels Free
University who spent thirty years in Venezuela's diplomatic corps before
joining the business world at a petrochemical firm. The previous July,
Fedecámaras elected him their leader. Now many people were thinking
of him as Venezuela's next president.

In Miraflores Palace, Hugo Chávez was trying to maintain a normal
schedule of activities after
canceling his trip to Costa Rica. He had a
meeting planned in the palace with a group of state governors. His father
was coming in from Barinas to attend. It was also his older brother Adán's
birthday. He'd be stopping by, too. Chávez's mother, Elena, was worried
about her second oldest son and decided to tag along with Hugo Sr. The
president knew the opposition was in an insurrectionist mode. But he figured
he had the support of the armed forces to control any disturbances.
He assumed the
National Guard would stop the marchers from reaching
the palace if they tried. Plan Avila was ready to go.

In Fort Tiuna, Defense Minister José Vicente Rangel was in his
fifth-floor office analyzing the situation with the military high command.
They had televisions tuned to the march. They were on high
alert. The government suspected the opposition was plotting something.
They just didn't know exactly what. Rangel later came to believe
the
intelligence services failed the government in part because they
were infiltrated by the opposition.

Across town, media mogul
Gustavo Cisneros was engaged in his
own activities. He was hosting a luncheon at his mansion for some of the
nation's business, political, academic,
and media elites. The guest of honor
was Charles Shapiro, the new American ambassador. Cisneros and the
others wanted to welcome him to Venezuela. Shapiro had arrived in late
February and met with Chávez the previous week. While accounts vary as
to whether Shapiro mentioned the CIA warnings of a coup, he believed it
was at any rate a moot point. All you had to do was turn on the television or
open a newspaper to realize Chávez's opponents were plotting a coup.

"There were people extremely unhappy with that government
and trying to overthrow it," Shapiro told an interviewer two years later.
"Everybody knew it. Clearly, there were conspiracies going on and not
one but multiple conspiracies . . . There were so many conspiracies going
on that you weren't quite sure which one was the serious one and, often,
which one were three guys getting together in a bar and talking."

At Cisneros's reception that day, as tuxedo-clad waiters served the
guests, the main topic of conversation was Chávez and how to get rid
of him. According to Shapiro's account, he told the guests the United
States would not support a coup.

By late morning the marchers were massed at the
PDVSA office in
Chuao. They cheered wildly as speakers lambasted the president and
waved their arms in unison, shouting "Out! Out!" Then, before noon,
some speakers began calling on the crowd to head to Miraflores. It
was a surprise to many.
Rear Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo shouted,
"Come on, we're going to Miraflores!" Carlos Ortega accused Chávez
of stealing "the resources of the state." Then he added, "I do not rule out
the possibility that this crowd, this human river, marches to Miraflores
to expel a traitor of the Venezuelan people."

The crowd roared its approval and took off for the palace, six miles
away. They chanted slogans: "Chávez, you're fired!" "Go to Cuba!"
"He's leaving! He's leaving!" They waved flags. They blew whistles.
They carried signs that said, GET OUT! DEATH TO CHáVEZ. BIN LADEN AND
FIDEL CASTRO = HUGO CHáVEZ.

The decision to illegally change the route of the
march at the last
minute without official permission set off alarm bells in the government.
"They've gone crazy!" exclaimed José Vicente Rangel in his
office. Thousands of Chavistas were already at the palace. A violent
confrontation could occur if the two sides clashed. Caracas mayor
Freddy Bernal went on
state-owned channel 8 and called on Ortega
and other leaders to halt their plans to head to the palace. "It is irresponsible
of you to be calling for a demonstration in front of Miraflores
when you know there are thousands of people already gathered there,"
he said. Bernal then called on
Chavistas to head to Miraflores to defend
the president. "Today," he said, "there is a conspiracy in progress."

Rangel got on the telephone to some of the television media moguls
to ask them to stop the march from reaching Miraflores. They told him
there was nothing they could do. General Lucas Romero Rincón, the
nation's highest-ranking military official, called Carmona once and
Ortega three times on their cell phones to try to dissuade them. When he
reached Carmona, the Fedecámaras leader told him there was nothing
he could do either, and that the time for
dialogue had run out.

In the mountainside barrios of Caracas, word spread that the marchers
were heading to the palace. Hundreds of Chavistas jumped on motorcycles
or public buses and made their way to Miraflores. In the neighborhood
of Guarataro one mile from the palace, unemployed baker Pedro
Linares took a shower, got dressed, and walked out the door to go help
defend the president. He'd barely gone fifty yards when he turned around
and went back home. He summoned his six children into the living room.
"I'm going, but I don't know if I'm going to return," he said.

A tall man with a beard and bushy eyebrows, Linares was forty-two
years old and a devoted Bolivarian Circle member. He had gone to the
PDVSA offices in Chuao that Tuesday night when a group of Chavistas
clashed with anti-Chávez demonstrators and his best friend, Pastora
Peña, got some of her teeth knocked out. Now Linares told his children
that if anything happened to him, he wanted them to behave well for
their mother and respect her. Then he walked out the door.

The march snaked its way down the six-lane Francisco Fajardo
Highway, turned at a bend near the Hilton Hotel, and spilled onto
six-lane Avenida Bolívar that led up to the Palace of Justice and — less
than a mile beyond that — Miraflores. Helping lead the way were Rear
Admiral Molina Tamayo and Guaicaipuro Lameda, the general whom
Chávez had fired as head of PDVSA. At about 2 P.M. a television reporter
stopped Lameda. "Despite the situation, you are insisting on going all
the way to Miraflores?" he asked. The general responded, "Up to now,
the call has been to reach Avenida Bolívar. If the people ask for it, we
will carry on to Miraflores. This is a peaceful march." The protestors
shouted and cheered in the background. Lameda shrugged, as it to say,
How can I stop them?

Rumors were already swirling on television that Chávez had left the
palace and resigned. At 2:10 P.M. General Rincón appeared to refute the
reports. Flanked by some of the high command, he said, "It has been
mentioned that the president of the republic is detained in Fort Tiuna
or in Miraflores, which I categorically reject. Mr. President is in his
office." Rincón also denied rumors that the military high command
had resigned.

Chávez, in fact, was in his office and had not resigned. But he
knew the situation was turning grave. Only a handful of
police and
National Guardsmen were in the streets around the palace to hold back
the approaching march. The police were controlled by the city's anti-
Chávez mayor, Alfredo Peña, and were helping the protestors move
along. Shortly after noon Chávez decided to implement Plan Avila. He
tried calling General Manuel Rosendo by telephone and radio, using
a system of code names they'd established. Chávez was
Tiburon Uno
— shark number one. But Rosendo did not respond. He was a trusted
Chávez ally, or so the president thought. Now he was nowhere to be
found.

Another Chávez ally, General Jorge Luis García Carneiro, overheard
the president trying to reach Rosendo and cut in after he failed to
answer. García Carneiro offered to implement Plan Avila on his own.
He was in charge of the Third Division of the army, the largest military
unit in Caracas. García Carneiro graduated from the military academy
with Chávez in 1975 and, although he did not take part in the 1992
coup, was sympathetic to the president's reform program.

But now, as he offered to help Chávez implement Plan Avila, something
strange was happening at Fort Tiuna where his unit was based.
Soldiers blocked the Pan-American Highway with large trucks and
diverted traffic into the fort. Buses, trucks, and cars flooded the base.
García Carneiro's troops could not get out. Chávez had no way of stopping
the marchers from surrounding the palace.

They passed by the Palace of Justice a little after 2 P.M. and swarmed
onto the streets leading into the historic El Silencio section of white-and
blue-painted buildings. They were a stone's throw from the gleaming
white palace, which was up a small hill on Avenida Urdaneta. The
crowd made its way to the towering white marble stairs of El Calvario
park, where hundreds of protestors rested. Others tried to advance closer
to Miraflores. A line of Metropolitan Police wearing bulletproof vests
and anti-riot helmets with plastic face shields stood across the road with
their motorcycles to block them.

A few streets away, hundreds of Chávez supporters stood on the
Llaguno Bridge overpass at the intersection of Avenida Urdaneta and
Avenida Baralt. Many had their faces painted red, the color of Chávez's
famous beret. They shook their fists in the air and shouted as the
marchers crossed Baralt a few blocks and several hundred yards below
them, heading the back way to the palace near El Calvario. Some
Chavistas had sticks, rocks, or bottles. Linares's friend Pastora Peña
bought a hot red pepper from a local store. She figured she could smear
it in the face of the enemy to blind them if hand-to-hand combat broke
out. Most of the crowd still wasn't expecting much more than that.
While tense, the atmosphere was also strangely festive. Street vendors
were selling popcorn, hot dogs, and bottled water. One woman set up a
stand to sell
empanadas
.