Hugo! (56 page)

In Turiamo the night before, Chávez had been visited by a nurse
assigned to check on him. After barely escaping what he believed was
an assassination attempt, Chávez had momentarily fallen into a depression.
"I had my doubts in Turiamo, looking at a star, whether it was
worth living, for a few minutes," he later told a National Assembly panel
investigating the coup. "I had come to the conclusion it was not worth
living." The idea receded when he thought about the soldiers who supported
him, and the Venezuelan people. Now the
nurse brought him
some moral support. "I always wanted to meet you, but not like this,"
she told Chávez, her eyes welling with tears. "My mother adores you."

The encounter triggered something in Chávez. "I had a lot of
things bottled up inside me," he said in April 2007. "I had in my heart
I don't know how many feelings of pain, of frustration, of hopelessness.
And that girl with her tears caused a dam inside me to burst. The flood
came in tears. I cried a lot. She left and I went in the bathroom and
cried and cried and cried. But this crying spell was like getting things
out of my system and I came out like a bull, like I was alive again. But
there had been moments when I felt like I was dead."

He slept a few hours and by the next morning, Saturday the thirteenth,
started to feel that
el pueblo
was going to react to his disappearance.
"Only I never thought it was going to occur with the magnitude
that it did," he said in April 2007. "When I woke up I had regained hope
and the desire to not die, and moreover, to return to power. I said, no,
we will return, I don't know if in one month, or six months, or six years,
but we will return. Only I never thought that the following day I would
be back again in the palace."

That morning a soldier brought Chávez breakfast and spoke to
him quietly. He asked Chávez if he had resigned. Chávez told him he
hadn't. "Then you are the president and these people have violated the
constitution," the soldier said. "They are deceiving us."

The soldier gave Chávez his first information about what was happening
in the country. He told him the paratroopers in Maracay under
Baduel's command were rising up and refusing to recognize
Carmona
as the nation's president. People were massing outside Baduel's barracks.
The soldier told Chávez he believed Baduel and other commanders
were planning an operation to rescue him.

Even at
Turiamo, the situation seemed to be changing. The soldiers
were treating Chávez with respect, like he was still the president.
They asked if he wanted to go jogging. They lent him a white T-shirt,
and he started running with a couple of sergeants assigned to guard
him. As they jogged, the sergeants called him "president" and said the
plotters were creating a "disaster." After they finished, they sat around
talking with some other soldiers. Chávez was feeling at home. He asked
about their families, their lives as soldiers, the decrepit installations they
had to put up with at Turiamo.

He went inside to take a shower, put on another white T-shirt and
a pair of shorts the soldiers lent him, and was brought lunch by the
same soldier he'd spoken with in the morning. He asked the soldier if
he would be willing to take a written message and somehow distribute
it. The soldier agreed. Chávez wanted to alert the world that he had not
quit. As he started to write, they heard a helicopter arriving outside. The
soldier had to leave. He told Chávez to hurry and place the paper in the
bottom of a garbage can in the room. He would get it later.

Chávez quickly finished the note. It stated: "Turiamo, 13 April 2002,
at 14:45. To the Venezuelan people . . . (and whoever else may be interested).
I, Hugo Chávez Frías, Venezuelan, President of the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela, declare: I have not renounced the legitimate
power that the Venezuelan people gave me." He ended with, "Forever!"
— Che Guevara's famous phrase.

Chávez had to go outside to meet the military officers who had
arrived in the helicopter. They had a new plan. They were going to take
him to La Orchila, an island off the Caribbean coast. Chávez resisted,
saying they could not force him to leave. He told them he was the constitutionally
elected president of the country, was incommunicado, and
had been denied a lawyer. The officers told him they were there to guarantee
his safety. Chávez procrastinated, but eventually they took off.
The loyal soldier, meanwhile, snuck back to the nurses' station, grabbed
the note out of the garbage can, and set off trying to get it to General
Baudel in Maracay.

Outside Miraflores Palace that afternoon, the throng of Chávez supporters
was growing. They were streaming into central Caracas not only
because Chávez was missing, but because their dream was dying. Chávez
was much more than a president. To them, he was a symbol of hope.
He truly believed in his people, they thought, and made them realize a
better life was possible. He had asked them to help build the country of
their dreams, and they were embarking on that road together.

His
disappearance was something like the assassinations of John F.
Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States — it was
not just the man who was vanishing, but the hope, the ideals, and the
dreams that he inspired. And it was all going to be taken away by the
same people who had blocked them from realizing those aspirations in
the past. The impoverished masses felt that, along with Chávez and the
constitutional assembly, they had written the constitution themselves.
The document clearly stated that even if the president resigned, as the
opposition claimed, the vice president was to succeed him in office.
The
golpistas
did not just take out Chávez. They destroyed the constitution
and removed everyone in his administration. To top it off, they put
in a figurehead of the oligarchy to run the country.

After a day of feeling hopeless and lost, of crying and sinking into
despair over their fallen leader, the masses were fighting back now. In the
barrios, word spread by megaphone and cell phone:
Todos a Miraflores!
— Everyone to Miraflores! People streamed out of their homes and
packed buses and cars, or even walked miles to the palace. "It was like a
human river going down the mountainsides," recalled one protestor.

The opposition-controlled police had backed off much of their
repression as the coup began to falter. The crowds pressed up against
the black rails surrounding the palace. Some took a white bed sheet and
spray-painted a message:
Donde Está Chávez? Que Hable!
— Where's
Chávez? Let him speak! They hung the sheet on gates near the palace
grounds. One protestor climbed up a pole that held a traffic light by
the entrance. Others clambered up a white cement pillar. Thousands
of people held up photographs of Chávez, pumped their fists in the
air, and chanted, "Chávez! Chávez!" One man shouted, "We voted for
Chávez. We don't want a dictatorship."

After Morao and his soldiers took control of the palace, three of
them climbed on top of the roof of Miraflores and pumped their fists
in the air. One made a V for victory sign with his fingers. The crowd
went crazy. On top of another nearby building, soldiers waved a huge
Venezuelan flag and pumped their fists, egging the throng on. The
crowd pushed their arms through the metal rails and shook the hands of
some of the soldiers inside. Some of the Chavistas had tears of gratitude
in their eyes. The
tide was turning. The
golpistas
were running scared.

But none of it was appearing on Venezuelan television networks.
About the only way people could get news about what was happening in
their country was by watching international news channels like
CNN,
if they were affluent enough to have cable television. By Saturday afternoon
groups of Chavistas — livid that the Venezuelan networks refused
to broadcast news of the huge demonstrations — surrounded some of
the stations on motorcycles and demanded that their side of the story be
aired. Television workers cowered inside, afraid the crowds were going
to kill them. They all but begged for their lives on the air. Protestors
broke windows at one station, but no one was attacked.

By early afternoon, as word spread that the coup was collapsing,
some of Chávez's ministers started returning to the palace. Aristóbulo
Istúriz had been holed up in his house not far from the palace. It turned
into an informal command center for high-level government officials.
Istúriz did not have to go into hiding, because he had natural protection
in the barrio where he lived. If the
golpista
authorities tried to detain
him, the people in the barrio would come to his defense.

He was one of the first to arrive at Miraflores. He clambered atop
a car with other officials and led the crowd in chants for Chávez.
Eventually soldiers ushered him into the honor guard barracks across
the street, and took him through the tunnels into Miraflores. They were
still not certain the palace was safe from attack by the coup forces, and
wanted to ensure he was not shot. It was about 2 P.M. As other ministers,
including Ana Elisa Osorio, made their way to Miraflores, the euphoric
crowd swept them up and practically carried them to the palace gates.
A ruffled attorney general, Isaías Rodríguez, arrived, his untucked but-tondown
shirt hanging out of his pants. Chávez's chief of staff, Rafael
Vargas Medina, came with a new look — he had dyed his gray hair
black to disguise himself.

Across town
at Fort Tiuna, after Vásquez Velasco read his statement
to CNN, General Jorge Luis García Carneiro went outside to talk to the
growing throng. He climbed atop a tank, told the crowd the armed forces
did not recognize Carmona as president, and said the army was going to
fight until Chávez was returned to power. "It is very important that you
stay here," García Carneiro told the demonstrators. "We aren't leaving
here until Hugo Chávez appears!" The protestors had a loudspeaker
system set up and were playing music by Alí Primera. Every ten minutes
or so García Carneiro and others interrupted the music with the latest
news of another barrack reporting in that they supported the president.

That evening they received a copy of the note Chávez wrote in
Turiamo. Congresswoman
Iris Varela, a red MVR bandanna wrapped
around her head, read it out loud. The crowd exploded in wild cheering.
The private at Turiamo had taken it off the base and brought it to
General Baudel in Maracay. Using a flashlight to see in the night, the
general read it out loud to the crowd in Maracay, provoking pandemonium
there, too.

With the coup falling apart, García Carneiro decided to arrest
Carmona and other coup leaders. They were meeting in Fort Tiuna,
desperately trying to figure out their next move. At about 7 P.M. several
officers went to the fifth floor of the army headquarters, cut off
the electricity, broke down the door to the army commander's officer,
and detained several coup leaders from the military, including Molina
Tamayo. They also grabbed Carmona, who was hiding in an adjacent
bedroom.

With
Carmona under arrest, Chávez's ministers wanted to reconstitute
the
legitimate government. But they needed the man who should succeed
him according to the constitution, since the
president was missing.
That was the vice president,
Diosdado Cabello. One of Chávez's MBR-
200 recruits from the military academy in the 1980s, Cabello had gone
into hiding the afternoon of April 11 when it became apparent a coup
was under way. He spent the next two days moving from place to place,
from an apartment of a friend to a farm in nearby Vargas state that had
no electricity or cell phone coverage.

By Saturday afternoon, Cabello had managed to communicate with
CNN en Español, where he told newscasters, "I am the president in this
moment. The president [Chávez] is not in office. So I am in control."
He added, "I can't go out in the street because my life is in danger."

Cabello had gotten word about 1 P.M. that loyalist soldiers had
retaken Miraflores Palace, but they told him to wait before going there.
They wanted to see if the coup leaders launched a counterattack first.
By late afternoon the situation seemed under control. Cabello had to
reach Caracas from the Caribbean coast in Vargas, but the highway
was blocked by barricades of trucks, garbage, and sticks set up by angry
Chavistas demanding the president's return. Cabello and another government
official had to walk, run, and change cars to get through the
barricades. When the people saw who it was, some started running
behind him to offer protection.

By the time he got to Caracas, crowds were looting stores in anger
over Chávez's disappearance. Bullets were flying through the air. Cars
were on fire in the streets. Cabello had to change routes. Guards at
Miraflores said they would meet him at a market at the foot of Avenida
Baralt. They showed up in an ambulance with its sirens wailing, wrapped
a bulletproof sheet around Cabello, and threw him on the floor of the
vehicle. Then some guards sat on top of him for extra protection.

When Cabello arrived at Miraflores about 9 P.M., the ministers
and other allies shouted with joy. Some cried. In Fort Tiuna,
Carmona
was writing his resignation as president. At about 10 P.M. he read it to
a radio station. A few minutes later Cabello took the oath of office in
the palace. Across town loyalist troops helped the staff of channel 8
retake the state-run television channel, which was slowly coming back
to life. Congressman Juan Barreto went on the air and declared that
"the tyrant has been deposed."

In Maracay a plan to rescue Chávez was under way. By Saturday afternoon
Baduel and other loyalist officers knew the rebels were holding
Chávez on La Orchila. They organized a mission to bring him back to
the mainland, dubbing it
Operation Rescue National Dignity. Three
helicopters carrying a team of elite commandos along with a doctor and
a military lawyer took off around midnight. They had received word that
an airplane with US insignias was parked on the small island. General
Alí Uzcátegui Duque, who was leading the mission, feared the rebels
were going to put Chávez on the plane, take off, and then blow it up or
crash it — claiming the president had died in an accident. The loyalists
were racing against the clock. They were also prepared for combat
— they did not know what to expect on the island.