My first life, p.33
My First Life, page 33
Were you concerned with economic issues?
Enormously. We studied economic matters very closely. Many members of our movement went on to university, to further their studies and acquire more tools for political, social and economic analysis. We all read a lot. Samuel Moncada, a history professor at the Military Academy, published his book The Serpent’s Eggs around then, and was forced to resign: they fired him from the Academy because he told the inside story of the Fedecámaras [Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce] case.10 I was duty officer when that book was published.
All in all, from 1980 to 1985 we were maturing and gaining even more experience than we had expected. I was surprised myself. As a result, in 1986 we organized another national congress, to further consolidate our ideas. We were some fifteen officers, some from very far away, all well prepared for that meeting. But we were growing so large that, in 1986, we decided to stop. Continuing to expand was just too risky.
Statistically, the danger of informers increases in proportion to the number of members.
It’s mathematical. That’s why we decided to stop expanding, and didn’t accept new members for a prudent period. We wanted to consolidate what we had achieved, man by man, structure by structure. So we re-analysed everything: the cells, the Revolutionary Area Commands, the ideology, the civilian–military alliance, the revolutionary aspect. Because some compañeros had joined without having a very clear sense of our identity, of who we were. We even had to explain that this wasn’t a right-wing movement. That issue showed up again later, especially in prison [1992–1994]. Some didn’t stick with it long, they lacked a solid political consciousness. Others came out of prison and joined the other side.
And eventually, some even went over to the opposition, like Jesús Urdaneta and Raúl Isaías Baduel.
Jesús Urdaneta never had much of a grasp of ideology; that says it all. He was ideologically weak, and the enemy rapidly spotted it. The same happened with Baduel. To be fair, Baduel was never wholly committed to our movement. He came to some meetings, but then, when 4 February 1992 happened, he didn’t take part, he decided to become a reservist. He was already showing signs of weakness. But anyway, when we get to that point, we’ll talk about those people if you like.
Going back to 1986, what I want to stress is the very rapid expansion our organization went through. That’s when we decided to change the EBR-200 [Revolutionary Bolivarian Army] into the MBR-200 [Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement]. We changed the E for Ejército [Army] into the M for Movement, because we said, ‘We have a big group of officers in the Air Force, so how can we call ourselves an Army?’ There were Navy officers too, not very many, but some. And civilian movements were also beginning to join. That’s why we decided to change the name. From then on we were the MBR-200, and under that name we carried out the rebellion of 4 February 1992. But before we get on to that, we have to talk about the Caracazo.
12
The Caracazo
Three years in Elorza – Back to Caracas
Studying political science
Return of Carlos Andrés Pérez – The ‘Great U-Turn’
27 February 1989 – Causes of the Caracazo
Impact on the Armed Forces – Death of Felipe Acosta Carlez
Under suspicion – In the Senior Defence School
War of nerves at Los Pinos – General Peñaloza
Manoeuvring – In Provisioning! – The ‘invisible conspiracy’
Commanding the parachute regiment in Maracay
In 1985, they took your post in the Military Academy in Caracas away from you, and transferred you to Elorza, a town in the state of Apure, in the far west of Venezuela near the border with Colombia. Why did they send you so far away?
Perhaps they thought they were sending me into exile [laughter]. The reason was very simple; it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep our organization secret, and its activities eventually reached the ears of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DIM). They almost certainly heard from our sworn enemy, General Julio Peñaloza, the army chief of staff, about the radical lectures we were giving at the Academy. Yet they weren’t Marxist speeches; they were about Bolívar, Miranda, and the heroes of Venezuelan history, so it was difficult to sack us or discipline us. What’s more, the officers involved were considered the most brilliant of the current crop. The armed forces couldn’t afford to lose a whole generation. So the DIM didn’t arrest us, or accuse us of being subversives, they just made sure we weren’t given command of troops in the centre of the country. They dispersed us to the four corners of Venezuela in the hope that we’d lose touch with one another.
Were you surprised to be sent so far away?
Not really. I didn’t even see Elorza as a punishment. On the contrary. I was recommended for that post by Ramón Carrizales, a great cavalry officer and a friend. I was given very important military responsibilities in a strategic location: the border with Colombia. I remember that when I received the order to transfer to Elorza, I packed my things, left the Academy, got into my old blue jalopy, started the engine, and shouted, ‘Mission accomplished!’ The seed had been sown, nobody was going to stop the birth of the revolution. The Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario-200 was the expression of the purest dreams of the 1970–1980 decade of heroic young soldiers.
What lessons did you learn from your time in Apure?
I spent almost three years in that beautiful state. First in Elorza, as commander of the town’s garrison and the Francisco Farfán Motorized Cavalry Squadron.1 My post was what they called a Remote Basic Unit. That is, I had no senior officer within a five-hundred-kilometre radius. I felt like a fish in water in Capanaparo, Sabanas del Viento, Barranco Yopal, Caño Caribe, Cubarro, Cinaruco … all in the central Llanos where I was born. It was like coming back to my nest, my cradle, my origins. The time I spent there was one of the happiest periods of my life, I felt fulfilled militarily, socially and politically. Elorza became a kind of sociological laboratory, where I put into practice our theories of creating a relationship between the armed forces and the people. Something I’d never done before.
So, you used Elorza to test your theories about governing society?
Yes, because I had to solve concrete problems, not virtual or theoretical ones. I had more time to reflect, to read and study. It was like a mini human laboratory where I was faced with very specific economic and social challenges. Normally, of course, it would not have been up to me or my garrison to solve these problems. So, at the beginning, if I had any ideas about ways of helping, I would seek the permission of my superiors, who were some distance away. The answer always came back, ‘No, Captain, that’s not your job. Your job is to guarantee the security of the border.’
But I’d say to myself, ‘Good grief, doesn’t the fact that the indigenous people round here are dying of hunger bear some relation to security? Or that the river fishermen are exploited by the boat owners? Or that local people are living in extreme poverty?’ Of course it was relevant to security. That’s what, in the early 1970s, General Juan José Torres and Bolivia’s socialist soldiers called the ‘interior frontier’. And part of my mission to safeguard Venezuelan territory – in the most intelligent way I could think of – was to look after that ‘interior frontier’. So I decided to stop consulting my superiors, or asking their permission, and I devoted myself to resolving concrete problems in that region.
Such as what?
The problem of the latifundio and exploitation, for example. And in Elorza I came up against the ‘Indian problem’. I’ve mentioned that already. The indigenous people of this region, the Cuivas and the Yaruros, lived the same tragic lives as indigenous peoples all over Venezuela. You had to see it to believe it. There I was tested as a leader, no longer of cadets and soldiers, but among a ragbag of different groups: students, Indians, sportspeople, etc. A genuine people, in other words. A microcosm of society – like society as a whole, but in miniature.
What was Elorza like in those days?
A typical abandoned Venezuelan town. A dusty main street, a small hotel, a few Syrian-owned shops, several Colombian-owned restaurants, and on the outskirts, the wretched shacks where the Cuivas and the Yaruros lived. And a military base some ten kilometres away. Images of poverty characteristic of those godforsaken pueblos of the Venezuelan plains, straight out of Doña Bárbara, or Otero Silva’s Casas Muertas [Dead Houses].2 And the same political set-up, but writ small, so it was easier to understand the manoeuvrings of the Pact of Punto Fijo. Corruption at every level, and a neglected underclass with no government, no social programmes of any kind. Schools without water, blackboards, desks, toilets or food. A hospital with no doctors or medicines. Nothing. Even ice had to be brought from San Cristóbal. An abandoned town, with no drinking water, appalling roads, impossible to drive on in winter. All this in such a rich country …
So what did you do?
I was the military commander, but I had to become a social leader. I got the soldiers out of their barracks-life routine, and into the life of that community, by providing support for social and economic development. We went out into the savannah and onto the rivers to gather the poor and organize them. The folkloric fiestas of 19 March, Saint John’s Day, are very important there now – all the best singers and musicians come to town. But not in those days. We used the local interest in the fiestas to organize the people, rouse them out of their lethargy. We asked for volunteers to contribute time or money to help organize and finance local pageants. We got hold of some old, thin cows and fattened them up to sell. The money went into the coffers of the Festival Committee. We’d erect stalls on street corners to sell food at weekends, and liquor as well. We brought musicians like Luis Lozada El Cubiro – God rest his soul – to sing joropos and liven things up. Money left over from that also went into the coffers. The town began to spring to life, people started to cooperate, to collaborate. I also worked a lot with the Cuivas and Yaruros, going deep into the Cajón de Arauca, following the banks of the Cubarro stream.
With your soldiers?
Yes. I commanded a patrol of bearded soldiers who looked more like guerrillas. I myself started to resemble the ragged character Lorenzo Barquero in Doña Bárbara … With the help of a great ethnologist, Arelis Sumavila, I got to know the Indians, to appreciate and respect their customs and culture. I spent weeks in the savannah with them, living the way they did. At the same time, I was able to keep researching Maisanta, whose memory was still fresh in the minds of many old people in the region. It was very important for me to dig more deeply into my family roots. And into the history, geography and culture of the Llanos.
So it was a fruitful ‘exile’ for you?
Yes, very fertile. I came out of that laboratory stronger mentally. It made a big impression on me, and reinforced my sense of the need for cooperation between the military and civil society. Those experiences were what I needed to form a more complete, integrated vision of the real Venezuela. Although the DIM were on my back even there.
They didn’t lose track of you?
As a precaution, we’d decided to suspend looking for new officers to join the movement. But one of our lieutenants [Ramón Valera Querales] asked me to let him finish the work he was doing with one particular second lieutenant. I gave him permission. Then this second lieutenant, nervous and scared, went and told his commander everything. He mentioned me by name. I didn’t know it at the time, but one day I started noticing agents following me everywhere.
Did you have any compromising documents or papers?
That was the trouble. I kept very important documents, books, notebooks in my bedroom. As it happened, when I heard about the informant I was away having an eye operation in Fuerte Tiuna, Caracas. Luckily I was able to alert some friends to ‘clean’ my room, and burn all those incriminating documents. Just in time, because the next day DIM and DISIP agents landed in Elorza in a light aircraft. They searched my room but didn’t find anything. But when I got back to Elorza, they stripped me of my command. I was left with no troops, no budget, nothing. The DISIP kept watching me, however, and in one of their reports they even linked me to the Colombian guerrillas, and said I was preparing an indigenous revolt! [Laughter.]
Were you still in touch with the other MBR-200 cadres?
It was more difficult, of course, because of the distances involved and the surveillance we were under. But these obstacles didn’t stop us organizing, in May 1986, our third National MBR-200 Congress in San Cristóbal, capital of the state of Táchira. I went there under the pretext of some armoured vehicle manoeuvre. During that congress, we discussed the main planks of what action to take, mainly those proposed by Arias Cárdenas and myself.
Apparently there was tension between you and Arias Cárdenas.
Arias had joined our Movement a few months before that congress, at the end of 1985. He was an exceedingly intelligent man, with experience of conspiracies within the Army. But, initially, there were things we disagreed about – like working methods, the ideological line to take, the strategy of uniting soldiers and civilians. These differences came to a head during the congress and we had a heated discussion about whether or not to incorporate popular organizations into our movement. But it didn’t stop us moving forward. We finally defined the Movement’s philosophical principles, based on the ideas of Bolívar, Miranda, Simón Rodríguez, and the social vision of Ezequiel Zamora: the four figures who nourished our political philosophy and our plan of action.
After this congress in 1986, we really did have an organization capable of preparing the civilian–military insurrection. And that was indispensable, because in the following months I was to feel the full pressure of the army intelligence services. What’s more, Generals Ítalo del Valle Alliegro, Manuel Heinz Azpurua, and especially Carlos Julio Peñaloza Zambrana, were out to get me.
Despite that, you were transferred back to Caracas, weren’t you?
Yes, but later. In 1986, I was promoted to major. One day, when I was just back from visiting a Yaruro area and my soldiers were so bedraggled, long-haired, and bearded that they really looked like veteran guerrillas, a general called Arnoldo Rodríguez Ochoa came on a visit of inspection. He was astonished by our appearance. Still, he and I talked at length, and eventually he asked me to be his second-in-command in San Juan de los Morros [capital of the state of Guárico], gateway to the Central Llanos. I accepted. And a mere three months later, he was appointed to run the National Security Council. He took me with him to Caracas to head up his staff. So, by way of a series of coincidences, from one day to the next, I was back in the capital.
What date was that?
Mid 1988, in the final days of Jaime Lusinchi’s presidency. In a trice, I had gone from the banks of the Arauca to the shores of the Guaire, I hadn’t even finished picking off the ticks. Once again, it was as if someone had conspired in my favour, like a cosmic conspiracy, with fate moving the pieces at the right time and place. There I was again in Caracas. My offices were in the Palacio Blanco [across the street from the Miraflores Palace], in the Seconasede [Secretariat of the National Council for Security and Defence, or Homeland Security]. It was an important position. Several generals opposed my appointment.
Did you revive the MBR-200?
I was under strict surveillance, but I did my best to get things going again and reactivate groups from within the Palacio Blanco and the Miraflores Palace. It was not easy. The Movement’s activity was at a low ebb. Everything, or almost everything, had been deactivated. I felt really deflated. I began to think about leaving …
About leaving the Army, again?
Yes. I’d been away from the capital for three years, and back in Caracas I was being watched very closely. I was under a lot of pressure, and forced to lower my level of activity. Several officers had deserted the Movement, others had left the Army, and some had even gone abroad … So, I took the decision to go to university and study political science; I was also considering leaving the Army altogether, to join the political struggle as a civilian.
You started at university, then.
Yes. I took advantage of being at the Seconasede to enrol, in July 1990, at the Simón Bolívar University to do a Masters in political science. I used my recent promotion to lieutenant colonel to ask permission, and General Rodríguez authorized it. The course was at the Valle de Sartenejas campus in Baruta [a smart neighbourhood in the east of Caracas].
With one exception, none of my lecturers was left-wing, so I argued with them and learned quite a bit from some of them. One day, one of these conservatives asked me, ‘What’s in your head, Major?’ ‘Ideas, Professor, ideas,’ I replied, to the lecturer’s alarm. ‘Those ideas of yours are rather worrying, seeing you’re in uniform …’
My main aim was to work hard and learn as much as possible about politics, economics and society. I remember my mentor, General Pérez Arcay, repeating, ‘Study! Study!’ He was always saying, ‘You have to learn a lot. One day you’ll be head of state, and you have to be a good head of state’. Personally, I had no wish to be head of state, what I wanted was to see change.
Did you specialize in any subject in particular?
Well, on the postgraduate course I signed up for I had to prepare a thesis. One of the subjects I took was National Projects, Planning and Development, and I wrote a paper on Carlos Andrés Pérez’s VIII Plan, known as the Gran Viraje [Great U-Turn].3 This U-turn was the one imposed on Venezuela by hegemonic global capitalism and the International Monetary Fund through a harsh programme of structural adjustment, which ultimately caused the mass protests and popular uprising known as the Caracazo.
What was the topic of your thesis?
Transitional government. I’d already done several papers on it for my Master’s.
