The electric fences are going up in the middle-class suburbs. The gun shopsare sold out. In the wake of a botched coup three months ago, the stageis set for a violent confrontation between two Venezuelas, rich and poor,with just a spark needed to ignite a civil war. Michael McCaughan reports from Caracas.
Gunfire rang out on April 11th in downtown Caracas after a huge opposition march strayed from its planned route and marched on the presidential palace. Death surprised the innocent as snipers using silencers picked off protesters at random from the rooftops of high-rise buildings.
"I thought people had fainted," said Judith Lopez, who saw a middle-aged man crumple beside her. Pools of blood trickled out from underneath the dead bodies. Panic followed as armed protesters responded to police bullets, while residents of nearby apartment blocks dragged snipers from the top of their buildings.
The local media, which had led a vicious, defamatory campaign against President Hugo Chavez, immediately blamed him for the deaths and demanded his resignation.
The news spread quickly around the world: Chavez sent gunmen to shoot peaceful protesters. No one questioned this version supplied by the same media outlets which had urged citizens to oust Chavez by any means necessary.
Chavez remained inside the presidential palace, surrounded by loyal guards. As he addressed the nation that evening, appealing for calm, the signal was cut. Behind the scenes, Venezuelan business, army and church leaders negotiated a post-Chavez government, counting on US support.
The army high command announced it would no longer obey Chavez who was detained and taken to an offshore military base, facing charges for the civilian deaths. In the early hours of April 12th, Pedro Carmona, head of a powerful business lobby, Fedecamaras, stepped forward to assume the presidency.
In an effort to contain social unrest, Venezuela's wealthy elite reached out to the poor. "We will never turn our back on you again," said Alejandro Pena, self-appointed leader of what they term "civil society", who secured less than 1 per cent of votes when he ran for office in the 1998 presidential elections. "Today we make you a solemn promise to unite rich and poor in an eternal alliance to promote national development." The coup came to an initial conclusion with far less victims than the average weekend death toll in crime-ridden Caracas.
Venezuela's poor were unimpressed, however, and the drums of war sounded in the shantytowns where Chavez supporters prepared to take back the country.
President Carmona named a conservative cabinet, dissolved congress, and revoked the nation's new constitution which had been ratified by referendum. Police raided the alternative press, detained legislators and allegedly tortured political suspects.
In a country free of political assassinations or political prisoners since Chavez took power in 1998, Venezuela's new rulers showed contempt for democratic rules and lost the little support they had.
In a dramatic ending to the botched coup, the deposed Chavez returned to the palace early on Saturday morning April 13th, promising to heal the nation's wounds.
Two months after these remarkable events this reporter was searching for clues to explain the coup when a hesitant voice volunteered the information: "One of the dead men is alive." The voice belonged to Diogenes Lopez, a skinny, streetwise youth, who then added with unnecessary gravitas: "And I am that man." Lopez had gone to the presidential palace on the fateful day to defend it against the opposition, fearing the overthrow of the government. As he stood on Puente Llaguno, close by the presidential palace, he half turned and saw police officers pointing guns at him.
"I felt a strange sensation and everything turned yellow," he said. Lopez was hit by a bullet in the head and two more in the back. He was placed on a stretcher and taken to the morgue, presumed dead. A sharp-witted employee noticed a hint of life in the moribund youth.
Despite the absence of a welfare system, unemployed Lopez turned down the offer of an appearance on a Mexican freak show where people receive $1,000 to tell their bizarre experiences: "I don't want my case to be manipulated by the opposition," he said. Lopez had no doubt that snipers and police acted together to put an end to the Chavez administration.
Venezuela is a nation of two halves, divided by love and hate towards President Chavez. There is no middle ground anymore. Even the relatives of the coup victims have formed groups along partisan lines. Victims' relatives who oppose Chavez have joined forces with lawyers who accuse the president of crimes against humanity for failing to safeguard lives on the day of the march. Meanwhile, the State continues to investigate what did happen, but has been hampered by division within the police.
Hugo Chavez Frias (48), the charismatic leader at the heart of Venezuela's political transformationa, is a former paratrooper with an uncanny ability to inspire the masses. Every Sunday Chavez broadcasts his weekly television programme, Alo Presidente, in which he recites parables, sings ballads, makes fun of his enemies and talks for hours without a script, captivating his audience.
Observers have tried to pin labels of Marx, Mao and Fidel Castro on to his broad lapels but the real Hugo Chavez transcends political categories. "God put him there," said one supporter, explaining his rise to power. Many Venezuelans are obsessed with astrological charts, tarot readings and psychics who dominate breakfast television, mapping out the day ahead. President Chavez, who came to prominence when he led a failed military uprising in 1992, is a man marked by destiny, someone who cast caution to the winds and gambled everything to improve his country's living standards. Chavez radiates bravery, confidence and compassion, values which are lacking in Venezuela's pampered and insecure middle classes.
Last weekend I attended a mass mobilisation of Chavez supporters, with half a million people turning out for the president. "Do you believe in god?" asked Alfredo Navarro, wearing the trademark red beret, "because a man without god is incomplete." Navarro is unemployed, eats a meal "every other day" and told me he would give his life for Chavez. When I asked what he hoped for from the Chavez government, he quoted Bolivar: "Stand firm and firmer still; have patience and more patience."
PRESIDENT Chavez, elected to office in December, 1998, promised social justice without touching the economic structures that underpin wealth and class. The secret weapon behind his revolution would be a new constitution, approved in 1999, which prioritised social welfare above the right to profit. Last November, President Chavez made his move, signing 49 decrees into law, including a land law which legalised the requisition of idle land. It was payback time for the middle and upper classes who began plotting the illegal overthrow of the government.
Minutes after arriving in Caracas a stranger gave me a brief lesson on how to survive the city: "Leave all your valuables at home or someone will mug you and kill you." Sound enough. Then she added: "But if you are mugged and you don't have anything of value on you they may kill you anyhow, out of frustration."
Venezuelans live in a state of permanent anguish, waiting for the marauding rabble to descend from the hillsides and seize their homes. For the poor, however, armed robbery, even for a pair of shoes, is a constant fear as workers return home through dimly lit areas with no police presence. In February, 1989, Venezuela experienced a dress rehearsal in class warfare which revealed the depth of divisions in society. Former President Carlos Andres Perez signed an IMF austerity package which sparked price hikes and street violence. The army and police shot looters on sight, killing more than 1,000 people.
President Chavez, who has rallied the poor behind a radical social reform project, has terrified the middle classes. Since the street violence and looting of April, Caracas's elegant urbanizaciones (high-rise apartment blocks) have been co-ordinating security measures which range from the astute to the insane.
At a residents' meeting in my building it was agreed to pay for an electrified fence and walkie talkies on each floor, to communicate with local police. Even without these modifications the apartments are built to withstand everything short of aerial bombardment, with access to lifts secured by laser cards while steel gates protect inner doors. A security firm posted a 30-point plan to improve our reflexes, including one point which simply said learn to distrust and becareful around maids and other employees.
In more upmarket areas neighbourhood associations have snapped up handguns and purchased vats of oil, which will be boiled and poured on to the heads of the invading hordes.
President Chavez's followers have also taken steps to protect the "accumulated capital" of their fledgling revolution. Thousands of Chavistas have also secured weapons and are prepared to use them in defence of the revolution. The stage is set for a violent confrontation between two Venezuelas, rich and poor, with just a spark needed to ignite a civil war.
The opposition blames Chavez's constant references to poverty and wealth as the reasons for the current tension but Chavez believes he has simply brought social differences to the surface in order to resolve them. The opposition has lodged 61 legal cases against Chavez in Venezuela's Supreme Court, attempting to impeach him on grounds that range from mental insanity to high treason for selling oil at a preferential price to Cuba.
The Chavez project has been handicapped by infighting between radicals and moderates, a reflection of the broader divisions within society. Opportunism and inefficiency has also taken its toll, with the presidential palace, Miraflores, in the hands of maddening bureaucrats.
The battle for Venezuela knows no age limits with Catholic primary schools now active in a row over religious education. Sister Dulce Maria Carvajal, principal at Mary Immaculate College in Caracas, is facing charges of incitement to hatred for actively encouraging pupils to oppose Chavez. Caravajal used school buses to take pupils and parents to the April 11th march, and parent-teacher meetings have become anti-Chavez rallies. At the heart of the debate is a government initiative to launch Bolivarian schools for the poor where pupils receive three meals a day, a crucial factor in their continuing education.
An estimated one million children have returned to the classroom in the past two years, earning plaudits from UNESCO but criticism from the Catholic church which is lobbying to secure government funding frozen due to budget deficit.
The Chavez steamroller buried the nation's traditional political parties in 1998 but discredited politicians are reinventing themselves as Civil Society, grouped within a "democratic co-ordinator". However, the opposition lacks leadership and has yet to present an alternative political project, held together only by a hatred of Chavez.
Since April 11th, President Chavez has raced to consolidate his democratic revolution through a neighbourhood network of organisations, the Bolivarian Circles set up to promote political awareness and local projects.
I spent a week visiting the circles, meeting literacy teachers, health workers, sewing circles and street vendors. The common link between the circles was a desire for community development and the need to put down roots in every barrio.
"The enemy is inside there," an elderly woman told me, pointing at bureaucrats inside government offices. "I've never earned a penny from my social work," she said, as she waited in line to register her Bolivarian Circle.
President Chavez remains one of Latin America's most solid leaders, as opposition polls gauge his popularity at 45 per cent, a remarkable feat after three years in office and a climate of virtual civil war on the streets. For the first time in history the nation's majority poor have become protagonists of their own transformation.
The opposition has regrouped and is now ready to attack once more, planning a fresh round of marches next week. The coup conspirators no longer enjoy the element of surprise but they have money, weapons and influence abroad.
Meanwhile the shortest path to power runs through the military barracks where some senior officers are upset at the army's new role in building schools and operating farmers' markets. There is also the temptation of assassination. A single bullet would eliminate Chavez and, with him, the hopes of humble Venezuela, which has woken to the possibility that a better world might yet be possible.