The Economist reviews a new book on the Venezuelan coup of 2002:
ON APRIL 11th 2002 nearly a million people marched on the presidential palace in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, to demand the ousting of Hugo Chávez, the elected president whom they accused of undermining democracy and causing the creeping “Cubanisation” of the country. As they neared the palace, violence broke out. . .
As Brian Nelson, who teaches at Miami University, writes in this superbly researched account, the short-lived coup “would become one of the most important, yet most misunderstood, events in recent history.” It severely damaged the democratic credentials of the Venezuelan opposition, while Mr Chávez successfully portrayed himself as the innocent victim of an American-inspired conspiracy to overthrow violently an elected government. . .
So what really happened in April 2002? . . . Chávez’s brief ouster was “not a coup in the classic sense”, nor a premeditated conspiracy, and he exonerates the United States of direct involvement. He finds that the National Guard and chavista gunmen started the shooting, and were responsible for most of the bloodshed, though some victims may have been killed when the Caracas police, loyal to an opposition mayor, returned fire.
When Mr Chávez ordered the army to suppress the demonstration, his top generals refused. They rightly argued that the order was unconstitutional. When the television images showed the chavistas shedding blood, the president quickly found himself friendless. Though he did not sign a written resignation, he did agree to step down in return for safe passage to Cuba. But the generals failed to broker a constitutional transition. As they dithered, Mr Carmona stepped opportunistically into the power vacuum, staging “a coup within a popular uprising”. The army swiftly withdrew its support from the appalling Mr Carmona, making Mr Chávez’s return inevitable.
Within days his government began “a multi-million dollar campaign to rewrite the history of the coup”. According to Mr Nelson, it destroyed evidence of the killings, blocked all attempts at police and judicial investigation, and swiftly shut down hearings by the chavista-controlled National Assembly. It offered money and benefits to those willing to say they or their relatives had been shot by the opposition, writes Mr Nelson, and harassed those who truthfully claimed the opposite.
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