by ELIAS JAUA (former vice-president of Venezuela, translation by Rachael Boothroyd)
(Jaua was appointed Venezuela’s foreign minister soon after this article was written.)
A massive rally was held in Caracas in defence of the Bolivarian Revolution on January 23, 2013. Known as the “Day of Democracy” in Venezuela, it marks the day in 1958 when the dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez was overthrown by a civilian-military movement.
The Bolivarian civic-military organisation that began to be constructed as a political force under the leadership of Comandante Hugo Chavez is rooted principally in the rebellions of the people and the military in 1989 and 1992 respectively. However, the structure of the Bolivarian Movement 200 (MBR200) as a presence in the streets began to take place at the beginning of 1994, when Hugo Chavez was released from prison and began a social and political pilgrimage throughout the country.
Between 1994 and 1998 Comandante Chavez managed to bring students, professionals, small and medium-sized business owners, peasants, farmers, fishers, miners, Indigenous peoples, workers, women, young people, the military, local activist leaders, and almost the entirety of Venezuela’s left leadership into the project of rescuing Simone Bolivar’s thought and holding a constituent assembly to re-found the state and recover national and popular sovereignty, with the goal of transforming the structures responsible for the social exclusion of the majority of the people. He even opportunistically managed to gain the support of important sectors of the bourgeoisie for the Bolivarian political insurgency.
That’s how Comandante Chavez was elected a president on December 6, 1998, and through this, activated a constituent process that would lead to the election of a national constituent assembly and the subsequent approval by the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s constitution; a totally unprecedented event in our country’s history.
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