Venezuelan Leader Marks Anniversary of His Failed Coup

President Hugo Chavez led a caravan of cheering supporters through four Venezuelan cities Sunday in a raucous anniversary celebration of a failed military coup he led nine years ago.

Wearing Chavez’s trademark red beret and waving Venezuelan flags, tens of thousands of the president’s fans trailed after him in almost 1,000 buses and cars. Thousands more waved and cheered from the streets as the caravan passed by.

The caravan covered the route of the failed 1992 coup, stopping in the cities of Valencia, Maracay and La Victoria, and ending in Caracas. Chavez culminated the celebration with fireworks and a two-hour speech praising his revolt before a massive rally in a Caracas plaza.

A fervent nationalist, Chavez calls the 1992 attempt coup the dawn of his “revolution” to dismantle a corrupt oligarchy and lift Venezuelans from poverty. He claims the date, Feb. 4, is as important as when the country declared independence from Spain on April 19, 1810.

“Hello, brothers! The revolution is advancing! What a beautiful Sunday . . . a patriotic day, a revolutionary day, a day of the future, a day of dignity,” Chavez said during the radio program.

Opposition groups railed against the commemoration of the failed coup, accusing the president of legitimizing uprisings against democratically elected governments.

Chavez, who went on to be elected president in 1998, has radically transformed Venezuelan politics in his two years in office. He pushed through a new constitution that prolonged the presidential term and, through elections, has stacked Congress, the Supreme Court and most state governments with his allies.

His frequent rants against “oligarchs” and promises to redistribute Venezuela’s oil wealth have earned him almost fanatical support among the country’s poor--which make up 80% of the population--and deep resentment among the middle and upper classes.

The three officers who helped Chavez stage his 1992 coup attempt broke ties with him last year in dramatic public dispute, during which his fellow coup plotters accused the president of amassing too much power.

On Saturday, a group of retired generals opposed to Chavez attended a Mass in Caracas to remember those who died trying to put down the rebellion.

The generals, known as the Institutional Military Front, say Chavez has caused discontent in the armed forces by trying to mobilize the army behind his political movement. Gen. Fernando Ochoa, who served as defense minister during the 1992 rebellion, said the president fed that discontent by unexpectedly appointing Jose Vicente Rangel, a key leader of Chavez’s Fifth Republic Movement party, as defense minister on Friday.

Chavez defended Rangel’s appointment as an attempt to build “civic-military” unity. He announced more Cabinet changes on Sunday, removing his interior minister Col. Luis Alfonso Davila, under fire recently for failing to curb Venezuela’s rising crime rate. He appointed his political mentor, Luis Miquilena, to the post. Davila replaced Rangel as foreign minister.

Miquilena, 80, was tried and acquitted last year on charges of corruption as Chavez’s first interior minister in 1999.

“Now, there’s a man in the presidency that will use his leadership to bring us out of the black hole we were in,” said Sebastian Viera, a 70-year-old retired mechanic who took part in the caravan.