From Massacre to Revolution in Venezuela: Reassessing the Urban Roots of Chavismo

In 1989, economic reforms in Venezuela unleashed a popular uprising the repression of which resulted in what the Inter American Court of Human Rights later called a “state-sponsored massacre,” centered primarily in low income districts of Caracas.  Over the next ten years, what had been heralded as one of Latin America’s most stable democracies suffered through failed coups, presidential impeachments, banking crises, and, eventually, the collapse of a decades-old two-party system under the weight of a Bolivarian Revolution led by Hugo Chávez.  Today, revolutionary mythology around the roots of Chavismo holds that urban popular sectors like those that suffered the brunt of state repression in 1989 comprise the strongest base of support for Chávez’s political project.  But the conventional wisdom underlying this claim rests on derivative assumptions and redemption narratives linking massacre and revolution in a context of rapid political change.  This paper reassesses these unproven links between urban popular sectors and a nascent movement led by Chávez as he ascended onto Venezuela’s political scene, first in a failed coup attempt in 1992, then through years of high profile incarceration in the mid 1990s, and finally in a successful presidential campaign in 1998.  Drawing on oral history interviews, public opinion polls, and newspaper accounts, the paper examines the nature of urban popular support for Chávez in the 1990s, gauging reactions and charting evolving perceptions of Chávez and his movement, while juxtaposing them to current memorializations of Chavismo’s urban roots as tied to the 1989 massacre.  In particular, the paper engages the lived experience of residents of Venezuela’s largest public housing community, located in the heart of Caracas and today cast as the “bastion” of the Bolivarian revolution, while ultimately aiming to bring together strands of urban, social, and contemporary history in the study of modern Latin America.