Hugo! (2 page)

¡HUGO!

Hugo Chávez's presidency was slipping out of his hands. Hundreds of
thousands of protestors were marching toward the Miraflores presidential
palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 11, 2002, demanding that he
resign. "Get out Chávez, traitor!" some yelled. "We're going to topple
the government!" "Chávez is going to pay!" It was one of the largest
protest marches in Venezuelan history, a diverse coalition of men,
women, and even children waving flags, blowing whistles, and banging
pots. Many had their faces painted yellow, red, and blue, the colors of
Venezuela's flag.

Three years into his presidency Chávez was a hated man among
some Venezuelans. They believed he was a messianic demagogue,
another Fidel Castro who was destroying the country with a half-baked
experiment in communism. To the protestors, Chávez had divided
Venezuela between rich and poor, pushing a peaceful nation to the
brink of civil war. He dismissed the wealthy elites who led the opposition
as "squealing pigs," "rancid oligarchs," and "the squalid ones." He
denounced the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in Venezuela as a
"tumor" and "devils in vestments." Chávez was an embarrassment to
the protestors, a crackpot
caudillo
who was inciting class warfare and
plunging the country into economic chaos.

But as word spread in the capital city's teeming mountainside barrios
that the protestors had illegally changed the route of their march at
the last minute and were converging on Miraflores, several thousand of
Chávez's supporters jumped on motorcycles and public buses to head to
the palace. They vowed to defend the president to the death. To them,
he was a messiah. He was the first president in Venezuela's history to
stand up for millions of poor people who made up a majority of the population.
Venezuela possessed the largest oil reserves in the world outside
the Middle East and was one of the largest foreign suppliers to the
United States, yet most of its population was mired in poverty. Many
blamed a corrupt ruling elite for pillaging the oil wealth and amassing
private fortunes. While bus drivers, electricians, and teachers lived in
shacks, the elites jetted off to Europe and the United States for vacations
and lived in gated mansions.

A few hundred of the Chavistas gathered on an overpass near
Miraflores called Llaguno Bridge. To distinguish themselves from the
protestors, many had their faces painted red, Chávez's color. Down on
the streets, thin lines of Metropolitan Police and National Guardsmen
tried to keep the groups apart. Clothing stores, coffee shops, and restaurants
that sold corn bread
arepas
were closed, with metal gates pulled
down to protect the windows. The hot Caribbean sun was beating down
on the city. Tear gas choked the air.

At about 3:20 P.M. one of the anti-Chávez protestors, twenty-nine-year-
old Aristóteles Aranguren, was standing on Baralt Avenue about
seven blocks from Miraflores when the first shots rang out. He wasn't
sure where they came from, but he assumed it was the Chavistas. The
bald, freckle-faced former soldier and fifth-grade teacher flinched and
ducked behind a tank-like vehicle called the Whale. It was owned by
the Metropolitan Police and had suddenly turned onto Baralt from a
side street. Aranguren started running backward and had gone just a
few steps when a woman on the seventh floor of a nearby office building
yelled out a window, "Watch out! They're bringing someone wounded!"
A group of men came running down the street carrying the limp, bloody
body of a man by the arms and legs. The man was slipping from their
grasp, so they paused to get a better hold.

Aranguren ran over to see if he could help with some of the first-aid
techniques he had learned in the military. The victim was about
twenty and dressed in black — shirt, jacket, and dungarees. His body
was limp, and his head was hanging to the side. A bullet had pierced it
on the left side just above the ear, exiting on the right. It left an inch-wide
hole through which Aranguren could see part of the man's gray,
bloody brain. In his free hand one of the rescuers was carrying a bloody
gray glob that looked like another part of the young man's brain. He was
bleeding profusely. The back of his head was soaked through in blood,
matting down his hair.

Aranguren was enraged at the sight of the young man, who
appeared dead. The protestors had come to peacefully demand that
Chávez resign. Aranguren had never imagined the march would turn
bloody. Maybe some tear gas from the police. Maybe some fistfights
with the Chavistas. But never gunshots.

Keeping a wary eye on the bridge, he retreated another twenty
yards south on Baralt. More gunshots rang out. He could see the leaves
shake on a tree in front of a McDonald's as bullets whizzed by. At the
corner of University Avenue, he encountered a second revolting scene:
a man lying faceup and unconscious on the sidewalk. A bullet hole left
a gaping wound on the left side of his head. Five protestors stood around
him in shocked silence. One held his head slightly off the ground and
unsuccessfully pressed a handkerchief against the wound to try to stop
the bleeding. The cloth was soaked with blood.

Aranguren quickly surveyed the ghastly scene, and was struck by
a chilling thought. Both men were killed with a single bullet to the
head. Were snipers taking people out? He'd undergone training in the
military in how to neutralize snipers, and this seemed to fit the bill. He
glanced at the rooftops of buildings up and down the street, but didn't
see anything unusual. Then he took off running, turning his back to
the overpass and yelling to the crowd, "There are snipers! Go back! Two
people are already dead!"

He had gone about thirty yards when, on the other side of the
street, he saw the head of a man running parallel to him jerk forward
abruptly as if someone had pushed him from behind. The man then
crumpled to the ground. He was thin, with a crew cut and no shirt.
He had taken a bullet to the head, which now had a small stain on it.
He lay on his right side on the sidewalk and did not move. It was the
third person Aranguren saw with a bullet in the head. The shooting had
started barely a minute ago.

Shots were still raining down on the crowd. About fifty people were
in the immediate area around Aranguren. Half a dozen or so had bullet
wounds to their feet, legs, torsos, or arms. People were walking, trotting,
sprinting in all directions. Others just stood there, dumbfounded. No
one knew where the shots were coming from or what was happening.

Aranguren kept running, turning his eyes quickly again to the
street in front of him. Ten yards away he saw another man lying on
his back on the sidewalk in front of a men's clothing store. A protestor
running in front of Aranguren spotted the man at the last minute and
leaped over his body. The man was motionless except for his lower left
arm and hand, which were extended into the air and moving back and
forth weakly in a sweeping motion. Just as Aranguren reached him, his
arm fell to the ground and stopped moving.

Aranguren stopped in front of the man and looked down. He
was about forty, had black hair, a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and white
sneakers. His face was full of sweat from running in the tropical heat.

On the left side of his neck was a gaping bullet wound. Blood was
gushing out. He didn't look like he had much life left in him. His lips
were white. His eyes were 90 percent closed. His head moved slightly
from side to side.

Part of Aranguren wanted to leave the man and flee, since his own
life was in danger. But he had seen his arm move a moment earlier, and
thought he might still be alive. He couldn't just abandon him.
He dropped to the ground and straddled the man with one leg
on either side. Then he did the only thing he could think of to stop
the bleeding: He shoved the middle finger of his right hand into the
warm, slippery wound, which swallowed his finger completely. The
man's bleeding slowed but did not stop. The wound was near his artery.
Aranguren could feel blood pulsing against his finger. Maybe there was
a chance to save him after all, he thought. Another marcher came over,
crouched down, and said, "How is he? Is he alive?"

"I think so," Aranguren responded. "Call the rescue squad. Call
civil defense."

Luckily paramedics were in the area in case the protest turned
violent. Two quickly came zooming up the sidewalk on a motorcycle
from the south of Baralt, where most of the protestors were massed.
One jumped off and shouted at Aranguren, "Don't take your finger out
of there! Wait a second!" The paramedic was in his midthirties and
wearing a bulky jacket that served as his medical kit. Its pockets were
filled with bandages, needles, sutures, rubber gloves, splints, gauze, little
bottles with liquid medicines. He was a walking emergency room.

He crouched down next to the man on the sidewalk, pulled out a
needle and a small bottle of medicine, and told Aranguren he was going
to inject the man with it. If he was still alive, he would respond, the paramedic
said. He jammed the needle into the man's right arm, squeezed
the lever, and pulled the needle out. Then he opened the man's eyelids
and looked at his eyes. Nothing. "I'm going to put another injection in
his arm," the paramedic said. "If he responds, he's alive. If he doesn't,
he's dead, and I have to go to another victim that needs help."

Aranguren protested, "But he's alive. I can feel the pulse. You've
got to do something." He told the paramedic he wanted to at least carry
the man out of there, out of the line of fire, to a safe location where he
could be treated.

The paramedic explained that Aranguren might simply be feeling
the man's blood draining from his brain. He injected him a second
time, looked at his eyes, and again saw no response. "This person can't
be saved," he said. "He's practically dead."

Aranguren exploded with anger. "How is it possible you can't do
anything?" he yelled. The two shouted back and forth, and the paramedic
ordered Aranguren to back away so he could look at the wound.
He pushed him against the chest, but Aranguren, instead of backing
away, simply pulled his finger out of wound and stood up.

Just as he did, he felt something strike the back of his right leg. He
turned around to see if someone was behind him, shooting, but didn't
see anyone. He wasn't sure if he'd been hit by a bullet or a rock. It didn't
hurt much. But as he reached around, he felt that his pant leg had been
ripped open. Blood was on his leg, just below the buttock. He'd been
shot. He realized to his horror that the spot he'd been hit on the leg was
exactly where his head had been just a second earlier, before the paramedic
pushed him. The bullet had been aimed at his head. He was in
the sight of a sniper.

Panicked, adrenaline pumping, he took off running down Baralt.
He had his eye on the Plaza Caracas, a football field or so away, where
he thought he might be out of the range of the snipers. He ran diagonally
across the street, desperate to reach the plaza. But as he ran, his
leg felt strange, like it was asleep in the area where he'd been shot. It
was getting harder and harder to move it, as if he had a weight attached
to it. Then the part that was numb got bigger and bigger. By now he
was practically dragging his leg. He made it across the street but only
halfway to the plaza before collapsing onto a sidewalk. Terrified that the
snipers were going to get him as he lay defenseless, he started screaming
for help. "I've been shot! Get me out of the line of fire because there
are snipers!"

Just a few minutes had passed since the first shots rang out.

One of the most extraordinary events in modern Latin American history
was unfolding. The gunfire went on for several hours, and before
long a television network owned by billionaire
Gustavo Cisneros, the
richest man in Venezuela and one of the richest in the world, was
showing a video of Chavistas purportedly firing from the Llaguno
Bridge at the marchers. In reality, they were firing at the Metropolitan
Police, who were controlled by a Chávez opponent, and not at the protestors,
who were too far away to be hit by their handguns. But it didn't
matter. The world was soon blaming Hugo Chávez for the "Massacre
of El Silencio."

Military officers appeared on television declaring that they no
longer recognized Chávez as the head of state. Opposition political
and business leaders came on, too, pronouncing Chávez an "assassin."
Eventually Chávez gave in to threats by military rebels that they were
going to bomb Miraflores Palace, surrendering himself to them while
a general announced to the world that he had resigned. Then Chávez
disappeared for the next two days. No one in the public knew where
he was. In fact, he was secretly shuffled among four different locations,
including a remote Caribbean island. At one point in the middle of the
night, his captors took him to a dark, desolate road, where it appeared
they were going to execute him.

Forty-seven hours after his
disappearance, Chávez returned to
power when tens of thousands of his enraged supporters took to the
streets and loyalist military officers launched a countercoup to rescue
him and bring him back to the palace. The two-day putsch was one of
the most dramatic chapters in a life that has taken one remarkable turn
after the other and transformed Hugo Chávez into a seminal figure in
modern Latin American history — the most controversial and closely
watched leader in the region since Fidel Castro.

Chávez's life story is the stuff of Hollywood, a Lincoln-like rise from
poverty to power . . . with a Venezuelan twist. He was born in a mud
hut on the Great Plains of Venezuela, delivered by a midwife because
few doctors worked in the impoverished countryside. As a child he sold
candies in school and on the streets to help his
family survive. By the
time he was seventeen he had entered the country's prestigious military
academy, Venezuela's version of West Point, mainly to play on its
baseball
team and pursue his dream of pitching in the major leagues.