From vheadline
Zack Krasuk writes: Large political and socio economic changes in a third world country do not happen when things are complacent and well for the masses. Neither was this the case with Venezuela. In December 6, 1998, Hugo Chavez of the MVR Party (Movimiento de la Quinta Republica-Movement of the Fifth Republic) won the presidential election by a whopping 56.2%, one of the largest majority of votes attained in the history of Venezuela and breaking the pattern of a two party political system that offered little practical variation at all for the previous 40 years. Indeed, the election of 1998 marked a new and brighter beginning for Venezuela and its citizens.Chavez had long fought for the rights of his people. To fully understand the political situation of this South American country we must look back a little over a decade.
A lieutenant colonel, Chavez rose up in a failed coup attempt on February 4, 1992 against then President Carlos Andres Perez (CAP) who had implemented years of failed laissez-faire capitalist austerity programs dictated by the IMF.
This IMF austerity program was appropriately called "The Washington Consensus," since CAP had close ties with the neo cons and businessmen of the Bush Senior administration. The trade-off for the IMF's austerity plan imposed on Venezuela would be a loan for US$4.5 billion.
The austerity programs included cuts in social programs, thus leaving hospitals without sufficient medicines and with time jails overcrowded to the extent that they no longer were suitable for humans, with rats and other animals and insects living alongside the prisoners.
I remember clearly while living in Venezuela then, that women in public hospitals such as Perez de Leon would give birth in metal desks covered with a sheet. A line would form and women would have to wait their turn. Such was the state of decay of the public services in 1992. (1, 2)
