<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<h1 class="title"><small>President Chávez: “We Are Now a Truly Free
Country”</small></h1>
<div class="submitted">
<div class="symbols"> <a
href="http://venezuelanalysis.com/printmail/7692"
title="Send this page by e-mail." class="print-mail" rel="nofollow"> </a><a
href="http://venezuelanalysis.com/print/7692"
title="Display a printer-friendly version of this page."
class="print-mail" rel="nofollow">http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7692<br>
</a> </div>
<p class="byline"> By <span class="author">Venezuelan Embassy to the
U.S.</span>, <span class="date">February 7th 2013</span> </p>
</div>
<p><span>On Monday, Vice President Nicolás Maduro read a message to the
Venezuelan people from President Hugo Chávez to mark the 21st
anniversary of the rebellion of February 4, 1992, an event he said
helped ensure that “we live in really and truly free country.”</span></p>
<p><span>“February 4th hasn’t ended,” Chávez wrote. “Its rebellious
spirit should accompany us each day because the powers we confronted
for more than two decades still persist.”</span></p>
<p><span>Many thousands of people joined public events in Caracas,
Venezuela’s capital city, to commemorate the “Day of National Dignity,”
which ended with Maduro’s speech.</span></p>
<p><span>“My spirit and my heart are with you on this day… I regret
being physically absent, but that is what is required in this battle
that I am facing for full recovery,” Chávez said, referring to his
recuperation from cancer surgery in Cuba.</span></p>
<p><span>Thanks to the Boliviarian Revolution that began with
democratic elections in 1999, he said, “today the people fully exercise
power.”</span></p>
<p><span>Finally, he offered an “infinite embrace” to the people and
the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, saying: “I am with you wearing my
red beret and arm band [with the colors of the flag].”</span></p>
<p><span><strong>Below is the full text of the letter by President
Chávez:</strong></span></p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="8">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span><strong>Comrades, in
commemorating the 21st anniversary of the civil-military rebellion of
February 4, 1992, I want to direct this fervently Bolivarian and
revolutionary message to the people and the armed forces as an
indivisible whole.</strong></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>How much I regret being
physically absent from our national territory for the first time on
this luminous date of birth, but that is what is required by this
battle I am facing for my full recovery in brotherly and revolutionary
Cuba, however my spirit and heart are with you on this Day of National
Dignity.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>There are dates on which all
the volume of history is revealed and that mark the path of peoples
once again, there are dates that seal and clear things up, that become
a commitment and a signal of a destiny that has to happen to calibrate
the past and let us see with greater clarity the liberating horizon,
and February 4, 1992, was one of those dates.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>On that memorable day, all
the struggles of our people were vindicated, on that memorable day our
liberators returned from all paths, on that memorable day [Simón]
Bolívar returned and entered into battle now and forever.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Those of us who, like
Bolívar, Robinson and Zamora, took up arms and went out that dawn to
risk our lives for the country and the people, were fully aware that
Venezuela had reached the bottom three years ago during the rebellion
of February 27, 1989, a day that marked our path, when the people
risked their lives fighting in the streets against the savage
neoliberalism that Washington tried to impose on us.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Those of us in the military
didn’t want to continue shouldering the disgrace of being the
praetorian guard of a political class that was as oppressive and
corrupt as it was criminal. Never again would they use us to drown the
people’s calls for justice in blood.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>The Caracazo marked and end
and a beginning, the end of a system drowned in shame, the beginning of
an era of change that required the rebirth of popular dignity.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Those of us who burst into
the shadows of injustice and indignity that overwhelmed Venezuela in
those days were, as Che Guevara said, guided by a great feeling of
love, a love that was Bolivarian, of the people, rebellious, combative,
an infinite liberating frenzy that brought us, as the liberator wanted,
to cast off fear and save the nation.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Our poet Gustavo Pereira
tells us with an eerie simplicity the following: “Love is the only
important thing in the world.” It has been 21 years since that February
4th, of anguish and the dawn, of bravery and sacrifice, the march
continues to be difficult, but with the irresistible force of love we
recall Bolívar, we are on our way to achieving definitive independence,
a socialist and liberated nation.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>I want to exalt today the
role of Venezuelan women on February 4th, of Columbas Rivas, Marisol
Terán, a robust group of women that accompanied the rebellion, they
were there at the moment of generosity and heroism, with all their
patriotic fervor, all their abnegation.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>The time is coming, history
is coming, history made with the people that forge it each day, there
is February 4th like a sacred cry from our collective memory that told
Venezuela to get up and move forward, and thanks to the collective
Lazarus that is the land of Bolívar, all of us are artifices of the
resurrected nation, of the country that finally took in its arms the
Bolivarian flag to be reborn in the light of dignity.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>From the deepest reaches of
the heart of the people I say, with Aquiles Nazoa, that thanks to
February 4th, every compatriot can with full certainty “have a
tomorrow, look upon the countryside and say this is my city, this is my
nation.”</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Brothers and sisters, today
after 21 years of that civil-military rebellion, that decision made
with the greatest sense of love for Venezuela, which we thought and
rethought as the only possible way to have a nation, we live in a
really and truly free country.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>On February 4th our people
saw the dawn of their hopes thanks to the military community; the
people once again felt accompanied by patriotic soldiers. We left to
brandish our swords in defense of social guarantees, of the rights of
the greater Venezuelan community. We were only motivated by the
ambition to become the heirs and followers of the independence army. We
wanted to return to our Bolivarian essence, to truly be the people in
arms forging liberty.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>My history was already
known. The patriotic and revolutionary military insurgencies in Carpano
and Puerto Cabello, and in the 1960’s created a historic opening, and
despite the fact that both rebellions were brutally put down by the
bourgeois democracy, a furrow for a seed remained. That is where we
come from, and from further back, from Indigenous resistance, from the
slave rebellions, from Chirinos, Gual and España, Miranda, Bolívar,
Sucre, Zamora, and Cipriano Castro.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>I recall a memorable passage
from a great revolutionary thinker named Walter Benjamin: “The past
comes with a temporal code through which it delivers redemption; there
exists a secret meeting between past generations and our own.” We could
very well say that this secret meeting took place on February 4th,
1992, where the past, present and future received redemption.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>February 4th has been fully
justified by history. Those of us who were against the Pact of Punto
Fijo have been blessed by a people who are today at the vanguard of the
fight for peace and justice, and who serve as examples for the peoples
of the world.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Honor and glory for the
fallen soldiers and students!</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>In 1828, our liberator
wrote: “Patriotism is a sacred fire that cannot be hidden and that
often, when it is extended in truly pure sentiment, leads to greater
happiness for the country.” I have long meditated on these words from
our great commander, and the more I do so, the more convinced I become
that this was the fundamental reason that led us to undertake that
heroic action on February 4th. The sacred fire that stirred within
could no longer be hidden.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>To the brave Bolivarian
soldiers, it is up to us to enhance that liberating fire of justice
that will last century upon century, while we have the nation we now
finally have.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Luis Alberto Crespo said of
this servant: “His courage stems from that February 4th, and that
courage is not just mine because I am not Chávez, Chávez is the people,
and in reality and truth, as long as that sacred fire is extended in
truly pure sentiment, it will be to the benefit of the greater
happiness of our nation of the Americas and the immense nation we call
humanity.”</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>We were not wrong in the
certainty that encouraged the Bolivarian soldiers, which is identical
to that which was personified in millions of fellow citizens at the
time, and which is found in every corner of this nation that is making
into reality the sentiment which spurred the rebellion.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>I am going to repeat what I
said 21 years ago: if our movement is triumphant, we will hand over
power to the people so that they can strongly exercise it. And it is a
fact that today the people exercise power strongly and fully.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>February 4th was a day that
set off forces that are still expanding. February 4th has not ended;
its spirit should accompany us each day because the powers we
confronted for more than two decades persist in their attempts to stop
the course of history in Venezuela, in our Americas and in the world.
They are the powers that threaten humanity and the planet with
destruction.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>The spirit of rebellion
should live on in each of us to continue advancing and not be thwarted.
Let us remember these words from our eternal leader, Bolívar: “Nothing
is finished while there is still work to be done.” That is why the “for
now” of 21 years ago, is today a “forever” for the Bolivarian people.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>Let us always stay true to
the ideal of our liberator: unity, unity, unity. Let us proclaim unity
without wavering and build it each day. Let us be inspired by it, so
that the empire and its lackeys in their repeated attempts to divide us
cannot succeed. Let us allow the inestimable good of unity to flourish.
We still have much of the nation to liberate, and that is why we need
to be even more united as a people.</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>From my soldier’s heart I
send an infinite embrace to the people, to the Bolivarian National
Armed Forces, may you feel that I am with you on this Day of National
Dignity. I am with you in my red beret and tricolor armband,
strengthened by the people’s love, the love that heals me and gives me
life. February 4th will now and forever be blessed.</span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><span><strong>Source: Press – Venezuelan Embassy to the U.S./
February 5, 2013</strong></span></p>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>