On 27 February 1989 started one of the most big and tragic events of contemporary venezuelan history: the "Caracazo",also named "sacudon" (big shake). Its trascendence is such, that still now Venezuelans live under its shadow: it is still mentioned and specially feared. It consisted in a series of protests, riots, shootings and lootings due to population's turmoil. The name "Caracazo" is because most of those events took place in Caracas, the Venezuela's capital, but the protests started in Guarenas and Guatire, some cities near Caracas. Then, they spread to Caracas, reshaping the history from then on.
Popular sectors were rioting against a set of economic measures impossed by the International Monetary Fund and announced by the former president of Venezuela, Carlos Andrés Pérez. Some of those measures included privatization of state-owned companies, release of interests rates, increase in prices of services such as electricity, water and telephone. However, probably the main detonant of the riots was the elimination of subsides to …show more content…
They were tired of the precarious situation, they had not enough purchasing power to adquire even food to maintain a healthy diet and specially they were tired of governments who did not take them into consideration. In the attempt of keeping control over the situation, government's repression transformed the event into a massacre: there were no trustable official data, although some estimations establish the ammount of deceased people over 2000. There were also forced disappearances, and Pérez government suffered a high political unstability atmosphere during all its period. As previously stated, there are still scars. For example, current government apparently does not dare to rise gasoline prices, fearing a similar
Popular sectors were rioting against a set of economic measures impossed by the International Monetary Fund and announced by the former president of Venezuela, Carlos Andrés Pérez. Some of those measures included privatization of state-owned companies, release of interests rates, increase in prices of services such as electricity, water and telephone. However, probably the main detonant of the riots was the elimination of subsides to …show more content…
They were tired of the precarious situation, they had not enough purchasing power to adquire even food to maintain a healthy diet and specially they were tired of governments who did not take them into consideration. In the attempt of keeping control over the situation, government's repression transformed the event into a massacre: there were no trustable official data, although some estimations establish the ammount of deceased people over 2000. There were also forced disappearances, and Pérez government suffered a high political unstability atmosphere during all its period. As previously stated, there are still scars. For example, current government apparently does not dare to rise gasoline prices, fearing a similar