Caracazo
| Caracazo | |||
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Top, left, right:
Venezuelans protesting against President Pérez's policies. Men looting stores in Caracas. A man carrying stolen butchered meat. |
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| Date | 27 February 1989–March 1989 | ||
| Location | Caracas | ||
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| Casualties | |||
| Death(s) | 44-2000+ | ||
| Injuries | 2,000 | ||
The Caracazo, or sacudón, is the name given to the wave of protests, riots, looting, shootings and massacres that began on 27 February 1989 in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, and the surrounding towns. The weeklong clashes resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, thousands by some accounts, mostly at the hands of security forces and the military. The riots and the protests began mainly in response to the government's economic reforms and the resulting increase in the price of gasoline and transportation.
The word Caracazo is the name of the city followed by the -azo suffix, which denotes a violent knock. Its translation could therefore be "the Caracas smash" or "the big one in Caracas". The name was inspired by the Bogotazo, a massive riot in neighboring Colombia in 1948, which played a pivotal role in that country's history. Sacudón is from sacudir (to shake) and means something along the lines of "the day that shook the country" (see Spanish nouns: Other suffixes).
The words are pronounced [kaɾaˈkaso] and [sakuˈðon], respectively.
A fall in oil prices in the mid-1980s caused an economic crisis to take hold in Venezuela, and the country had accrued significant levels of debt. Nevertheless, the administration of the left-leaning President Jaime Lusinchi was able to restructure the country's debt repayments and offset an economic crisis but allow for the continuation of the government's policies of social spending and state-sponsored subsidies.
Lusinchi's political party, the Democratic Action, was able to remain in power following the 1988 election of Carlos Andrés Pérez as president. Pérez then proposed a major shift in policy by implementing neoliberal economic reforms recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The program, known as the paquete (the "package"), was contrary to statements made during Pérez's populist campaign in which he had described the IMF as "a neutron bomb that killed people, but left buildings standing."
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