Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200
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The Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 or MBR-200) was the political and social movement that current Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez founded. Its first members were Chávez and his fellow officers Felipe Acosta Carles and Jesús Urdaneta Hernández.[1] On 17 December, 1982, as Chávez biographer Richard Gott reports, the three
revolutionary officers swore an oath underneath the great tree at Samán de Güere, near Maracay, repeating the words of the pledge that Simón Bolívar had made in Rome in 1805, when he swore to devote his life to the liberation of Venezuela from Spanish yoke: "I swear before you, and I swear before the God of my fathers, that I will not allow my arm to relax, nor my soul to rest, until I have broken the chains that oppress us..."[1]
Gott further explains that the suffix "200" was added to the group's name the following year, in 1983, on the 200th anniversary of South American liberator Simon Bolívar's birth.
The movement began "more as a political study circle than as a subversive conspiracy," but soon its members "began thinking in terms of some kind of coup d'état."[1] Chávez and his friends soon recruited more members, including Francisco Arias Cárdenas, in March 1985.[2] They eventually planned and executed the February 4, 1992 attempted coup.
The movement later evolved into the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR).
As Hugo Chávez himself explained in a speech at the University of Havana in Cuba on December 14, 1994;
"Nosotros tuvimos la osadía de fundar un movimiento dentro de las filas del ejército nacional de Venezuela, hastiados de tanta corrupción, y nos juramos dedicarle la vida a la construcción de un movimiento revolucionario y a la lucha revolucionaria en Venezuela, ahora, en el ámbito latinoamericano. Eso comenzamos a hacerlo el año bicentenario del nacimiento de Bolívar."
"We had the audacity to found a movement within the ranks of the Army of Venezuela. We were tired of the corruption, and we swore to dedicate our lives to the creation of a revolutionary movement and to the revolutionary struggle in Venezuela, straight away, within Latin America. We started doing this the year of the bicentenary of the birth of Bolívar".[citation needed]
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Gott, Richard (2000), In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chávez and the Transformation of Venezuela, London: Verso, ISBN 978-1859847756.
[edit] External links
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