This article first appeared on Venezuelanalysis.com.
In a massive demonstration that dwarfed violent opposition student protests two weeks ago against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s proposed constitutional reforms, more than 50,000 students marched in favor of the reforms in Caracas on Thursday (Nov. 22). The rally on the “Day of the Students,'” also commemorated 50 years since the student uprising on October 21, 1957 that culminated in the downfall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez on 23 of January 1958.
Students gathered in Plaza Venezuela at 10 a.m. where Cesar Trompiz, a student leader from the Bolivarian University
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The march was festive and peaceful as it wound its way through the streets of Caracas. Students danced and sang “Yes, yes, yes to the reforms!” and “Yes, yes, yes—the hour of the people, the hour of the poor!” Supporters also waved flags and posters from high-rise apartment blocks, and workers on a construction site in La Candelaria downed tools and cheered and danced salsa on the scaffolding as the students went by. An incident where an opposition supporter hung a “No” sign out the window of an office building was met with laughter and chants of “They will not return” in a reference to the old political parties that governed Venezuela prior to Chávez.
Three thousand students also joined the march from the School of Social Work in the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), where on Nov. 7, opposition students had trapped 123 Chavista students for several hours, threatening to lynch them, throwing rocks and chairs, smashing windows and attempting to set fire to the building.
Thousands of high school students also marched in support of a reform that would lower the voting age to 16, which Trompiz explained was a proposal introduced by the student movement, “and another reason to celebrate.”
The march finally arrived at Miraflores at 5 p.m. where students flooded the grounds of the presidential palace and waited to hear from President Chávez, just returned from a six-day tour of Europe and the Middle East.
Referring to the student uprising in 1957 Chávez said, “In the 50s the students rose up against the president, but today they are in Miraflores with the president because this government belongs to you all, this power belongs not to Chávez, but to the people, the students.”
“Here is the demonstration that the Venezuelan students are with the revolution … here a solid revolutionary student movement has been born. This is essential, you students are the fuel of the revolution,” Chávez added.
Some people go around saying Chávez wants more power with the reform, he said, “but what I want is to give more power to the republic, a new equation of power, of popular power, strengthening political parties and social movements.”
The reforms are for the future, and are necessary to deepen the transition to socialism, Chávez explained. “One-day I will have to leave the presidential palace,” he said to cries of protest, however he assured, he was confident that there were many capable people that could take over from him.
Paraphrasing a popular anti-imperialist chant at student demonstrations across Latin America—”those who don’t jump are Yankees”—he concluded his speech saying “those who don’t jump are escualidos” (a term coined by Chávez when he referred to the opposition as being “philosophically and morally squalid”), as Urdaneta Avenue was filled with tens of thousands of jumping students.
The reforms will enshrine the right to free university education in the constitution and proposed changes to article 109 will also give students and workers voting parity with academic staff for elections of university authorities. Hector Sosa, a student from the Bolivarian University of Venezuela told Venezuelanalysis.com that these had been “the dreams of Venezuelan students for generations.”
Sosa also said that the reforms are necessary to strengthen popular power through the creation of worker, student, campesino and communal councils.
For Adriana Castillo, a student from the National Experimental University of the Armed Forces, the march signified the rebirth of the Venezuelan student movement, which she explained to Venezuelanalysis.com, had historically been very radical and left wing, but throughout the 1990s had shifted to the right as universities restricted access and became more elite.
Emilio Negrín, president of the Bolivarian Union of Students argued that in reality more than 90 percent of students support the constitutional reforms but the opposition refuses to recognize the 700,000 students in the education missions, and the municipal Bolivarian universities created since 2003.
A far smaller demonstration of opposition students also took place in Plaza Brión in the middle class suburb of Chacao, where newly elected president of the UCV student union, Ricardo Sánchez, argued that the reforms which will allow Chávez to stand for reelction will lead to “Cuban-style dictatorship.” He also called for opposition students to march to Miraflores next Monday.
