First Combatant Cilia Flores de Maduro commented that it was in the Dignity Prison where she brought to Commander Chávez the sentiment of the people, "towards the brave combatants" who led the civil-military rebellion of February 4, 1992.
“Not only did I come with my feelings but with the feeling I brought from the street. Thirty years later we are with them and on the path of Chávez,” said the First Combatant, when commemorating the 30th anniversary of the departure of Commander Hugo Chávez from the Dignity Prison in Yare, Miranda state.
The First Combatant told how she was in charge of carrying letters to and from the commanders, and how she became the group's lawyer.
«On March 26, 1994, we were waiting for Commander Chávez at the Military Academy. Adán Laura Sánchez and I were waiting for him. First, he found himself, only finding himself and the Academy. The Villafranca brothers had lent us a white jeep and we left for Los Próceres. Nicolás was waiting for them there with another group. I was in the jeep behind and Laura was interviewing him. When the Commander opened the door, he didn't imagine that he would be greeted by a hurricane of people, who even rushed out the door. Chávez found himself with the people and from there he held the press conference,» he said.
The presidential couple visited the venue accompanied by the combatants of February 4, 1992, among them Francisco Arias Cárdenas, Wilmar Castro Soteldo, Luis Reyes Reyes, Gerardo Márquez and Pedro Alastre, for which President Maduro highlighted that this group of men They were “the first to rise up against the traitorous surnames of the Homeland.”
During the tour, the Venezuelan president reflected on the words of Chávez, who shared part of his vision of Homeland, rooted in the need to "build a powerful popular force in the neighborhoods."
He stated that this movement that rebelled against Carlos Andrés Pérez, today represents “a school for our founding generation, led by Commander Chávez and his companions, who paved the way for the rebirth of the Homeland.”
"Rising" lieutenants
Diosdado Cabello stressed that he was in the group of "rebel lieutenants, the rebels" and that the prison was an area liberated by us. "Then the comrades from 27 November arrived," Cabello recalled.
Cabello highlighted that on the same February 4th at 4 pm an admiral arrived and Ronald Blanco La Cruz stood up and reminded him that it was a military rebellion «and we are against you». «That was when Gerardo Márquez -current governor of Trujillo- stood on a table and recited the corrío of Commander Acosta Carles, who died on March 1st, 1989, murdered by treachery after the events of the Caracazo on February 27th, 1898. That raised our morale», Cabello highlighted.
For his part, President Nicolás Maduro remembered where he was the day Acosta Carles died.
«On 27F I was near the Pedro Emilio Coll high school and I had a flat tire. I called and Jesus Martinez came to help me. We saw a bus arrive with some soldiers commanded by a military man, a tall, blond man, who went up with his command through the Venegas neighborhood. In a few minutes we saw a motorcyclist carrying the bullet-ridden body of the blond Felipe Acosta Carles,» said President Maduro.
For his part, Gerardo Márquez highlighted what prison represented for them from a family perspective. “We spent almost two years there,” Márquez recalled. “I remember Diosdado saying goodbye to his wife, with his little children, his daughter was barely two months old and his wife gave him support. It was a common prison, not a military one, with common prisoners, more than 1.000 with the intention of decapitating the movement. Without ventilators. Little by little we gained some improvements. Here in this prison I was able to get my wife pregnant,” he commented.
