 February 27 marked the anniversary of the historic Caracas uprising of 1989 that laid the foundation for the struggle to restore democracy in Venezuela. On that day, hundreds of thousands of poor Venezuelans took to the streets of Caracas against neoliberalism and decades of social injustice in the country for a protest action known as Caracas. In the 1980s, Venezuela was experiencing a serious economic crisis. President Carlos Andres Perez, in a bid to get out of the crisis, signed a deal with the IMF in 1989 and subsequently implemented a series of neoliberal reforms. This led to an abrupt increase in the price of basic food products, fuel, public transportation and other public services and sparked widespread outrage in the country. The main trigger was the increase in the price of public transportation. Ministers of poverty and indignity had eaten into the poor in Venezuela and then when the government raised the price of bus tickets, without prior notice, their frustrations boiled over. Caracas burned and then so did Venezuela's other cities and towns. In the face of insurrection, Perez declared a state of emergency and suspended all constitutional guarantees to citizens. The government deployed the military and permitted soldiers to use firearms against protesters unleashing a brutal repression that resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 people. The Caracas of Ladbach pushed the revolutionary Bolivarian movement 200 into action. This was a political movement founded by Hugo Chavez in the country's military barracks in 1982. Perez was later accused of corruption and removed from the presidency. Chavez, who was by then incarcerated for leading a coup against Perez, under charges of sedition, was pardoned by Rafael Caldera, successor of Perez. Subsequently on February 2, 1999, Chavez was first sworn in as the president of Venezuela. He vowed to democratically reform the 1961 constitution and lay the foundations for a new inclusive and social constitution. The same day he began the revolutionary process and called for a referendum for the creation of a national constituent assembly to write a new constitution. The new constitution was one based on the principles put forward by Simon Bolivar. Socialism, nationalization, and state-led economy. On December 15, 1999, the constitutional draft that established a new social and people-centric model of the state was approved with 71% of the votes. It also renamed the country as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Chavez's rule from 1999 until his death in 2013 marked the end of the Fourth Republic. The Fourth Republic was marked by social inequality, neoliberal economic policies, and abuse of power. His rule also saw the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution, a process of political, economic, social, and cultural transformation of Venezuela. President Nicolás Maduro recalled the Caracazo uprising on a message on Twitter. He said, 33 years have passed since the people rose up against the most ambitious re-colonization plan that had been proposed in 200 years. We are constituted of a powerful historical consciousness of the past, present, and future. Let's remember El Caracazo. The Minister for Defence Vladimir Padrena Lopez said, this martyr interaction not only represented a certain blow to the capitalist system and pseudo-democracy, but also the genesis of the Bolivarian Revolution by becoming the beginning of a stage of national liberation.