Venezuela to pay $6 million in 1989 riot deaths

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Compensation for victims during El Caracazo (see second article)

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CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Venezuela's government on Tuesday approved nearly $6 million in compensation for the families of about 1,000 people killed during the nation's worst urban rioting nearly 15 years ago.

The 1989 so-called Caracazo street riots -- sparked by a package of strict IMF-backed economic reforms -- became a landmark human rights case in Venezuela after troops fired indiscriminately at protesting crowds in Caracas.

"This is a way to comply with international obligations on the issue of human rights," Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton said in a statement.

The payments were ordered in a 1999 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights -- part of the Organization of American States. President Hugo Chavez' government accepted that authorities had committed human rights abuses during the riots.

Protests over the 1989 reforms quickly spilled into angry looting as hundreds of poor people streamed down from hillside slums that ring Caracas. Then-President Carlos Andres Perez ordered a curfew and sent tanks into the streets.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11381380.htm

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About El caracazo

From "Brief History of Venezuelan Politics"

...1989 Perez was reelected at the height of discontent. He immediately began inflicting an IMF sponsored neoliberal program (El Paquete) on the country. Privatization of state owned industry, elimination of subsidies, devaluation of currency hit the public hard and they screamed out in protest in the form of labor strikes, student strikes, and violent urban riots.

El caracazo

A gas price hike was the last straw and on 27 February 1989 Caracas and other Venezuelan cities erupted. Spontaneously, the masses struck out against bus drivers who had unfairly raised their fares and shop clerks who were hoarding subsidized inventory for later sales. Joining them for 5 days of chaos was the destitute from the slums in the hills that surround Caracas who converged on the valley city looting stores, breaking windows, stealing cars, and generally reeking havoc. The uprising was finally ended by a vicious massacre of some 2000 persons by the police and military.

http://www.bolivariancircles.net/english/history1.html