page_title: Hugo Chávez
section_title: Opposition and the CD
hierarchical_section_title: Hugo Chávez / Presidency (1999–2013) / Second presidential term: 10 January 2001 – 10 January 2007 / Opposition and the CD
caption_attribution_description: English: Released to Public ID: DNSD0509136 Service Depicted: Navy Command Shown: USS YORKTOWN (CG 48) 020302N0872M506 US Navy (USN) Commander (CDR) Robert S. Kerno (left), Commanding Officer (CO), USN Ticonderoga Class Cruiser USS YORKTOWN (CG 48), points out some sights to the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez during a tour of the ship. The YORKTOWN is visiting the city of Willemstad at Curacao, Netherlands Antilles north of Venezuela during the 43rd annual UNITAS (Unity in Spanish) exercise. UNITAS is the largest multi-national naval exercise conducted by US, Caribbean, Central, and South American naval forces with the focus on building a hemispheric coalition for mutual defense and cooperation. Location: WILLEMSTAD, CURACAO NETHERLANDS ANTILLES (ANT)
context_page_description: Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which he led until 2012.
  Born into a middle-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer and, after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system based on the Puntofijo Pact, founded the clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 in the early 1980s. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Pardoned from prison after two years, he founded a political party known as the Fifth Republic Movement and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 with 56.2% of the vote. He was re-elected in 2000 with 59.8% of the vote and again in 2006 with 62.8% of the vote.
context_section_description: During Chávez's first term in office, the opposition movement had been "strong but reasonably contained, [with] complaints centering mainly on procedural aspects of the implementation of the constitution". However, much of Chávez's opposition originated from the response to the "cubanization" of Venezuela. Chávez's popularity dropped due to his relationship with Fidel Castro and Cuba, with Chávez attempting to make Venezuela in Cuba's image. Chávez, following Castro's example, consolidated the country's bicameral legislature into a single National Assembly that gave him more power and created community groups of loyal supporters allegedly trained as paramilitaries. Such actions created great fear among Venezuelans who felt like they were tricked and that Chávez had dictatorial goals.
  The first organized protest against the Bolivarian government occurred in January 2001, when the Chávez administration tried to implement educational reforms through the proposed Resolution 259 and Decree 1.011, which would have seen the publication of textbooks with a heavy Bolivarian bias. Parents noticed that such textbooks were really Cuban books filled with revolutionary propaganda outfitted with different covers. The protest movement, which was primarily by middle class parents whose children went to privately run schools, marched to central Caracas shouting out the slogan Con mis hijos no te metas ("Don't mess with my children"). Although the protesters were denounced by Chávez, who called them "selfish and individualistic", the protest was successful enough for the government to retract the proposed education reforms and instead enter into a consensus-based educational program with the opposition.
  
  Later into 2001, an organization known as the Coordinadora Democrática de Acción Cívica (CD) was founded, under which the Venezuelan opposition political parties, corporate powers, most of the country's media, the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce, the Institutional Military Front and the Central Workers Union all united to oppose Chávez's regime. The prominent businessman Pedro Carmona (1941–) was chosen as the CD's leader. 
   The CD and other opponents of Chávez's Bolivarian government accused it of trying to turn Venezuela from a democracy into a dictatorship by centralising power amongst its supporters in the Constituent Assembly and granting Chávez increasingly autocratic powers. Many of them pointed to Chávez's personal friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro and the one-party socialist government in Cuba as a sign of where the Bolivarian government was taking Venezuela. Others did not hold such a strong view but still argued that Chávez was a "free-spending, authoritarian populist" whose policies were detrimental to the country.
caption: Chávez visiting the USS Yorktown, a U.S. Navy ship docked at Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles, in 2002
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