"The great Latin American revolution began on April 13, 2002", President Hugo Chavez said during a speech to tens of thousands of supporters in front of the Miraflores Presidential Palace exactly three years later.
Chavez was referring to the mass uprising that returned him to power after his elected government was overthrown by a US-backed military coup two days earlier.
"The US imperialists and their local backers launched their attack on April 11, but the Venezuelan people fought back", Chavez said.
"Now, the Bolivarian revolution will defeat the enemy within and the international counter-revolutionary forces. If we are not strong enough to defeat the internal and external enemies of the Bolivarian revolution, then the revolution in the whole of Latin America will also fail.
"Let's continue the fight against the bureaucracy; they are the old evils", Chavez said. "Karl Marx said that the old capitalist society moves inside the new society that's trying to be born ... We need to dismantle the old bourgeois state, to create equal rights and justice for all. Marx said that for the bourgeoisie the equality of rights means the right [for them] to continue to exploit the majority."
Chavez said: "Our project is that of popular power". Popular power was being organised in the communal councils (grassroots bodies that grant small communities control over resources and decisions in their area), and the communes, which are based on elected represented representatives from the councils.
"Only the people can make the revolution", Chavez said, to huge cheers.
Chavez said that while he carries a flag of peace, with the Venezuelan corporate elite, "there is no understanding whatsoever ... They do not respect anything or anyone. And it is because of this that we should go on the offensive, rolling over the counter-revolution."
Chavez also called for the continuation of the campaign to bring to trial those who committed crimes as part of carrying out the coup. "I invite the powers of the state to keep on the offensive for justice", he said.
Two days before Chavez's speech, several hundred relatives of victims of the massacre at Llaguno Bridge near Miraflores rallied at the monument erected to commemorate the event.
On that day in 2002, 19 people were killed by police and unknown snipers, with 200 wounded. The massacre created a pretext for the coup. Over the course of the coup, some 80 people were killed.
Evidence discoveredsince the coup has implicated military and business leaders, and owners of the private communications media, in a plot to create a provocation to justify the overthrow of Chavez.
On April 3, a court convicted three senior officers of the Caracas police of involvement in the shootings and sentenced them to 30 years in jail. Other police were given lesser prison sentences.
Antonio Molina, a lawyer for the Association of Victims of 11-A (Asovic), welcomed the convictions.
The April 12 Ultimas Noticias quoted Molina saying: "We consider that what happened on 11-A [April 11, 2002] was the creation of a criminal business, where each one of the actors had a defined task … There is sufficient proof to show that the mass communications media directly participated in the coup plot. We hope that the attorney-general will press charges on this matter."
Richard Penalver, a councilor for Greater Caracas and member of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) who was wounded and later imprisoned during the coup, said: "We must bring to justice all those assassins who participated in the massacre of A-11, and also the mass communications media, such as Globovision and Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), as being participants in the coup d'etat.
"Even today, they refuse to broadcast what really happened in the country then", Penalver said, the April 12 Diario Vea reported.