A Conversation with President Hugo

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There are other elements in the constitution. As we were in the Southern Cone, I'm reminded of the 30,000 disappeared from the period of the last military dictatorship in Argentina. While we were in Buenos Aires, we met with some of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who are carrying a heavy emotional burden in their hearts, still searching for information about their lost children. Thousands of them! In the Venezuelan constitution, we have addressed some of these concerns by prohibiting torture, disappearances, or detention of anyone without a judicial order. It also orders all public officials and military personnel to disobey any order from their superiors that would obligate them to torture or "disappear" someone. The constitution establishes the right to information, freedom of expression, the right to personal dignity, and economic rights that cannot exclude anyone. It's a socially advanced constitution, among the most advanced in the world. The section on social rights is the broadest and the deepest in the world, and we've worked hard on it. There's practically no social or human right that cannot be found in its pages.

M: And you did in fact release many prisoners who were awaiting trial when you took office?

H: Of course. More than 10,000. The oligarchy kicked off their media campaign immediately, saying that criminals and delinquents were being released onto the general population indiscriminately. In researching the policy, I myself went to the prisons, and interviewed the prisoners. I went to the prison where I had been held, and spoke with the prisoners, the wardens, lawyers and sociologists. More than half of the detainees in Venezuela were being held without a sentence, some of them for more than a decade! Well, as we began to implement the constitution and the penal code, we designed a whole set of measures that guaranteed not only certain juridical rights of prisoners, but also their right to work, to leave the prison and come back at night. The right to play sports, to attend cultural activities and express themselves. We're still perfecting our policy.

A lot has changed in our prisons... We've set up computer labs with internet access in the prison, so that the prisoners can share their story with the rest of the world. The same access and rights go to the male and female prisoners. We've begun to offer micro-credits in the prisons to allow them to set up bakeries -- we're very happy with this. We're even looking at freeing up some funding to have a prison system-wide consultation with prisoners and prison employees to suggest a series of further reforms of the prison system.

M: Let's talk about the press for just a bit more. You have a problem with both the international and the Venezuelan press. The international press: the New York Times actually endorsed the coup in April of 2002. Probably the first time in more than 25 years that they supported a military coup against a democratic government. That was on the Saturday. And then on the Tuesday -- this was their editorial board -- they issued a retraction, but they never apologized. Have you talked to them since then? Or asked for an apology?

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