Mario Linares was sleeping when buses filled with soldiers rumbled past his house and into a military museum a few yards away. The next morning, he woke to the news that the men were trying to overthrow President Carlos Andrés Pérez.

By most measures the 1992 coup attempt was a fiasco. The young commander of the rebellion never made it to the presidential palace, hundreds of soldiers went to jail, and more than 30 people died, including civilians.

But it launched a political career, and President Hugo Chávez, the leader of the ill-fated uprising, marks the failed coup’s 20th anniversary on Saturday with a military parade alongside the presidents of Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti.

The display — which will include more than 12,000 soldiers and a procession of tanks and fighter jets — caps a week of nationwide events commemorating the date, known here as 4-F for the fourth of February.

But in politically polarized Venezuela, the 4-F celebration is under fire and comes as opposition parties are preparing to hold primaries next week to determine who will face-off against Chávez in October. “I don’t understand how they can have a parade,” said Linares, 58, who lives in the working class Monte de Piedad neighborhood. “They weren’t trying to topple a dictator. They were trying to overthrow a democratically elected government, and a lot of innocent people died.”

Chávez ultimately captured the presidency through the ballot box in 1998. But to the president and his followers, 4-F was the beginning of his “socialist revolution” and a historical watershed.

At the time, Venezuela was suffering record inflation and rampant crime. When the unpopular Pérez administration announced a series of austerity measures in 1989, it sparked the Caracazo riots. The military was called out and more than 500 died, according to human rights groups. Chávez, a rising military star, was already conspiring to topple the government — but it would take four more years to pull off the plan.

“They almost ruined this country, until the people rose up and we rose up with the people on Feb. 4, 1992,” Chávez told cadets last month. “And that’s when we began this new history. That’s when the resurrection of the country began.’’

Glorifying a coup in the middle of an election season seems tone deaf, said Henrique Capriles Radonski, the governor of Miranda state and the frontrunner in the opposition race

“The government forgets that it won the presidency through votes,” he said during a recent campaign stop in Zulia. “Maybe it would have liked to get there through a coup, because then it wouldn’t have to face elections.”

On large video screens around Caracas are images of a young Chávez when he went on national TV to ask his co-conspirators to put down their arms.

It was one of the briefest and most important speeches of his career. In it, Chávez introduced himself to Venezuela and took responsibility for the uprising.

“Unfortunately, we did not meet the objectives we set for ourselves – for now,” he said.

The image of the idealistic officer in a red beret — which would become his trademark — turned him into a national phenomenon and set him on his political career.