BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

  CARACAS - In President Hugo Chávez's version, he survived a military coup thanks to a friendly jailer, a certain Pvt. Rodríguez, who sneaked out word
  that the captive Venezuelan president had not resigned and thereby triggered a military counter-rebellion.

  More mundanely, it now seems that the military officers who detained him and appointed a new government were few, disorganized, lacked command of
  combat troops and made a U-turn largely because of the new regime's appalling errors.

  The emerging version of Friday's coup attempt shows the powerful military was sharply divided on Chávez's leftist populist rule and remains a factor of
  instability in this oil-rich nation of 24 million.

  ''I recognize there's a fracture that needs to be mended,'' said National Guard Gen. Francisco Belisario Landis, a Chávez supporter fired during the brief
  coup attempt and reinstated after the president's return.

  Added Chavez's Vice President Diosdado Cabello: ``Eighty generals participated, but 80 generals who did not command troops . . . Those who came out
  in favor [of the president 43 hours later] had the troops.''

  The exact balance of power within the military between Chávez supporters and foes was never in fact established because the two groups carefully
  avoided coming to blows during the takeover.

  But from the start, the coup seemed disorderly, perhaps reflecting that it was largely unplanned -- though Chávez insists it was -- or rather an almost
  accidental confluence of bizarre events.

  The spark for the coup attempt came Thursday afternoon, after alleged pro-Chávez gunmen fired on an opposition march, killing 15 people, according to
  versions provided by Chávez and several other participants in the stunning events and reconstructions published Monday by Caracas newspapers.

  OFFICERS' DEMANDS

  Angered by the killings but reluctant to stage an outright coup, a group of military officers calling itself the ''Movement for the Integrity and Dignity of the
  National Armed Forces'' demanded that Chávez resign Thursday evening.

  They included army Commander in Chief Efraín Vásquez, most commanders of the paramilitary National Guard, 10 senior military officers in largely
  administrative posts and several midlevel commanders based in the capital.

  It looked like most of the military had rebelled. But Cabello later dismissed them as little more than administrators who used the country's largely
  anti-Chávez media to magnify their revolt.

  Venezuela's armed forces total 79,000 in uniform, including national guardsmen.

  Several commanders of tank units and the 31st Infantry Brigade based near Caracas offered to come to Chávez's defense Thursday night, the president
  said, but he ordered them to stay in their barracks and await developments.

  UNDER PRESSURE

  Chávez nevertheless admitted that under pressure from the rebellious officers who had gathered at the Fort Tiuna barracks in Caracas, he initially offered
  not to resign but to ''abandon'' the presidency -- a move that under the constitution would throw his succession to the pro-Chávez legislature.

  'I told them, `I am ready to go,' but I demand respect for the constitution,'' Chávez said. But he also demanded that he be free to leave the country,
  according to previous reports. The rebels rejected that demand, detained him and took him to Fort Tiuna around 3 a.m. Friday.

  Minutes later, Armed Forces Inspector General Gen. Lucas Rincón announced on television that the military had asked Chávez to resign ''and he agreed.''
  Rincón insisted that it was not a coup and that Chávez' successor, business leader Pedro Carmona, was the legitimate interim president.

  Rincón's announcement gave credence to the coup attempt because he is regarded as a Chávez supporter. But the president later said the general was
  ''under pressure from the others'' and was never part of the coup attempt.

  But Chávez opponents said Rincón's presence at both the coup and the counter-coup showed the entire event was stage-managed by Chávez himself as
  an effort to lure his foes in the military out into the open -- and then fire them.

  Word that Chávez had not in fact resigned began spreading through the military rank and file after two military prosecutors interviewed him Friday at
  9.15 a.m. at Fort Tiuna about his knowledge of Thursday's shootings.

  'These two valiant young women . . . wrote in their report `He testified that he has not resigned,' '' Chávez said.

  Friday afternoon, Carmona outraged the coup officers by announcing, without consulting them, that he had suspended the constitution, the National
  Assembly and other government bodies controlled by Chávez backers.

  APPOINTMENTS

  More troubling to the rebels, Carmona also began making military appointments without their consent, naming Gen. Rafael Damina Bustillo, a Chávez
  critic, to head the National Guard. Hours later, Gen. Vásquez would angrily declare: ``The officers who are with me . . . will remain here.''

  At 9 a.m. Saturday, after thousands of Chávez backers had gathered outside Fort Tiuna to demand his freedom, his captors flew him by helicopter to
  Turiamo, a Navy commando base on the Caribbean, Chávez recalled.

  ''Lucky me,'' Chávez said, for that's where a friendly jailer known only as Pvt. Rodríguez asked him if he had really resigned. When he denied it, Rodríguez
  told him to write that in a note and leave it in a garbage can.

  The private promised that when his superiors were not watching, he would take the note and pass it to the outside world to make clear that he was a
  victim of a coup. ''He did a heroic service to this nation,'' Chávez said.

  As the word that the former army lieutenant colonel and paratrooper, who staged a failed coup attempt six years before he was elected in 1998, had not
  resigned filtered out, the coup and Carmona's regime began unraveling.

  Early Saturday, the commander of the 42nd Paratrooper Brigade in Maracay, west of Caracas, where Chávez once served, announced his 2,000 troops
  had rebelled against Carmona in ``Operation Restitution of National Dignity.''

  The commander, Gen. Raúl Isaías Baduel, was quickly joined by Gen. Nelson Verde, commander of all Maracay, air force operations chief Gen. Pedro Torres
  and an army general in charge of troops in the nearby city of Valencia.

  ''Maracay became the epicenter of the counter-coup,'' Chávez said.

  Rumors of the rebellion began reaching Caracas around noon, creating panic in the Miraflores presidential palace, where Carmona aides canceled the
  swearing-in ceremony for his Cabinet and ordered all journalists out of the white colonial-styled building.

  SUPPORTERS GATHER

  Outside the palace, thousands of Chávez supporters who had heard the report on radio -- private television stations did not broadcast the reports,
  saying they were unconfirmed -- began gathering to demand his return to power.

  Several Carmona Cabinet members in the palace who feared leaving through the angry crowds were reportedly told by a soldier, ``Take off your ties and
  jackets and just walk out. No one knows you yet.''

  By 1 p.m., soldiers in the 2,000-strong detachment that guards Miraflores were seen wearing red ribbons on their arms -- the color of ''Chavismo'' -- and
  egging on the protesters, pumping their fists into the air.

  TAKING COVER

  Others were seen taking cover almost anywhere they could, as though they were not sure whether the other soldiers in the palace were with them or
  against them, witnesses reported.

  Two hours later, five Chávez Cabinet members slipped into Miraflores to start reclaiming power as rumors spread that F-16 bombers controlled by the air
  force general rebelled in Maracay would strike the palace.

  ''If there is no surrender, the F-16s will strike,'' Defense Minister José Vicente Rangel told people at Miraflores, the newspaper El Universal reported
  Monday.

  Meanwhile, more and more military units began switching sides.

  Col. Celso Canelones, second in command of the Miraflores guard, went on television to announce he was taking charge of the palace until he was shown
  proof of Chávez's resignation.

  Gen. Jorge García, commander of the Third Infantry division based in Caracas, declared his allegiance to Chávez. And the Libertador air base, one of the
  country's largest, joined the Maracay rebels.

  Carmona left Miraflores and drove to Fort Tiuna, where he found the coup leaders boiling over his draconian decrees and arguing bitterly with other
  senior military officers who complained that they had backed the new regime only because they believed that Chávez had indeed resigned.

  Carmona went on television to announce he had rolled back his decrees, but the damage was done. He resigned soon afterward, saying the legitimate
  successor to Chávez was Vice President Cabello. He was detained and remains in the custody of Venezuela's political police, the DISIP.

  TAKEN TO AN ISLAND

  Fearing an attempt to rescue him, Chávez's captors flew him by helicopter late Saturday to the tiny Caribbean island of La Orchila, where the Navy
  maintains a small base and a posh guest house for government officials.

  At 9:30 p.m., troops from the Caracas Infantry Battalion at Fort Tiuna rebelled in favor of Chávez and took prisoner Gen. Vásquez and navy Vice Adm.
  Héctor Ramírez Pérez, who had been named defense minister by Carmona.

  Vice President Cabello said more than 100 military officers suspected of involvement in the coup had been detained and could face charges.

  Sometime Saturday night, the Maracay rebellion leader, Gen. Baduel, took eight helicopters to La Orchila to free the former president and return him to
  Miraflores palace, Chávez said in a news conference Monday.

  BRIEF APPEARANCE

  Chávez arrived at the palace around 3:30 a.m. aboard one of the paratroopers' Super Puma helicopters, and made a brief appearance at the balcony
  from which he often addresses crowds putting his joined hands to his right cheek in a signal to thousands of supporters below that he needed sleep.

  The usually pugnacious president went on nationwide television at 4:30 a.m., sounding chastened by his experience but sounding a note of defiance for
  his foes.

  ''Not only did I never leave, I will never leave,'' he said. ``God bless the soldiers of Venezuela.''

  From start to finish, from the fatal shootings Thursday to his televised address Sunday from behind the ceremonial mahogany desk at the Miraflores
  palace, just 61 hours had passed.

  Chávez said he had started to write poems while under detention.

  ''But I never got to finish the first one,'' he joked after it was all over.