Contemporary Authors

• My First Life: Conversations with Ignacio Ramonet ( Translated by Ann Wright) Verso (London, England), 2016

1. My First Life : Conversations with Ignacio Ramonet LCCN 2016011444 Type of material Book Personal name Chávez Frías, Hugo, interviewee. Uniform title Mi primera vida. English Main title My First Life : Conversations with Ignacio Ramonet / Hugo Chávez ; translated by Ann Wright. Edition English language edition. Published/Produced London : Verso, 2016. Description lii, 490 pages : map ; 25 cm ISBN 9781784783839 (hardback : alk. paper) CALL NUMBER F2329.22.C54 A5 2016 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• LOC Authorities -

  LC control no.: n 93108109

  Descriptive conventions:
  rda

  Personal name heading:
  Chávez Frías, Hugo

  Variant(s): Frías, Hugo Chávez
  Chávez, Hugo
  Chaves, Ugo

  See also: Venezuela. President (1999-2013 : Chávez Frías)

  Other standard no.:
  000000011085880 isni

  Invalid standard no.:
  isni

  Birth date: 19540728

  Death date: 20130305

  Place of birth: Sabaneta, Barinas, Venezuela

  Place of death: Caracas, Venezuela

  Fuller form of name
  Hugo Rafael

  Affiliation: Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela
  Movimiento V República (Organization)
  Venezuela. Ejército

  Profession or occupation:
  President of Venezuela
  Politician
  Army officer

  Found in: LC data base, 11-03-93 (hdg.: Chávez Frías, Hugo)
  Botello, O. El golpe en Aragua, 1992: p. 43 (Comandante
  Hugo Chávez Frías; teniente coronel Hugo Rafael
  Chávez Frías, b. Sabaneta, Barinas State, Venezuela,
  July 28, 1954)
  Dieterich, Heinz. Hugo Chávez, 1999: p. 5 (president of
  Venezuela; former military officer and prisoner)
  Venezuela Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores website, Dec.
  31, 2001: (Chávez elected president Dec. 6, 1998,
  sworn in Feb. 2, 1999)
  Dabagiï¸ a︡, Ė.S. Ugo Chaves, 2005.
  New York times (online), viewed Mar. 7, 2013 (in obituary
  published Mar. 5: Hugo Chávez; b. Hugo Rafael Chávez
  Frías, July 28, 1954; d. Tuesday [Mar. 5, 2013], aged
  58)
  Britannica online encyclopedia, viewed Mar. 7, 2013 (Hugo
  Chávez, in full Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías; b. July
  28, 1954, Sabaneta, Barinas, Venezuela; d. Mar. 5, 2013,
  Caracas; president of Venezuela, 1999-2013)
  Spanish Wikipedia, viewed Mar. 7, 2013 (Hugo Rafael
  Chávez Frías, known as Hugo Chávez; b. July 28,
  1954, Sabaneta; d. Mar. 5, 2013, Caracas; politician and
  military man; president of Venezuela, Feb. 2, 1999-Mar.
  5, 2013)
  LC database, Mar. 7, 2013 (hdg.: Chávez Frías, Hugo;
  usage in works by him: Hugo Chávez Frías, Hugo
  Rafael Chávez Frías, Hugo Chávez; usage in works
  about him: Hugo Chávez, Chávez)

  Associated language:
  spa

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• Encyclopædia Britannica - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hugo-Chavez

  Hugo Chávez
  president of Venezuela
  Written By:
  Brian A. Nelson
  Last Updated:
  3-5-2013 See Article History
  Alternative Title: Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías
  Hugo Chavez
  President of Venezuela

  Also known as

  Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías

  born

  July 28, 1954

  Sabaneta, Venezuela
  died

  March 5, 2013

  Caracas, Venezuela

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  Hugo Chávez, in full Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (born July 28, 1954, Sabaneta, Barinas, Venezuela—died March 5, 2013, Caracas), Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela (1999–2013). Chávez styled himself as the leader of the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a socialist political program for much of Latin America, named after Simón Bolívar, the South American independence hero. Although the focus of the revolution has been subject to change depending on Chavez’s goals, its key elements include nationalism, a centralized economy, and a strong military actively engaged in public projects. His ideology became known to many as simply chavismo.

  Hugo Chávez, 2010.
  Hugo Chávez, 2010.
  © Victor5490/Dreamstime.com

  Early life

  Chávez grew up in Sabaneta, a small town in the southwestern plains of Venezuela. He was the second of six surviving children, all boys. His parents, both schoolteachers, did not have enough money to support all their children, so Hugo and his eldest brother, Adán, were raised in the city of Barinas by their grandmother, Rosa Inés Chávez, who instilled in Hugo a love of history and politics.

  As a teenager, Chávez was heavily influenced by José Esteban Ruiz Guevara, a local historian, who introduced him to the teachings of Bolívar and Karl Marx, the German philosopher who was one of the fathers of communism, both of which had a profound impact on Chávez’s political philosophy. The presence of the National Liberation Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional; FALN), the communist guerrilla insurgency that began fighting the Venezuelan government in the 1960s, also greatly affected Chávez. The FALN was supported by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who would later become Chávez’s political muse.

  In 1971 Chávez entered the Venezuelan Military Academy in Caracas, the national capital, not because he wanted to be a soldier but because he dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player, and the academy had good baseball coaches. Chávez planned to enroll there, excel at baseball, and then drop out. But while he was a skilled left-handed pitcher, he was not good enough to play professionally, so he continued his studies. He was a poor and unruly student, however, and ultimately graduated near the bottom of his class in 1975.

  Chávez started his military career as a second lieutenant in the army. His first assignment was to capture the remaining leftist guerrillas. But as he pursued the insurgents, Chávez began to empathize with them, seeing them as peasants fighting for a better life. By 1977 Chávez was ready to leave the army in disgust when he discovered that his brother Adán was secretly working with the insurgents. Chávez arranged to meet Douglas Bravo—head of the Venezuelan Revolution Party (Partido de la Revolución Venezolana; PRV), an underground movement, and a former leader of the FALN. “He inspired me and I realized I wouldn’t be leaving the army,” Chávez later said of Bravo. In 1982 Chávez and some fellow military officers secretly formed the Bolivarian Movement 200 to spread the insurgents’ revolutionary ideology within the military. Their goal was to take power in a civilian-military coup d’état.
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  On February 4, 1992, Chávez and a group of military officers led an attempt to overthrow the government of Pres. Carlos Andrés Pérez. Unfortunately for Chávez, the rebellion quickly collapsed. While the other rebel leaders successfully captured their targeted military bases, Chávez was unable to complete the key part of the operation—the capture of President Pérez. Trapped in the Military History Museum near the presidential palace, Chávez realized that it was useless to keep fighting, and he agreed to surrender on the condition that he be allowed to address his coconspirators on national television. Chávez stood in front of the cameras and told his fellow “comrades” that regrettably—“for now,” he said—their goal of taking power could not be accomplished, and he beseeched them to put down their arms to avoid further bloodshed. Chávez spoke for less than two minutes, but this was essentially the beginning of his life as a politician. Many Venezuelans at that time were frustrated with their elected leaders, and they were inspired by Chávez and praised his bold ideas to reform the country. His address became known as the por ahora (“for now”) speech because many people took that specific phrase as a promise that one day Chávez would return.
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  Chávez was imprisoned without a court ruling for the attempted coup until 1994, when Pres. Rafael Caldera Rodríguez, bowing to Chávez’s growing popularity, dropped the charges against him. Chávez then founded the political party Movement of the Fifth Republic (Movimiento de la Quinta República; MVR), enlisting many former socialist activists and military officers. Viewed as an outsider, Chávez was able to capitalize on widespread discontent with Venezuela’s established political parties, and in December 1998 he won the presidential election with 56 percent of the vote.
  The Chávez presidency
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  Chávez took office in February 1999. During his first year in office, his approval rating reached 80 percent, and his platform—which advocated an end to corruption, increased spending on social programs, and redistribution of the country’s oil wealth—was widely applauded. Riding this wave of popularity, Chávez oversaw the drafting of a new constitution that gave him unprecedented control over the three branches of government. The new constitution required new elections for every elected official in the country. In this “mega-election” of 2000, Chávez was reelected to a six-year term. He also increased his power in the National Assembly, but his party fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for absolute control. Nevertheless, the pro-Chávez majority was large enough to pass an enabling law that allowed the president to implement certain laws by decree; the National Assembly also appointed all new (pro-Chávez) justices to the Supreme Court.

  While many Venezuelans had supported Chávez as an alternative to the corrupt two-party system that had ruled since 1958, others were alienated by his increasingly radical agenda. He formed intimate ties with Castro and stated his intent to take Venezuela down a path similar to Cuba’s. He continued to pass controversial laws by decree and moved to limit the independent press. He also alienated the United States and other countries in the West by forging close ties with Iraq, Iran, and Libya, as well as by openly criticizing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks of 2001. By early 2002 his approval rating had fallen to 30 percent, and anti-Chávez marches had become regular occurrences. Moreover, many of his allies, including some members of the military, began to turn against him.

  On April 11, 2002, a rally estimated at close to a million people marched on the president’s palace to demand Chávez’s resignation. The rally was met with pro-Chávez gunmen and National Guard troops, and a gun battle erupted, leaving dead and wounded on both sides. The violence sparked a military revolt, and, in a move widely condemned as an illegal coup d’état, the military took Chávez into custody. The following day the military established an interim government, choosing Pedro Carmona, head of a national federation of private businesses and a Chávez opponent, to be the interim president. But Carmona caused an uproar when he immediately dissolved most of Venezuela’s democratic institutions and suspended the constitution. The Venezuelan military, fearing a right-wing dictatorship, then withdrew its support for the new government and on April 13 recognized Chávez’s vice president, Diosdado Cabello, as the rightful successor. Once sworn in, Cabello restored Chávez to power, and Chávez returned to the presidential palace on the morning of April 14.
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  The coup was the first of a string of conflicts between the Chávez government and the opposition—clashes that continued to polarize Venezuelan society into two bitterly opposed camps: Chávez supporters (chavistas) and opposition members (escuálidos [“scrawny ones”], a derisive term coined by Chávez but quickly and proudly embraced by the opposition). In December 2002 the opposition began a national strike designed to force Chávez to resign. At the centre of the strike was the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which accounted for 80 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue. In response, Chávez fired the striking PDVSA workers—about half the company’s 38,000 employees—and brought in nonunion workers and foreign oil crews to maintain oil production. By February 2003 the strike had collapsed, and Chávez had full control of PDVSA.

  Throughout 2003 and the first half of 2004, the opposition focused on a recall referendum that would push the president out of office midway through his term, but Chávez—now with PDVSA revenues at his disposal and the global price of oil climbing—began spending lavishly on social programs, including literacy and health care initiatives. His approval rating rebounded and, despite allegations of fraud, Chávez defeated the recall referendum in August 2004. In December 2005, to protest what they felt was corruption in the Chávez-dominated National Election Council (the institution that oversees elections), the opposition candidates boycotted the country’s legislative elections. But the elections proceeded without them, and Chávez’s coalition gained complete control of the National Assembly. It seemed to some political analysts that the more the opposition attacked Chávez, the stronger he became.
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  In December 2006 Chávez was elected president for a third time, with 63 percent of the vote. Ensured another six years in power, he pushed ahead with plans for “21st-century socialism” by nationalizing key industries, including electricity and telecommunications, as well as what remained of the private oil sector. He also became more vocal in his anti-American rhetoric, particularly in his attacks against Pres. George W. Bush, whom he called “the Devil” in front of the United Nations General Assembly. In 2007 Chávez sponsored a package of changes to the Venezuelan constitution. While analysts noted that the new provisions included certain “crowd pleasers,” like a maximum six-hour workday, most of the changes would have increased the power of the executive branch, including giving it greater control over the Central Bank and allowing it to seize property without a legal ruling. The most controversial provision, however, would have allowed for the president’s indefinite reelection. In December 2007 the package of amendments was narrowly defeated in a popular referendum by a margin of 51 to 49 percent—Chávez’s first defeat at the polls.

  In February 2009 a more moderate package of constitutional changes was approved in a popular referendum, clearing the way for Chávez’s perpetual reelection. Bolstered by the victory, the government launched an aggressive program to stifle dissent, arresting key political opponents, closing dozens of opposition radio stations, and moving to close Globovisión—the only television station that remained critical of the government.
  Brian A. Nelson

  In June 2011 Chávez was operated on in Cuba to remove a cancerous tumour. The specific nature of his cancer was not revealed, but, after coming home to Venezuela in early July, he returned to Cuba twice (first in July and then in early August) for follow-up treatment that included chemotherapy. Although speculation grew as to whether he would be physically able to stand for reelection in 2012, Chávez mounted an aggressive campaign against challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski, the popular 40-year-old governor of Miranda state, who headed a united opposition made up of some 30 parties from across the political spectrum. The election in October 2012 was not as close as expected, though Chávez’s margin of victory (about 10 percent) was considerably less than that in his triumph in 2006, when he captured almost two-thirds of the vote.

  In December 2012 Chávez underwent his fourth cancer surgery in Cuba. He remained there into the new year to recuperate, ostensibly from a lung infection that was a consequence of the surgery; however, the government was criticized by the opposition for not being more forthcoming with details of the president’s health. When Chávez was not well enough to return to Venezuela for his scheduled inauguration in January 2013, it became a constitutional issue. The National Assembly voted to allow the president’s swearing-in to be delayed, and the Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of that action. Opposition leaders—who had called for the head of the National Assembly to be named temporary president in Chávez’s absence—grudgingly accepted the court’s decision.
  The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
  Assessment

  Although many people criticized Chávez as appearing unprofessional or even buffoonish for his fiery rhetoric and his penchant for slinging insults at world leaders, he was in fact a very astute politician and a remarkable strategist. With his charisma and gift as an orator, he arguably did more than any other Latin American leader in half a century to unite many of the countries in the region, largely by capitalizing on the widespread feelings of neglect and frustration felt by the masses.

  Chávez sincerely saw himself as a modern-day Bolívar, continuing the work of the 19th-century statesman who had led the fight for Latin America’s independence from Spain and advocated the creation of a league of Latin American states. Combining Bolívar’s vision of a unified Latin America, free from the interference of foreign powers, with revolutionary Marxist ideology, Chávez worked to create a Latin American alliance powerful enough not only to expel U.S. influence from the region but also to compete politically and economically with the United States and the European Union. To this end, he actively promoted the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), a regional bloc for social, political, and economic integration created with Castro in 2004, and PetroCaribe, a Venezuelan-led regional energy program created in 2005. These initiatives found considerable support as alternatives to globalization and the economic policies that many Latin Americans felt were pushed on them by the United States and by international lending agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. However, while Chávez found common ground with many Latin American countries, he alienated others. Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru at some point each accused Chávez of meddling in their domestic affairs. Furthermore, Chávez’s critics cited Venezuela’s massive arms buildup, its transfer of money and arms to the Colombian guerrilla group FARC, its military alliance with Russia, and its continentwide media coverage as proof of Chávez’s intent to destabilize large sections of Latin America in a sort of “superinsurgency.”

  Within Venezuela the people were deeply divided, and this polarization, combined with a lack of transparency on the part of the government, made it difficult to gauge the success of Chávez’s revolution. Government statistics were often contradicted by independent sources, and nonbiased assessments were rare. His opponents pointed to Chávez’s increasing authoritarianism, a more than doubling of the country’s homicide rate under his rule, shortages of basic foods like sugar, milk, and beans, one of the highest inflation rates in Latin America, and a stubbornly high infant mortality rate, which suggested that government oil profits still were not reaching the poorest citizens. Critics also noted that democracy was dramatically weakened under Chávez’s rule. He and his coalition indeed controlled all the institutions of the state—the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the Justice Department, and the National Election Council. Analysts said that the Chávez government could act with impunity, while those who opposed it had little legal recourse and were often subject to state-sponsored harassment. On the other hand, Chávez proponents pointed to successful education programs, increased access to health care, a rise in employment, and a more than 20 percent drop in the poverty rate under Chávez’s rule.
  Brian A. NelsonThe Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica

• BBC - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-10086210

  Profile: Hugo Chavez

  18 February 2013
  From the section Latin America & Caribbean

  Share
  Image caption President Chavez says his battle with cancer is behind him
  Chavez health crisis

  Venezuela on edge over Chavez rumours
  Hugo Chavez: Continuity or crisis?
  Hugo Chavez inauguration: Conflicting views
  World media consider life after Chavez

  Hugo Chavez, who won another six-year term as Venezuela's president in October 2012, is one of the most visible, vocal and controversial leaders in Latin America.

  The former army paratrooper first came to prominence as a leader of a failed coup in 1992.

  Six years later, he caused a seismic shift in Venezuelan politics, riding a wave of popular outrage at the traditional political elite to win the presidency.

  Since then, Mr Chavez has won a series of elections and referendums, including one in 2009 which abolished term limits for all elected officials, including the president.

  President Chavez argues that he needs more time for Venezuela's socialist revolution to take root.

  His supporters say he speaks for the poor; his critics say he has become increasingly autocratic.
  HUGO CHAVEZ

  Born 28 July 1954 in Sabaneta, Barinas state, the son of schoolteachers
  Graduated from military academy in 1975
  Has four children
  Keen baseball player

  In May 2012, Mr Chavez said he had recovered from an unspecified cancer, after undergoing surgery and chemotherapy in 2011 and a further operation in February 2012.

  However, in December 2012, he announced he needed further cancer surgery in Cuba, and named his Vice-President, Nicolas Maduro, as his preferred successor should the need arise.

  Since then he has struggled to recover and remained out of public view, finally returning to Venezuela in February.

  In February 1992, Mr Chavez led a doomed attempt to overthrow the government of President Carlos Andres Perez amid growing anger at economic austerity measures.

  The foundations for that failed coup had been laid a decade earlier, when Mr Chavez and a group of fellow military officers founded a secret movement named after the South American independence leader Simon Bolivar.

  The 1992 revolt by members of the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement claimed 18 lives and left 60 injured before Mr Chavez gave himself up.
  Image caption Hugo Chavez is a close ally of Cuba's Fidel and Raul Castro

  He was languishing in a military jail when his associates tried again to seize power nine months later.

  That second coup attempt, in November 1992, was crushed as well.

  Mr Chavez spent two years in prison before being granted a pardon. He then relaunched his party as the Movement of the Fifth Republic and made the transition from soldier to politician.

  By the time Mr Chavez was swept into power in the 1998 elections, the old Venezuelan order was falling apart.

  Unlike most of its neighbours, the country had enjoyed an unbroken period of democratic government since 1958.

  But the two main parties that had alternated in power stood accused of presiding over a corrupt system and squandering the country's vast oil wealth.

  Mr Chavez promised "revolutionary" social policies, and constantly abused the "predatory oligarchs" of the establishment as corrupt servants of international capital.
  Hello Mr President
  Hugo Chavez: Key dates

  Feb 1999: Takes office after winning 1998 election
  July 2000: Re-elected under new constitution for a six-year term
  April 2002: Abortive coup. Chavez returns to power after two days
  Aug 2004: Wins recall referendum on whether he should serve out rest of his term
  Dec 2006: Wins another six-year term with 63%
  Dec 2007: Loses constitutional referendum which included proposal to allow the president to run indefinitely for office
  Feb 2009: Wins referendum that lifts term limits on elected officials
  Sep 2010: Chavez party wins majority in National Assembly elections but opposition gets some 40% of seats
  June 2011: Reveals he is being treated for cancer
  February 2012: Undergoes further operation in Cuba
  October 2012: Re-elected for further six-year term

  Never missing an opportunity to address the nation, he once described oil executives as living in "luxury chalets where they perform orgies, drinking whisky".

  Mr Chavez has also frequently clashed with church leaders, whom he accuses of neglecting the poor, siding with the opposition, and defending the rich.

  "They do not walk in... the path of Christ," said Mr Chavez at one stage.

  Relations with Washington reached a new low when he accused the Bush administration of "fighting terror with terror" during the war in Afghanistan after 11 September 2001.

  Mr Chavez accused the US of being behind a short-lived coup that saw him removed from office for a couple of days in 2002.

  He survived this episode and emerged strengthened two years later in a referendum on his leadership. He then went on to victory in the 2006 presidential election.

  Mr Chavez's government has implemented a number of "missions" or social programmes, including education and health services for all. But poverty and unemployment are still widespread, despite the country's oil wealth.

  Mr Chavez is renowned for his flamboyant public speaking style, which he has put to use in his weekly live TV programme, Alo Presidente (Hello President), in which he talks about his political ideas, interviews guests and sings and dances.

• Wikipedia -

  Hugo Chávez
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  For other people named Hugo Chávez, see Hugo Chávez (disambiguation).
  This name uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Chávez and the second or maternal family name is Frías.
  Hugo Chávez
  Hugo Chávez (02-04-2010).jpg
  Chávez in 2010
  President of Venezuela
  In office
  14 April 2002 – 5 March 2013
  Vice Presidents
  See list
  [show]
  Preceded by Diosdado Cabello (Acting)
  Succeeded by Nicolás Maduro
  In office
  2 February 1999 – 12 April 2002
  Vice Presidents
  See list
  [show]
  Preceded by Rafael Caldera
  Succeeded by Pedro Carmona (Interim)
  De facto President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela
  In office
  24 March 2007 – 5 March 2013
  Preceded by Position established
  Succeeded by Nicolás Maduro
  Personal details
  Born Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías
  28 July 1954
  Sabaneta, Venezuela
  Died 5 March 2013 (aged 58)
  Caracas, Venezuela
  Resting place Cuartel de la Montaña
  Caracas, Venezuela
  Political party Fifth Republic Movement
  (1997–2007)
  United Socialist Party
  (2007–13)
  Other political
  affiliations Great Patriotic Pole
  (2011–13)
  Spouse(s) Nancy Colmenares (divorced)
  Marisabel Rodríguez (divorced)
  Children Rosa Virginia
  María Gabriela
  Hugo Rafael
  Rosinés
  Alma mater Military Academy of Venezuela
  Religion Roman Catholicism
  Signature
  Military service
  Allegiance Venezuela
  Service/branch Venezuelan Army
  Years of service 1971–1992
  Rank Lieutenant colonel
  Part of a series on
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  v t e

  Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as]; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who served as the 64th President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013. He was also leader of the Fifth Republic Movement from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he led until 2012.

  Born into a working-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system based on the Punto Fijo Pact,[1] he founded the clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-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.

  Released from prison after two years, he founded a political party known as the Fifth Republic Movement and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He was re-elected in 2000 and again in 2006 with over 60% of the votes. After winning his fourth term as president in the October 2012 presidential election,[2] he was to be sworn in on 10 January 2013, but Venezuela's National Assembly postponed the inauguration to allow him time to recover from medical treatment in Cuba.[3] Suffering a return of the cancer originally diagnosed in June 2011, Chávez died in Caracas on 5 March 2013 at the age of 58.[4][5]

  Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1999, Chávez focused on enacting social reforms as part of the Bolivarian Revolution, which is a type of socialist revolution. Using record-high oil revenues of the 2000s, his government nationalized key industries, created participatory democratic Communal Councils, and implemented social programs known as the Bolivarian Missions to expand access to food, housing, healthcare, and education.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][citation clutter] Venezuela received high oil profits in the mid-2000s [15] and there were improvements in areas such as poverty, literacy, income equality, and quality of life occurring primarily between 2003 and 2007.[7][15][16] At the end of Chávez's presidency in the early 2010s, economic actions performed by his government during the preceding decade such as deficit spending [17][18][19][20][21] and price controls[22][23][24][25][26] proved to be unsustainable, with Venezuela's economy faltering while poverty,[7][15][27] inflation[28] and shortages in Venezuela increased. Chávez's presidency also saw significant increases in the country's murder rate[29][30][31][32] and continued corruption within the police force and government.[33][34] His use of enabling acts[35][36] and his government's use of Bolivarian propaganda was also controversial.[37][38][39][40]

  Internationally, Chávez aligned himself with the Marxist–Leninist governments of Fidel and then Raúl Castro in Cuba, and the socialist governments of Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua). His presidency was seen as a part of the socialist "pink tide" sweeping Latin America. Chávez described his policies as anti-imperialist, being a prominent adversary of the United States's foreign policy as well as a vocal critic of US-supported neoliberalism and laissez-faire capitalism.[41] He described himself as a Marxist.[42][43][44][45][46] He supported Latin American and Caribbean cooperation and was instrumental in setting up the pan-regional Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South, and the regional television network TeleSUR. Chavez's ideas, programs, and style form the basis of "Chavismo", a political ideology closely associated with Bolivarianism and socialism of the 21st Century.

  Contents

  1 Early life
  2 Military career
  2.1 Military Academy
  2.2 Early military career
  2.3 Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200
  2.3.1 Operation Zamora coup attempt: 1992
  3 Political rise
  3.1 1998 election
  4 Presidency
  4.1 First presidential term: 2 February 1999 – 10 January 2001
  4.1.1 Constitutional reform
  4.2 Second presidential term: 10 January 2001 – 10 January 2007
  4.2.1 Opposition and the CD
  4.2.2 Coup, strikes and the recall referendum
  4.2.3 "Socialism of the 21st century"
  4.3 Third presidential term: 10 January 2007 – 10 January 2013
  4.3.1 United Socialist Party of Venezuela and domestic policy
  4.4 Fourth presidential term: 10 January 2013 – 5 March 2013
  5 Political ideology
  5.1 Bolivarianism
  5.2 Marxism
  5.3 Other influences
  6 Policy overview
  6.1 Economic and social policy
  6.1.1 Food and products
  6.1.2 Communes
  6.1.3 Currency controls
  6.2 Crime and punishment
  6.2.1 Prisons
  6.3 Democracy under Chávez
  6.4 Corruption
  6.4.1 Aiding FARC
  6.5 Human rights
  6.5.1 1999 Venezuelan Constitution
  6.5.2 Criticisms
  6.5.2.1 Allegations of Anti-semitism
  6.6 Media and the press
  6.7 Foreign policy
  7 In popular culture
  8 Personal life
  9 Illness
  10 Death
  11 Honours and awards
  11.1 Recognition
  11.2 Honorary degrees
  12 See also
  13 References
  13.1 Footnotes
  13.2 Bibliography
  14 External links

  Early life

  He was born on 28 July 1954 in his paternal grandmother Rosa Inéz Chávez's home, a modest three-room house located in the rural village Sabaneta, Barinas State. The Chávez family were of Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, and Spanish descent.[47] His parents, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, described as a proud COPEI member,[48] and Elena Frías de Chávez, were schoolteachers who lived in the small village of Los Rastrojos.[48]

  Hugo was born the second of seven children.[49][50] Hugo described his childhood as "poor... [but] very happy",[51] though his childhood of supposed poverty has been disputed as Chávez possibly changed the story of his background for political reasons.[48] Attending the Julián Pino Elementary School, Chávez was particularly interested in the 19th-century federalist general Ezequiel Zamora, in whose army his own great-great-grandfather had served.[52][53] With no high school in their area, Hugo's parents sent Hugo and his older brother Adán to live with their grandmother Rosa, who lived in a lower middle class subsidized home provided by the government, where they attended Daniel O'Leary High School in the mid-1960s.[54][55][56] Hugo later described his grandmother as being "a pure human being... pure love, pure kindness."[57] She was a devout Roman Catholic, and Hugo was an altar boy at a local church.[58] His father, despite having the salary of a teacher, helped pay college for Chávez and his siblings.[48]
  Military career
  Military Academy

  Aged seventeen, Chávez studied at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in Caracas, following a curriculum known as the Andrés Bello Plan, instituted by a group of progressive, nationalistic military officers. This new curriculum encouraged students to learn not only military routines and tactics but also a wide variety of other topics, and to do so civilian professors were brought in from other universities to give lectures to the military cadets.[59][60][61]
  Supporters of Hugo Chávez at his funeral at the Military academy of Venezuela.

  Living in Caracas, he saw more of the endemic poverty faced by working class Venezuelans, and said that this experience only made him further committed to achieving social justice.[62][63] He also began to get involved in activities outside of the military school, playing baseball and softball with the Criollitos de Venezuela team, progressing with them to the Venezuelan National Baseball Championships. He also wrote poetry, fiction, and drama, and painted,[64] and he researched the life and political thought of 19th-century South American revolutionary Simón Bolívar.[65] He also became interested in the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–67) after reading his memoir The Diary of Che Guevara.[66] In 1974, he was selected to be a representative in the commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho in Peru, the conflict in which Simon Bolívar's lieutenant, Antonio José de Sucre, defeated royalist forces during the Peruvian War of Independence. In Peru, Chávez heard the leftist president, General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1910–1977), speak, and inspired by Velasco's ideas that the military should act in the interests of the working classes when the ruling classes were perceived as corrupt,[67] he "drank up the books [Velasco had written], even memorising some speeches almost completely."[68]

  Befriending the son of Maximum Leader Omar Torrijos, the leftist dictator of Panama, Chávez visited Panama, where he met with Torrijos, and was impressed with his land reform program that was designed to benefit the peasants. Influenced by Torrijos and Velasco he saw the potential for military generals to seize control of a government when the civilian authorities were perceived as serving the interests of only the wealthy elites.[67][69] In contrast to Torrijos and Velasco, Chávez became highly critical of Augusto Pinochet, the right-wing general who had recently seized control in Chile with the aid of the American CIA.[70] Chávez later said, "With Torrijos, I became a Torrijist. With Velasco I became a Velasquist. And with Pinochet, I became an anti-Pinochetist".[71] In 1975, Chávez graduated from the military academy as one of the top graduates of the year.[72][73][74]
  Early military career
  Further information: Military career of Hugo Chávez

  I think that from the time I left the academy I was oriented toward a revolutionary movement... The Hugo Chávez who entered there was a kid from the hills, a Ilanero [sic] with aspirations of playing professional baseball. Four years later, a second-lieutenant came out who had taken the revolutionary path. Someone who didn't have obligations to anyone, who didn't belong to any movement, who was not enrolled in any party, but who knew very well where I was headed.
  Hugo Chávez[75]

  Following his graduation, Chávez was stationed as a communications officer at a counterinsurgency unit in Barinas,[76] although the Marxist–Leninist insurgency which the army was sent to combat had already been eradicated from that state.[77] At one point he found a stash of Marxist literature that apparently had belonged to insurgents many years before. He went on to read these books, which included titles by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong, but his favourite was a work entitled The Times of Ezequiel Zamora, written about the 19th-century federalist general whom Chávez had admired as a child.[78] These books further convinced Chávez of the need for a leftist government in Venezuela: "By the time I was 21 or 22, I made myself a man of the left".[79]

  In 1977, Chávez's unit was transferred to Anzoátegui, where they were involved in battling the Red Flag Party, a Marxist–Hoxhaist insurgency group.[80] After intervening to prevent the beating of an alleged insurgent by other soldiers,[81] Chávez began to have his doubts about the army and their methods in using torture.[79] At the same time, he was becoming increasingly critical of the corruption in the army and in the civilian government, coming to believe Venezuela's poor were not benefiting from the oil wealth, and began to sympathize with the Red Flag Party and their cause and their violent methods.[82]

  In 1977, he founded a revolutionary movement together with Luis R. Gonzalez an William Jimenez, within the armed forces, in the hope that he could one day introduce a leftist government to Venezuela: the Venezuelan People's Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación del Pueblo de Venezuela, or ELPV), consisted of him and a handful of his fellow soldiers who had no immediate plans for direct action, though they knew they wanted a middle way between the right wing policies of the government and the far left position of the Red Flag.[81][83][84] Nevertheless, hoping to gain an alliance with civilian leftist groups in Venezuela, Chávez set up clandestine meetings with various prominent Marxists, including Alfredo Maneiro (the founder of the Radical Cause) and Douglas Bravo.[85][86] At this time, Chávez married a working-class woman named Nancy Colmenares, with whom he had three children: Rosa Virginia (born September 1978), Maria Gabriela (born March 1980) and Hugo Rafael (born October 1983).[87]
  Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200
  Logo of MBR-200.

  Five years after his creation of the ELPV, Chávez went on to form a new secretive cell within the military, the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200 (EBR-200), later redesignated the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200).[59][88][89] He was inspired by Ezequiel Zamora (1817–1860), Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) and Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), who became known as the "three roots of the tree" of the MBR-200.[90][91] Later, Chávez said that "the Bolivarian movement that was being born did not propose political objectives... Its goals were imminently internal. Its efforts were directed in the first place to studying the military history of Venezuela as a source of a military doctrine of our own, which up to then didn't exist".[92] However, he always hoped for the Bolivarian Movement to become a politically dominant party that would "accept all kinds of ideas, from the right, from the left, from the ideological ruins of those old capitalist and communist systems."[93] Indeed, Irish political analyst Barry Cannon noted that the MBR's early ideology "was a doctrine in construction, a heterogeneous amalgam of thoughts and ideologies, from universal thought, capitalism, Marxism, but rejecting the neoliberal models currently being imposed in Latin America and the discredited models of the old Soviet Bloc."[94]

  In 1981, Chávez, by now a captain, was assigned to teach at the military academy where he had formerly trained. Here he introduced new students to his so-called "Bolivarian" ideals and recruited some of them. By the time they had graduated, at least thirty out of 133 cadets had joined his cause.[95] In 1984 he met Herma Marksman, a recently divorced history teacher with whom he had an affair that lasted several years.[96][97] During this time Francisco Arias Cárdenas , a soldier interested in liberation theology, also joined MBR-200.[98] Cárdenas rose to a significant position within the group, although he came into ideological conflict with Chávez, with Chávez believing that they should begin direct military action in order to overthrow the government, something Cárdenas thought was reckless.[99]

  After some time, some senior military officers became suspicious of Chávez and reassigned him so that he would not be able to gain any more fresh new recruits from the academy. He was sent to take command of the remote barracks at Elorza in Apure State,[100] where he organized social events for the community and contacted the local indigenous tribal peoples, the Cuiva and Yaruro. Distrustful as they were because of the mistreatment at the hands of the Venezuelan army in previous decades, Chávez gained their trust by joining the expeditions of an anthropologist to meet with them. Chávez said his experiences with them later led him to introduce laws protecting the rights of indigenous tribal peoples.[101] In 1988, after being promoted to the rank of major, the high-ranking General Rodríguez Ochoa took a liking to Chávez and employed him to be his assistant at his office in Caracas.[102]
  Operation Zamora coup attempt: 1992
  Main article: 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempts
  Chávez seen giving his famous speech following his failure to overthrow President Pérez.

  In 1989, centrist Carlos Andrés Pérez (1922–2010) was elected President, and though he had promised to oppose the United States government's Washington Consensus and the International Monetary Fund's policies, he opposed neither once he got into office, following instead neoliberal economic policies supported by the United States and the IMF, angering the public.[103][104][105] In an attempt to stop widespread protests and looting that followed his social spending cuts, Pérez initiated Plan Ávila and an outbreak of looting and violent repression of protesters, known as El Caracazo unfolded.[106][107][108] Though members of Chávez's MBR-200 movement allegedly participated in the crackdown,[109] Chávez did not; he was then hospitalized with chicken pox. He later condemned the event as "genocide".[110][111]
  The San Carlos military stockade, where Hugo Chávez was held following the 1992 coup attempt.

  Chávez began preparing for a military coup d'état[108][112] known as Operation Zamora.[113] The plan involved members of the military overwhelming military locations and communication installations and then establishing Rafael Caldera in power once Perez was captured and assassinated.[114] Chávez delayed the MBR-200 coup, initially planned for December, until the early twilight hours of 4 February 1992.[114]

  On that date five army units under Chávez's command moved into urban Caracas. Despite years of planning, the coup quickly encountered trouble since Chávez commanded the loyalty of less than 10% of Venezuela's military.[115] After numerous betrayals, defections, errors, and other unforeseen circumstances, Chávez and a small group of rebels found themselves hiding in the Military Museum, unable to communicate with other members of their team. Pérez managed to escape Miraflores Palace.[116] Fourteen soldiers were killed, and fifty soldiers and some eighty civilians injured during the ensuing violence.[117][118][119] Another unsuccessful coup against the government occurred in November,[112][120] with the fighting during the coups resulting in the deaths of at least 143 people and perhaps as many as several hundred.[121]

  Chávez gave himself up to the government and appeared on television, in uniform, to call on the remaining coup members to lay down their arms.[122] Many viewers noted that Chávez in his speech remarked that he had failed only "por ahora" (for now).[59][123][124][125][126] Venezuelans, particularly poor ones, began seeing him as someone who stood up against government corruption and kleptocracy.[127][128][129] The coup "flopped militarily – and dozens died – but made him a media star," noted Rory Carroll of The Guardian.[130]

  Chávez was arrested and imprisoned at the San Carlos military stockade, wracked with guilt and feeling responsible for the failure of the coup.[131][132] Pro-Chávez demonstrations outside San Carlos led to his transfer to Yare Prison.[133] The government meanwhile cracked down on journalists who supported Chávez and the coup.[134] Pérez was impeached a year later for malfeasance and misappropriating funds for illegal activities.[135][136]
  Political rise
  Chávez speaking at an event in Buenos Aires in October 1995.

  While Chávez and the other senior members of the MBR-200 were in prison, his relationship with Herma Marksman broke up in July 1993.[137] In 1994, Rafael Caldera (1916–2009) of the centrist National Convergence Party and who had knowledge of the coup was elected president, and soon after freed Chávez and the other imprisoned MBR-200 members, though Caldera banned them from returning to the military.[138][139] Chávez went on a 100-day tour of the country, promoting his Bolivarian cause of social revolution.[140] On his tours around the country he met Marisabel Rodríguez, who would give birth to their daughter shortly before becoming his second wife in 1997.[141][142]
  A 1997 image of MBR-200 members meeting. Nicolás Maduro can be seen on the far left while Hugo Chávez is seen speaking in the center.

  Travelling around Latin America in search of foreign support for his Bolivarian movement, he visited Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, and finally Cuba, where he met Castro and became friends with him.[143] During his stay in Colombia, he spent six months receiving guerilla training and establishing contacts with the FARC and ELN terrorist groups, and even adopted a nom de guerre, Comandante Centeno.[144] After his return to Venezuela, Chávez was critical of President Caldera and his neoliberal economic policies.[145] A drop in per capita income, coupled with increases in poverty and crime, "led to gaps emerging between rulers and ruled which favoured the emergence of a populist leader".[146]

  By now Chávez was a supporter of taking military action, believing that the oligarchy would never allow him and his supporters to win an election,[147] while Francisco Arias Cárdenas insisted that they take part in the representative democratic process. Indeed, Cárdenas soon joined the Radical Cause socialist party and won the December 1995 election to become governor of the oil-rich Zulia State.[148] As a result, Chávez and his supporters founded a political party, the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR – Movimiento Quinta República) in July 1997 in order to support Chávez's candidature in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1998.[117][149][150][151]
  1998 election
  A painted mural in support of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) found in Barcelona, Venezuela

  At the start of the election run-up, front runner Irene Sáez was backed by one of Venezuela's two primary political parties, Copei.[152] Chávez's revolutionary rhetoric gained him support from Patria Para Todos (Homeland for All), the Partido Comunista Venezolano (Venezeuelan Communist Party) and the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism).[151][153] Chávez's promises of widespread social and economic reforms won the trust and favor of the primarily poor and working class. By May 1998, Chávez's support had risen to 30% in polls, and by August he was registering 39%.[154] With polls showing support for Chávez increasing, and for Sáez decreasing, both the main two political parties, Copei and Democratic Action, put their support behind Henrique Salas Römer, a Yale University-educated economist who represented the Project Venezuela party.[155]

  Voter turnout in the election is disputed[how?]. Voter turnout was 63.45%, and Chávez won the election with 56.20% of the vote.[156][157] Academic analysis of the election showed that Chávez's support had come primarily from the country's poor and "disenchanted middle class", whose standard of living had decreased rapidly over the previous decade,[158] while much of the middle and upper class vote went to Römer.[159]
  Presidency
  Further information: History of Venezuela (1999–present)
  First presidential term: 2 February 1999 – 10 January 2001
  Hugo Chávez being sworn in as president, with President Rafael Caldera seen in the background.

  Chávez's presidential inauguration took place 2 February 1999. He deviated from the usual words of the presidential oath when he took it, proclaiming: "I swear before God and my people that upon this moribund constitution I will drive forth the necessary democratic transformations so that the new republic will have a Magna Carta befitting these new times."[160][161] Freedom in Venezuela suffered following "the decision of President Hugo Chávez, ratified in a national referendum, to abolish congress and the judiciary, and by his creation of a parallel government of military cronies".[162] Soon after being established into office, Chávez spent much of his time attempting to abolish existing checks and balances in Venezuela.[162] He appointed new figures to government posts, adding leftist allies to key positions and "army colleagues were given a far bigger say in the day-to-day running of the country".[162] For instance he put MBR-200 founder Jesús Urdaneta (es), in charge of the Bolivarian Intelligence Agency and made Hernán Grüber Ódreman (es), one of the 1992 coup leaders, governor of the Federal District of Caracas.[163]

  Chávez appointed conservative, centrist and centre-right figures to government positions as well. He reappointed Caldera's economy minister, Maritza Izaquirre, to her previous position and appointed businessman Roberto Mandini president of the state-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela.[164][165] His critics referred to these government officials as the "Boliburguesía" or "Bolivarian bourgeoisie",[166][167] and highlighted that it "included few people with experience in public administration."[160] The number of his immediate family members in Venezuelan politics led to accusations of nepotism also.[168]

  In June 2000 he separated from his wife Marisabel, and their divorce was finalised in January 2004.[169]

  The Chávez government's initial policies were moderate, capitalist and centre-left. They had much in common with those of contemporary Latin American leftists like Brazilian president Lula da Silva.[170][171] Chávez initially believed that capitalism was still a valid economic model for Venezuela, but only Rhenish capitalism, not the US-supported neoliberalism of prior Venezuelan governments.[172] He followed the economic guidelines of the International Monetary Fund and continued to encourage foreign investment in Venezuela,[173] even visiting the New York Stock Exchange in the United States to convince wealthy investors to invest.[174][175]

  Beginning February 27, 1999, the tenth anniversary of the Caracazo massacre, Chávez set into motion a social welfare program called Plan Bolívar 2000. He said he had allotted $20.8 million for the plan, though some say that the program cost $113 million. The plan involved 70,000 soldiers, sailors and members of the air force repairing roads and hospitals, removing stagnant water that offered breeding areas for disease-carrying mosquitoes, offering free medical care and vaccinations, and selling food at low prices.[176][177][178][179]

  In May 2000 he launched his own Sunday morning radio show, Aló Presidente (Hello, President), on the state radio network. This followed an earlier Thursday night television show, De Frente con el Presidente (Face to Face with the President).[180] He founded two newspapers, El Correo del Presidente (The President's Post), founded in July, for which he acted as editor-in-chief, and Vea (See), another newspaper, as well as Question magazine and Vive TV.[180] El Correo was later shut down among accusations of corruption and mismanagement.[181] In his television and radio shows, he answered calls from citizens, discussed his latest policies, sang songs and told jokes, making it unique not only in Latin America but the entire world.[180][182]
  Constitutional reform

  Chávez called a public referendum, which he hoped would support his plans to form a constitutional assembly of representatives from across Venezuela and from indigenous tribal groups to rewrite the Venezuelan constitution.[183][184] Chávez said he had to run again; "Venezuela's socialist revolution was like an unfinished painting and he was the artist," he said,[130] while someone else "could have another vision, start to alter the contours of the painting".[130] The momentum of the support he received in previous elections,[185] made the referendum on 25 April 1999 a success for Chávez; 88% of the voters supported his proposal.[183][184]
  Chávez holds a miniature copy of the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution at the 2003 World Social Forum held in Brazil.

  Chávez called an election on 25 July to elect the members of the constitutional assembly.[186] Over 900 of the 1,171 candidates standing for election that July were Chávez opponents. Despite the many opposition candidates, Chávez supporters won another overwhelming electoral victory. His supporters took 95% of the seats, 125 in all, including all of the seats assigned to indigenous groups. The opposition won only six seats.[183][187][188] The constitutional assembly, filled with supporters of Chávez, began to draft a constitution that made censorship easier and granted the executive branch more power.[162]

  On 12 August 1999, the new constitutional assembly voted to give themselves the power to abolish government institutions and to dismiss officials who were perceived as corrupt or as operating only in their own interests. Opponents of the Chávez regime argued that it was therefore dictatorial.[189][190] Most jurists believed that the new constitutional assembly had become the country's "supreme authority" and that all other institutions were subordinate to it.[191] The assembly also declared a "judicial emergency" and granted itself the power to overhaul the judicial system. The Supreme Court ruled that the assembly did indeed have this authority, and was replaced in the 1999 Constitution with the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.[192][193]

  The Chávez supporting constituent assembly[185] then put together a new constitution. The referendum in December 1999 on whether to adopt it saw a low turnout with an abstention vote of over 50%. However 72% of those who did vote approved the new constitution's adoption.[188][194][195] The constitution included progressive language on environmental and indigenous protections, socioeconomic guarantees and state benefits, but also gave greater powers to Chávez.[185][196] Notably, the presidential term was expanded to six years, and he was allowed to run for two consecutive terms. Previously, a sitting president could not run for reelection for 10 years after leaving office. It also replaced the bicameral Congress with a unicameral Legislative Assembly, and granted Chávez the power to legislate on citizen rights, to promote military officers and to oversee economic and financial matters.[185][196] The assembly also gave the military a mandated role in the government by empowering it to ensure public order and aid national development, which the previous constitution had expressly forbidden.[196]

  In the new constitution, the country, until then officially known as the Republic of Venezuela, was renamed the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (República Bolivariana de Venezuela) at Chávez's request.[187][188]

  The 1999 Venezuelan constitution eliminated much of Venezuela's checks and balances, Chávez's government controlled every branch of the Venezuelan government for over 15 years after it passed until the Venezuelan parliamentary election in 2015.[162][197]
  Second presidential term: 10 January 2001 – 10 January 2007
  Chávez visiting Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2003

  Under the new constitution, it was legally required that new elections be held in order to re-legitimize the government and president. This presidential election in July 2000 would be a part of a greater "megaelection", the first time in the country's history that the president, governors, national and regional congressmen, mayors and councilmen would be voted for on the same day.[198][199][200] Going into the elections, Chávez had control of all three branches of government.[192] For the position of president, Chávez's closest challenger proved to be his former friend and co-conspirator in the 1992 coup, Francisco Arias Cárdenas, who since becoming governor of Zulia state had turned towards the political centre and begun to denounce Chávez as autocratic.[201] Although some of his supporters feared that he had alienated those in the middle class and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy who had formerly supported him, Chávez was re-elected with 59.76% of the vote (the equivalent of 3,757,000 people), a larger majority than his 1998 electoral victory,[202][203] again primarily receiving his support from the poorer sectors of Venezuelan society.[204]

  That year, Chávez helped to further cement his geopolitical and ideological ties with the Cuban government of Fidel Castro by signing an agreement under which Venezuela would supply Cuba with 53,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates, in return receiving 20,000 trained Cuban medics and educators. In the ensuing decade, this would be increased to 90,000 barrels a day (in exchange for 40,000 Cuban medics and teachers), dramatically aiding the Caribbean island's economy and standard of living after its "Special Period" of the 1990s.[205] However, Venezuela's growing alliance with Cuba came at the same time as a deteriorating relationship with the United States: in late 2001, just after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in retaliation for 11 September attacks against the U.S. by Islamist militants, Chávez showed pictures of Afghan children killed in a bomb attack on his television show. He commented that "They are not to blame for the terrorism of Osama Bin Laden or anyone else", and called on the American government to end "the massacre of the innocents. Terrorism cannot be fought with terrorism." The U.S. government responded negatively to the comments, which were picked up by the media worldwide.[206]
  Chávez's second term in office saw the implementation of social missions, such as this one to eliminate illiteracy in Venezuela.

  Meanwhile, the 2000 elections had led to Chávez's supporters gaining 101 out of 165 seats in the Venezuelan National Assembly, and so in November 2001 they voted to allow him to pass 49 social and economic decrees.[207][208] This move antagonized the opposition movement particularly strongly.[200]

  At the start of the 21st century, Venezuela was the world's fifth largest exporter of crude oil, with oil accounting for 85.3% of the country's exports, therefore dominating the country's economy.[209][210] Previous administrations had sought to privatise this industry, with U.S. corporations having a significant level of control, but the Chávez administration wished to curb this foreign control over the country's natural resources by nationalising much of it under the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PdVSA). In 2001, the government introduced a new Hydrocarbons Law through which they sought to gain greater state control over the oil industry: they did this by raising royalty taxes on the oil companies and also by introducing the formation of "mixed companies", whereby the PdVSA could have joint control with private companies over industry. By 2006, all of the 32 operating agreements signed with private corporations during the 1990s had been converted from being primarily or solely corporate-run to being at least 51% controlled by PdVSA.[209]
  Opposition and the CD

  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".[200] However, much of Chávez's opposition originated from the response to the "cubanization" of Venezuela.[192] Chávez's popularity dropped due to his relationship with Fidel Castro and Cuba, with Chávez attempting to make Venezuela in Cuba's image.[192] Chávez, following Castro's example, consolidated the country's bicameral legislature into a single National Assembly that gave him more power[185] and created community groups of loyal supporters allegedly trained as paramilitaries.[192] Such actions created great fear among Venezuelans who felt like they were tricked and that Chávez had dictatorial goals.[192]

  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 "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.[192][211]

  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.[207][212] The prominent businessman Pedro Carmona (1941–) was chosen as the CD's leader.[207]
  Chávez visiting the USS Yorktown, a US Navy ship docked at Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles, in 2002

  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.[207] 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.[213]
  Coup, strikes and the recall referendum
  Main articles: 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt; Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003; and Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004
  A 2004 rally against Chávez in Caracas, demanding his removal from the presidency.

  On 11 April 2002, during mass protests in Caracas against the Bolivarian government,[214] twenty people were killed, and over 110 were wounded.[215] A group of high-ranking anti-Chávez military officers had been planning to launch a coup against Chávez and used the civil unrest as an opportunity.[216] After the plotters gained significant power, Chávez agreed to be detained and was transferred by army escort to La Orchila; business leader Pedro Carmona declared himself president of an interim government.[217] Carmona abolished the 1999 constitution and appointed a small governing committee to run the country.[200] Protests in support of Chávez along with insufficient support for Carmona's regime, which some felt was implementing totalitarian measures, quickly led to Carmona's resignation, and Chávez was returned to power on 14 April.[218]

  Chávez's response was to moderate his approach, implementing a new economic team that appeared to be more centrist and reinstated the old board of directors and managers of the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), whose replacement had been one of the reasons for the coup.[219][220] At the same time, the Bolivarian government began increased the country's military capacity, purchasing 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and several helicopters from Russia, as well as a number of Super Tucano light attack and training planes from Brazil. Troop numbers were also increased.[221]

  In 2002, after appointing political allies to head the PDVSA and replacing the company's board of directors with loyalists who had "little or no experience in the oil industry",[222] Chávez faced a two-month management strike at the PDVSA.[223] The Chávez government's response was to fire about 19,000 striking employees for illegally abandoning their posts and then employing retired workers, foreign contractors, and the military to do their jobs instead.[224] According to one observer, this move further damaged the strength of Chávez's opposition by removing the many managers in the oil industry who had been supportive of their cause to overthrow Chávez.[224]

  The 1999 constitution had introduced the concept of a recall referendum into Venezuelan politics, so the opposition called for such a referendum to take place. A 2004 referendum to recall Chávez was defeated. 70% of the eligible Venezuelan population turned out to vote, with 59% of voters deciding to keep the president in power.[203][225] Unlike his original 1998 election victory, this time Chávez's electoral support came almost entirely from the poorer working classes rather than the middle classes, who "had practically abandoned Chávez" after he "had consistently moved towards the left in those five and a half years".[226]
  "Socialism of the 21st century"

  The various attempts at overthrowing the Bolivarian government from power had only served to further radicalize Chávez.[citation needed] In January 2005, he began openly proclaiming the ideology of "socialism of the 21st Century", something that was distinct from his earlier forms of Bolivarianism, which had been social democratic in nature, merging elements of capitalism and socialism. He used this new term to contrast the democratic socialism, which he wanted to promote in Latin America from the Marxist–Leninist socialism that had been spread by socialist states like the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China during the 20th century, arguing that the latter had not been truly democratic, suffering from a lack of participatory democracy and an excessively authoritarian governmental structure.[94]

  In May 2006, Chávez visited Europe in a private capacity, where he announced plans to supply cheap Venezuelan oil to poor working class communities in the continent. The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone welcomed him, describing him as "the best news out of Latin America in many years".[227]
  Third presidential term: 10 January 2007 – 10 January 2013

  In the presidential election of December 2006, which saw a 74% voter turnout, Chávez was once more elected, this time with 63% of the vote, beating his closest challenger Manuel Rosales, who conceded his loss.[225] The election was certified as being free and legitimate by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center.[228][229][230] After this victory, Chávez promised an "expansion of the revolution."[231]
  United Socialist Party of Venezuela and domestic policy
  Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans during the 2007 Venezuelan protests demonstrating against Chávez's proposed constitutional referendum.[232]

  On 15 December 2006, Chávez publicly announced that those leftist political parties who had continually supported him in the Patriotic Pole would unite into one single, much larger party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, PSUV).[151] In the speech which he gave announcing the PSUV's creation, Chávez declared that the old parties must "forget their own structures, party colours and slogans, because they are not the most important thing for the fatherland."[151] According to political analyst Barry Cannon, the purpose of creating the PSUV was to "forge unity amongst the disparate elements [of the Bolivarian movement], providing grassroots input into policy and leadership formation, [and] uniting the grassroots and leadership into one single body."[233] It was hoped that by doing so, it would decrease the problems of clientelism and corruption and also leave the movement less dependent on its leadership:[233] as Chávez himself declared, "In this new party, the bases will elect the leaders. This will allow real leaders to emerge."[233]
  The logo for the PSUV, Chávez's socialist political party founded in 2007

  Chávez had initially proclaimed that those leftist parties which chose to not dissolve into the PSUV would have to leave the government, however, after several of those parties supporting him refused to do so, he ceased to issue such threats.[234] There was initially much grassroots enthusiasm for the creation of the PSUV, with membership having risen to 5.7 million people by 2007,[233][235] making it the largest political group in Venezuela.[236] The United Nations' International Labour Organization however expressed concern over some voters' being pressured to join the party.[237]

  In 2007, the Bolivarian government set up a constitutional commission in order to review the 1999 constitution and suggest potential amendments to be made to it. Led by the prominent pro-Chávez intellectual Luis Britto García, the commission came to the conclusion that the constitution could include more socially progressive clauses, such as the shortening of the working week, a constitutional recognition of Afro Venezuelans and the elimination of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.[225] It also suggested measures that would have increased many of the president's powers, for instance increasing the presidential term limit to seven years, allowing the president to run for election indefinitely and centralizing powers in the executive.[225] The government put the suggested changes to a public referendum in December 2007.[238] Abstention rate was high however, with 43.95% of registered voters not turning out, and in the end the proposed changes were rejected by 50.65% of votes.[225][239] This would prove to the first electoral loss that Chávez had faced in the thirteen electoral contests held since he took power,[225] something analysts argued was due to the top-down nature of the changes, as well as general public dissatisfaction with "the absence of internal debate on its content, as well as dissatisfaction with the running of the social programmes, increasing street crime, and with corruption within the government."[240]

  In order to ensure that his Bolivarian Revolution became socially engrained in Venezuela, Chávez discussed his wish to stand for re-election when his term ran out in 2013, and spoke of ruling beyond 2030.[241] Under the 1999 constitution, he could not legally stand for re-election again, and so brought about a referendum on 15 February 2009 to abolish the two-term limit for all public offices, including the presidency.[242] Approximately 70% of the Venezuelan electorate voted, and they approved this alteration to the constitution with over 54% in favor, allowing any elected official the chance to try to run indefinitely.[241][242][243]
  Chávez (far right) with fellow Latin American leftist presidents in 2009. From left to right: Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Brazil's Lula da Silva and Ecuador's Rafael Correa
  Fourth presidential term: 10 January 2013 – 5 March 2013

  On 7 October 2012, Chávez won election as president for a fourth time, his third six-year term. He defeated Henrique Capriles with 54% of the votes versus 45% for Capriles, which was a lower victory margin than in his previous presidential wins, in the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election[2][244] Turnout in the election was 80%, with a hotly contested election between the two candidates.[245] There was significant support for Chávez amongst the Venezuelan lower class. Chávez's opposition blamed him for unfairly using state funds to spread largesse before the election to bolster Chavez's support among his primary electoral base, the lower class.[244]
  Chávez in June 2012.

  The inauguration of Chávez's new term was scheduled for 10 January 2013, but as he was undergoing medical treatment at the time in Cuba, he was not able to return to Venezuela for that date. The National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello proposed to postpone the inauguration and the Supreme Court decided that, being just another term of the sitting president and not the inauguration of a new one, the formality could be bypassed. The Venezuelan Bishops Conference opposed the verdict, stating that the constitution must be respected and the Venezuelan government had not been transparent regarding details about Chávez's health.[246]

  Acting executive officials produced orders of government signed by Chávez, which were suspected of forgery by some opposition politicians, who claimed that Chávez was too sick to be in control of his faculties. Guillermo Cochez, recently dismissed from the office of Panamanian ambassador to the Organization of American States, even claimed that Chávez had been brain-dead since 31 December 2012.[247][248] Near to Chavez's death, two American attachés were expelled from the country for allegedly undermining Venezuelan democracy.[citation needed]

  Due to the death of Chávez, Vice President Nicolas Maduro took over the presidential powers and duties for the remainder of Chávez's abbreviated term until presidential elections were held. Venezuela's constitution specifies that the speaker of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, should assume the interim presidency if a president cannot be sworn in.[249]
  Political ideology
  19th century general and politician Simón Bolívar provided a basis for Chávez's political ideas.

  Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest. Rousseau said, 'Between the powerful and the weak all freedom is oppressed. Only the rule of law sets you free.' That's why the only way to save the world is through socialism, a democratic socialism... [Democracy is not just turning up to vote every five or four years], it's much more than that, it's a way of life, it's giving power to the people... it is not the government of the rich over the people, which is what's happening in almost all the so-called democratic Western capitalist countries.
  Hugo Chávez, June 2010[172]

  Chávez propagated what he called "socialism for the 21st century", but according to the pro-Chavez academic Gregory Wilpert, "Chávez has not clearly defined twenty-first century socialism, other than to say that it is about establishing liberty, equality, social justice, and solidarity. He has also indicated that it is distinctly different from state socialism", as implemented by the governments of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.[250] As a part of his socialist ideas, he emphasised the role of so-called "participatory democracy", which he claimed increased democratic participation, and was implemented through the foundation of the Venezuelan Communal Councils and Bolivarian Circles which he cited as examples of grassroots and participatory democracy.[251]
  Bolivarianism
  Main articles: Bolivarianism and Bolivarian Circles

  Hugo Chávez defined his political position as Bolivarianism, an ideology he developed from that of Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) and others. Bolívar was a 19th-century general who led the fight against the colonialist Spanish authorities and who is widely revered across Latin America today. Along with Bolívar, the other two primary influences upon Bolivarianism are Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), a philosopher who was Bolívar's tutor and mentor, and Ezequiel Zamora, (1817–1860), the Venezuelan Federalist general.[252] Political analyst and Chávez supporter Gregory Wilpert, in his study of Chávez's politics, noted that "The key ingredients for Chávez's revolutionary Bolivarianism can be summarized as: an emphasis on the importance of education, the creation of civilian-military unity, Latin American integration, social justice, and national sovereignty. In many ways this is not a particularly different set of principles and ideas to those of any other Enlightenment or national liberation thinker."[253] Chávez's ideology originating from Bolívar has also received some criticism because Chávez had occasionally described himself as being influenced by Karl Marx, a critic of Bolívar.[254][255] Beddow and Thibodeaux noted the complications between Bolívar and Marx, stating that "[d]escribing Bolivar as a socialist warrior in the class struggle, when he was actually member of the aristocratic 'criollos,' is peculiar when considering Karl Marx's own writings on Bolivar, whom he dismissed as a false liberator who merely sought to preserve the power of the old Creole nobility which he belonged".[255]
  Marxism

  Chávez's connection to Marxism was a complex one, though he had described himself as a Marxist on some occasions.[42][43][44][45][46] In May 1996, he gave an interview with Agustín Blanco Muñoz in which he remarked that "I am not a Marxist, but I am not anti-Marxist. I am not communist, but I am not anti-communist."[256] In a 2009 speech to the national assembly, he said: "I am a Marxist to the same degree as the followers of the ideas of Jesus Christ and the liberator of America, Simon Bolivar."[42][257] He was well versed in many Marxist texts, having read the works of many Marxist theoreticians, and often publicly quoted them. Various international Marxists supported his government, believing it to be a sign of proletariat revolution as predicted in Marxist theory.[258] In 2010, Hugo Chávez proclaimed support for the ideas of Marxist Leon Trotsky, saying "When I called him (former Minister of Labour, José Ramón Rivero)" Chávez explained, "he said to me: 'President I want to tell you something before someone else tells you ... I am a Trotskyist', and I said, 'well, what is the problem? I am also a Trotskyist! I follow Trotsky's line, that of permanent revolution," and then cited Marx and Lenin.[259][260]
  Other influences

  Chávez's early heroes were nationalist military dictators that included former Peruvian president Juan Velasco Alvarado[65] and former Panamanian "Maximum Leader" Omar Torrijos.[69][261] One dictator Chávez admired was Marcos Pérez Jiménez, a former president of Venezuela that he praised for the public works he performed.[48] Chávez praised Pérez Jiménez in order to vilify preceding democratic governments, stating that "General Pérez Jiménez was the best president Venezuela had in a long time ... He was much better than Rómulo Betancourt, much better than all of those others. They hated him because he was a soldier."[48]

  Chávez was also well acquainted with the various traditions of Latin American socialism, espoused by such figures as Colombian politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán[262] and former Chilean president Salvador Allende.[262] Early in his presidency, Chávez was advised and influenced by the Argentine fascist Norberto Ceresole.[261] Cuban Communist revolutionaries Che Guevara and Fidel Castro also influenced Chávez, especially with Castro's government assistance with the Bolivarian Missions.[261][262] Other indirect influences on Chávez's political philosophy are the writings of American linguist Noam Chomsky[263] and the Gospel teachings of Jesus Christ.[264][265] Other inspirations of Chávez's political view are Giuseppe Garibaldi,[266] Antonio Gramsci and Antonio Negri.[267][268][269][270]
  Policy overview
  This section may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Please consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding or removing subheadings. (December 2014)
  Economic and social policy
  See also: Economic policy of the Hugo Chávez government and Economy of Venezuela
  The blue line represents annual rates. The red line represents trends of annual rates given throughout the period shown. GDP is in billions of Local Currency Unit that has been adjusted for inflation.
  Sources: International Monetary Fund, World Bank

  From his election in 1998 until his death in March 2013, Chávez's administration proposed and enacted democratic socialist economic policies. Domestic policies included redistribution of wealth, land reform, and democratization of economic activity via workplace self-management and creation of worker-owned cooperatives.[271]

  With increasing oil prices in the early 2000s and funds not seen in Venezuela since the 1980s, Chávez created the Bolivarian Missions, aimed at providing public services to improve economic, cultural, and social conditions[10][14][22][272] so he could maintain political power.[273] According to Corrales and Penfold, "aid was disbursed to some of the poor, and more gravely, in a way that ended up helping the president and his allies and cronies more than anyone else".[274] The Missions entailed the construction of thousands of free medical clinics for the poor,[10] and the enactment of food[22] and housing subsidies.[14] A 2010 OAS report[275] indicated achievements in addressing illiteracy, healthcare and poverty,[16] and economic and social advances.[276] The quality of life for Venezuelans had also improved according to a UN Index.[7] Teresa A. Meade wrote that Chávez's popularity strongly depended "on the lower classes who have benefited from these health initiatives and similar policies."[277]

  The Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, also dropped from .495 in 1998 to .39 in 2011, putting Venezuela behind only Canada in the Western Hemisphere.[278] Venezuelans aged 15 and older, 95.2% could also read and write, with Venezuela having one of the highest literacy rates in the region,[279] though some scholars have disputed that literacy improvements during Chavez's presidency resulted from his administration's policies.[280] The poverty rate fell from 48.6% in 1999 to 32.1% in 2013, according to the Venezuelan government's National Statistics Institute (INE).[281] The drop of Venezuela's poverty rate compared to poverty in other South American countries was slightly behind that of Peru, Brazil and Panama[282] with the poverty rate becoming higher than the Latin American average in 2013 according to the UN.[20] In the two years following Chávez's death, the poverty rate returned to where it had been before his presidency.[20]

  The social works initiated by Chávez's government relied on oil products, the keystone of the Venezuelan economy, with Chávez's administration suffering from Dutch disease as a result.[19][283] Economist Mark Weisbrot, in a 2009 analysis of the Chávez administration stated that economic expansion during Chávez's tenure "began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003".[284] Chávez gained a reputation as a price hawk in OPEC, pushing for stringent enforcement of production quotas and higher target oil prices.[285] According to Cannon, the state income from oil revenue grew "from 51% of total income in 2000 to 56% 2006";[285] oil exports increased "from 77% in 1997 [...] to 89% in 2006";[285] and his administration's dependence on petroleum sales was "one of the chief problems facing the Chávez government".[285] In 2012, the World Bank also explained that Venezuela's economy is "extremely vulnerable" to changes in oil prices since in 2012 "96% of the country's exports and nearly half of its fiscal revenue" relied on oil production, while by 2008, according to Foreign Policy, exports of everything but oil "collapsed".[19][286] The Chávez administration then used such oil prices on his populist policies and for voters.[19][272]

  Economists say that the Venezuelan government's overspending on social programs and strict business policies contributed to imbalances in the country's economy, contributing to rising inflation, poverty, low healthcare spending and shortages in Venezuela going into the final years of his presidency.[7][17][18][19][272][278][287] Such occurrences, especially the risk of default and the unfriendliness toward private businesses, led to a lack of foreign investment and stronger foreign currencies,[273] though the Venezuelan government argued that the private sector had remained relatively unchanged during Chavez's presidency despite several nationalizations.[288] In January 2013 near the end of Chávez's presidency, the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal gave Venezuela's economic freedom a low score of 36.1, twenty points lower than 56.1 in 1999, ranking its freedom very low at 174 of 177 countries, with freedom on a downward trend.[289] Nicholas Kozloff, Chávez's biographer, stated of Chávez's economic policies: "Chávez has not overturned capitalism, he has done much to challenge the more extreme, neo-liberal model of development."[290] According to analysts, the economic woes Venezuela suffered under President Nicolás Maduro would have still occurred with or without Chávez.[291]
  Food and products
  Empty shelves in a Venezuelan market due to shortages in Venezuela (2014).

  In the 1980s and 1990s health and nutrition indexes in Venezuela were generally low, and social inequality in access to nutrition was high.[292] Chávez made it his stated goal to lower inequality in the access to basic nutrition, and to achieve food sovereignty for Venezuela.[293] The main strategy for making food available to all economic classes was a controversial policy of fixing price ceilings for basic staple foods implemented in 2003.[294] Between 1998 and 2006 malnutrition related deaths fell by 50%.[295] In October 2009, the Executive Director of the National Institute of Nutrition (INN) Marilyn Di Luca reported that the average daily caloric intake of the Venezuelan people had reached 2790 calories, and that malnutrition had fallen from 21% in 1998 to 6%.[296][better source needed] Chávez also expropriated and redistributed 5 million acres of farmland from large landowners.[297]
  Shoppers waiting in line at a government-run MERCAL store.

  Price controls initiated by Chávez created shortages of goods since merchants could no longer afford to import necessary goods.[298][299] Chávez blamed "speculators and hoarders" for these scarcities[300] and strictly enforced his price control policy, denouncing anyone who sold food products for higher prices as "speculators".[294] In 2011, food prices in Caracas were nine times higher than when the price controls were put in place and resulted in shortages of cooking oil, chicken, powdered milk, cheese, sugar and meat.[23] The price controls increased the demand for basic foods while making it difficult for Venezuela to import goods causing increased reliance on domestic production. Economists believe this policy increased shortages.[300][301] Shortages of food then occurred throughout the rest of Chávez's presidency with food shortage rates between 10% and 20% from 2010 to 2013.[25] One possible reason for shortages is the relationship between inflation and subsidies, where no profitability due to price regulations affect operations. In turn, the lack of dollars made it difficult to purchase more food imports.[24] Chávez's strategy in response to food shortages consisted of attempting to increase domestic production through nationalizing large parts of the food industry,[citation needed] though such nationalizations allegedly did the opposite and caused decreased production instead.[302][303]

  As part of his strategy of food security Chávez started a national chain of supermarkets, the Mercal network, which had 16,600 outlets and 85,000 employees that distributed food at highly discounted prices, and ran 6000 soup kitchens throughout the country.[304] Simultaneously Chávez expropriated many private supermarkets.[304] According to Commerce Minister Richard Canan, "The average [savings] for the basic food bundle (at the Mercal Bicentennial markets) is around 30%. There are some products, for example cheese and meat, which reach a savings of 50 to 60% compared with capitalist markets."[305] The Mercal network was criticized by some commentators as being a part of Chávez's strategy to brand himself as a provider of cheap food, and the shops feature his picture prominently.[according to whom?] The Mercal network was also subject to frequent scarcities of basic staples such as meat, milk and sugar – and when scarce products arrived, shoppers had to wait in lines.[304]
  Communes

  Every factory must be a school to educate, like Che Guevara said, to produce not only briquettes, steel, and aluminum, but also, above all, the new man and woman, the new society, the socialist society.
  Hugo Chávez, May 2009[306]

  After his election in 1998, more than 100,000 state-owned cooperatives – which claimed to represent some 1.5 million people – were formed with the assistance of government start-up credit and technical training;[307] and the creation and maintenance, as of September 2010, of over 30,000 communal councils, examples of localised participatory democracy; which he intended to be integrated into regional umbrella organizations known as "Communes in Construction".[308]

  In 2010, Chávez supported the construction of 184 communes, housing thousands of families, with $23 million in government funding. The communes produced some of their own food, and were able to make decisions by popular assembly of what to do with government funds.[309] In September 2010, Chávez announced the location of 876 million bolivars ($203 million) for community projects around the country, specifically communal councils and the newly formed communes. Chávez also criticised the bureaucracy still common in Venezuela saying, when in discussion with his Communes Minister Isis Ochoa, that "All of the projects must be carried out by the commune, not the bureaucracy." The Ministry for Communes, which oversees and funds all communal projects, was initiated in 2009.[308] Despite such promises, the Venezuelan government often failed to construct the number of homes they had proposed.[310][311] According to Venezuela's El Universal, one of the Chávez administration's outstanding weaknesses is the failure to meet its goals of construction of housing.[310]
  Currency controls
  For more details on this topic, see Economy of Venezuela § Currency Black Market.
  Blue line represents implied value of VEF compared to USD. The red line represents what the Venezuelan government officially rates the VEF.
  Sources: Banco Central de Venezuela, Dolar Paralelo, Federal Reserve Bank, International Monetary Fund

  In the first few years of Chavez's office, his newly created social programs required large payments in order to make the desired changes. On February 5, 2003, the government created CADIVI, a currency control board charged with handling foreign exchange procedures. Its creation was to control capital flight by placing limits on individuals and only offering them so much of a foreign currency.[312] This limit to foreign currency led to a creation of a currency black market economy since Venezuelan merchants rely on foreign goods that require payments with reliable foreign currencies. As Venezuela printed more money for their social programs, the bolívar continued to devalue for Venezuelan citizens and merchants since the government held the majority of the more reliable currencies.[313]

  The implied value or "black market value" is what Venezuelans believe the Bolivar Fuerte is worth compared to the United States dollar.[314] The high rates in the black market make it difficult for businesses to purchase necessary goods since the government often forces these businesses to make price cuts. This leads to businesses selling their goods and making a low profit.[315] Since businesses make low profits, this leads to shortages since they are unable to import the goods that Venezuela is reliant on.[316]
  Crime and punishment
  For more details on this topic, see Crime in Venezuela.
  Murder rate (1 murder per 100,000 citizens) from 1998 to 2013. Sources: OVV,[317][318] PROVEA,[319][320] UN[319][320][321]
  * UN line between 2007 and 2012 is simulated missing data.
  Number of kidnappings in Venezuela 1989–2011.
  Source: CICPC[322][323][324]
  * Express kidnappings may not be included in data

  During the 1980s and 1990s there was a steady increase in crime in Latin America. The countries of Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Brazil all had homicide rates above the regional average.[325] During his terms as president, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans were murdered due to violent crimes occurring in the country.[326] Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers stated in their book Youth violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective that, "With the change of political regime in 1999 and the initiation of the Bolivarian Revolution, a period of transformation and political conflict began, marked by a further increase in the number and rate of violent deaths" showing that in four years, the murder rate had increased to 44 per 100,000 people.[327] Kidnappings also rose tremendously during Chavez's tenure, with the number of kidnappings over 20 times higher in 2011 than when Chavez was elected.[322][323][324] Documentary filmmaker James Brabazon, stated "kidnapping crimes had skyrocketed ... after late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez freed thousands of violent prisoners as part of controversial criminal justice system reforms" while kidnappings and murders also increased due to Colombian organized crime activity as well.[328][329] He further explained that common criminals felt that the Venezuelan government did not care for the problems of the higher and middle classes, which in turn gave them a sense of impunity that created a large business of kidnapping-for-ransom.[328]

  Under Chávez's administration, crimes were so prevalent that by 2007 the government no longer produced crime data.[330] Homicide rates in Venezuela more than tripled, with one NGO finding the rate to have nearly quadrupled. The majority of the deaths occur in crowded slums in Caracas.[29][30] The NGO found that the number of homicides in the country increased from 6,000 in 1999 to 24,763 in 2013.[31][32][331] In 2010 Caracas had the highest murder rate in the world.[332] According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2012 there were 13,080 murders in Venezuela.[333]

  In leaked government INE data for kidnappings in the year 2009, the number of kidnappings were at an estimated 16,917, contrasting the CICPCs number of only 673,[323] before the Venezuelan government blocked the data.[329][334][335] According to the leaked INE report, only 1,332 investigations for kidnappings were opened or about 7% of the total kidnapping cases, with 90.4% of the kidnappings happening away from rural areas, 80% of all being express kidnappings and the most common victim being lower-middle or middle class Venezuelans and middle-aged men.[335] Also in 2009, it was reported that Venezuelan authorities would assign judicial police to Caracas area morgues to speak with families.[336] At that time, they would advise families not to report the murder of their family member to the media in exchange for expediting the process of releasing the victim's body.[336]

  In September 2010, responding to escalating crime rates in the country, Chávez stated that Venezuela is no more violent than it was when he first took office.[337] An International Crisis Group report that same year stated that when Chávez took office, there were some factors beyond his control that led to the crime epidemic throughout Venezuela, but that Chávez ignored it as well as corruption in the country; especially among fellow state officials. The report also stated that international organised crime filters between Colombia and Venezuela with assistance from "the highest spheres of government" in Venezuela, leading to higher rates of kidnapping, drug trafficking, and homicides. Chávez supporters stated that the Bolivarian National Police has reduced crime and also said that the states with the highest murder rates were controlled by the opposition.[338][339]
  Prisons

  During Chávez's presidency, there were reports of prisoners having easy access to firearms, drugs, and alcohol. Carlos Nieto—head of Window to Freedom—alleges that heads of gangs acquire military weapons from the state, saying: "They have the types of weapons that can only be obtained by the country's armed forces. ... No one else has these." Use of internet and mobile phones are also a commonplace where criminals can take part in street crime while in prison. One prisoner explained how, "If the guards mess with us, we shoot them" and that he had "seen a man have his head cut off and people play football with it."[340]

  Edgardo Lander, a sociologist and professor at the Central University of Venezuela with a PhD in sociology from Harvard University explained that Venezuelan prisons were "practically a school for criminals" since young inmates come out "more sort of trained and hardened than when they went in". He also explained that prisons are controlled by gangs and that "very little has been done" to control them.[341]
  Democracy under Chávez
  Chávez voting in December 2007

  The electoral processes surrounding Venezuela's democracy under Chávez were often observed controversially. Given the protests and strikes, some of which were quite big, like in 10 December 2001, then the largest in the history of Venezuela,[342] some confidential cables published on Wikileaks tried to explain the discrepancy between Chávez's relatively low popularity and his overwhelming electoral victory.[343]

  According to the cables, Hugo Chávez used "practically unlimited state resources" for propaganda activities, and high oil prices facilitated his success. The opposition, on the contrary, was divided into different parties, which ran for the same office, and the limited financial resources were badly invested. During his re-election campaigns, Chávez handed out huge amounts of money in exchange for votes.[343] He reportedly mobilized the lower class Venezuelan voters who had historically abstained from elections for years,[343] providing both undocumented Venezuelans and foreigners with identity cards; 200,000 foreigners were naturalized before August 2004 and around 3,000-4,000 foreigners per year that might have been naturalized thereafter. Most of them purportedly voted for him.[343]

  According to the same cable, Chávez had control over the CNE (National Electoral Council) "and, by extension, the international observer missions."[343] Moreover, "The CNE's decision to use fingerprinting machines "cazahuellas" to verify a voter's identity led to the widespread belief that a person's vote would not be secret".[343]

  Finally, Chávez allegedly used the judiciary in order to detain or intimidate opposition politicians or NGOs accused of receiving money from the United States (through the National Endowment for Democracy - NED) purportedly in order to overthrow the government.[344][345] According to the same source, the received money amounts to $30,000.[344] He reportedly also put pressure in the attorney general's office in order to replace three key employees and have any case that might damage the government or Chávez himself undisclosed.[346][347]
  Corruption
  For more details on this topic, see Corruption in Venezuela.
  Venezuela's perception of corruption scores between 2004 and 2013.
  ( * ) Score was averaged according to Transparency International's method.
  Source: Transparency International

  In December 1998, Hugo Chávez declared three goals for the new government; "convening a constituent assembly to write a new constitution, eliminating government corruption, and fighting against social exclusion and poverty". However, during Hugo Chávez's time in power, corruption has become widespread throughout the government due to impunity towards members of the government, bribes and the lack of transparency.[348] In 2004, Hugo Chávez and his allies took over the Supreme Court, filling it with supporters of Chávez and made new measures so the government could dismiss justices from the court.[349] According to the libertarian Cato Institute, the National Electoral Council of Venezuela was under control of Chávez where he tried to "push a constitutional reform that would have allowed him unlimited opportunities for reelection".[350] The Corruption Perceptions Index, produced annually by the Berlin-based NGO Transparency International (TNI), reported that in the later years of Chávez's tenure, corruption worsened; it was 158th out of 180 countries in 2008, and 165th out of 176 (tied with Burundi, Chad, and Haiti).[351] Most Venezuelans believed the government's effort against corruption was ineffective; that corruption had increased; and that government institutions such as the judicial system, parliament, legislature, and police were the most corrupt.[352]

  In Gallup Poll's 2006 Corruption Index, Venezuela ranked 31st out of 101 countries according to how widespread the population perceive corruption as being in the government and in business. The index listed Venezuela as the second least corrupt nation in Latin America, behind Chile.[353] Some criticism came from Chávez's supporters, as well. Chávez's own political party, Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), had been criticized as being riddled with the same cronyism, political patronage, and corruption that Chávez alleged were characteristic of the old "Fourth Republic" political parties. Venezuela's trade unionists and indigenous communities participated in peaceful demonstrations intended to impel the government to facilitate labor and land reforms. These communities, while largely expressing their sympathy and support for Chávez, criticized what they saw as Chávez's slow progress in protecting their interests against managers and mining concerns, respectively.[354][355][356]
  Aiding FARC
  Raúl Reyes

  According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), "Chavez's government funded FARC's office in Caracas and gave it access to Venezuela's intelligence services" and said that during the 2002 coup attempt that "FARC also responded to requests from [Venezuela's intelligence service] to provide training in urban terrorism involving targeted killings and the use of explosives". The IISS continued saying that "the archive offers tantalizing but ultimately unproven suggestions that FARC may have undertaken assassinations of Chavez's political opponents on behalf of the Venezuelan state". Venezuelan diplomats denounced the IISS' findings saying that they had "basic inaccuracies".[357]

  In 2007, authorities in Colombia claimed that through laptops they had seized on a raid against Raúl Reyes, they found in documents that Hugo Chávez offered payments of as much as $300 million to the FARC "among other financial and political ties that date back years" along with other documents showing "high-level meetings have been held between rebels and Ecuadorean officials" and some documents claiming that FARC had "bought and sold uranium".[358][359]

  In 2015, Chávez's former bodyguard Leamsy Salazar stated in Bumerán Chávez that Chávez met with the high command of FARC in 2007 somewhere in rural Venezuela. Chávez created a system in which the FARC would provide the Venezuelan government with drugs that would be transported in live cattle and the FARC would receive money and weaponry from the Venezuelan government. According to Salazar, this was done in order to weaken Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, an enemy of Chávez.[360]
  Human rights
  For more details on this topic, see Human rights in Venezuela.
  Chávez, speaking at the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil
  1999 Venezuelan Constitution

  In the 1999 Venezuelan constitution, 116 of the 350 articles were concerned with human rights; these included increased protections for indigenous peoples and women, and established the rights of the public to education, housing, healthcare, and food. It called for dramatic democratic reforms such as ability to recall politicians from office by popular referendum, increased requirements for government transparency, and numerous other requirements to increase localized, participatory democracy, in favor of centralized administration. It gave citizens the right to timely and impartial information, community access to media, and a right to participate in acts of civil disobedience.[361][362]
  Criticisms
  Freedom ratings in Venezuela from 1998 to 2013. (1 = Free, 7 = not free)
  Source: Freedom House

  Shortly after Hugo Chávez's election, ratings for freedom in Venezuela dropped according to political and human rights group Freedom House and Venezuela was rated "partly free".[363] In 2004, Amnesty International criticized President Chavez's administration of not handling the 2002 coup in a proper manner, saying that violent incidents "have not been investigated effectively and have gone unpunished" and that "impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators encourages further human rights violations in a particularly volatile political climate".[364] Amnesty International also criticized the Venezuelan National Guard and the Direccion de Inteligencia Seguridad y Prevención (DISIP) stating that they "allegedly used excessive force to control the situation on a number of occasions" during protests involving the 2004 Venezuela recall.[364] It was also noted that many of the protesters detained seemed to not be "brought before a judge within the legal time limit".[364]

  In 2008, Human Rights Watch released a report reviewing Chávez's human rights record over his first decade in power.[365] The report praises Chávez's 1999 amendments to the constitution which significantly expanded human rights guarantees, as well as mentioning improvements in women's rights and indigenous rights, but noted a "wide range of government policies that have undercut the human rights protections established" by the revised constitution.[365] In particular, the report accused Chávez and his administration of engaging in discrimination on political grounds, eroding the independence of the judiciary, and of engaging in "policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela."[366] The Venezuelan government retaliated for the report by expelling members of Human Rights Watch from the country.[367] Subsequently, over a hundred Latin American scholars signed a joint letter with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a leftist NGO[368] that would defend Chávez and his movement,[369] with the individuals criticizing the Human Rights Watch report for its alleged factual inaccuracy, exaggeration, lack of context, illogical arguments, and heavy reliance on opposition newspapers as sources, amongst other things.[370][371][372]

  The International Labour Organization of the United Nations had also expressed concern over voters being pressured to join the party.[237]
  Chávez meets with Hillary Clinton at the Summit of the Americas on 19 April 2009.

  In 2010, Amnesty International criticized the Chávez administration for targeting critics following several politically motivated arrests.[373] Freedom House listed Venezuela as being "partly free" in its 2011 Freedom in the World annual report, noting a recent decline in civil liberties.[374] A 2010 Organization of American States report found concerns with freedom of expression, human rights abuses, authoritarianism, press freedom, threats to democracy,[375][376] as well as erosion of separation of powers, the economic infrastructure and ability of the president to appoint judges to federal courts.[375][376][377] OAS observers were denied access to Venezuela;[377] Chávez rejected the OAS report, pointing out that its authors did not even come to Venezuela. He said Venezuela should boycott the OAS, which he felt is dominated by the United States; a spokesperson said, "We don't recognize the commission as an impartial institution". He disclaimed any power to influence the judiciary.[378] A Venezuelan official said the report distorted and took statistics out of context, and said that "human rights violations in Venezuela have decreased".[379] Venezuela said it would not accept an IACHR/OAS visit as long as Santiago Cantón remains its Executive Secretary, unless the IACHR apologizes for what he[clarification needed] described as its support of the 2002 coup.[275][380]

  In November 2014, Venezuela appeared before the United Nations Committee Against Torture over cases between 2002 and 2014.[381] Human rights expert of the UN committee, Felice D. Gaer, noted that in "only 12 public officials have been convicted of human rights violations in the last decade when in the same period have been more than 5,000 complaints".[382] The United Nations stated that there were 31,096 complaints of human rights violations received between the years 2011 and 2014.[383] Of the 31,096 complaints, only 3.1% of the cases resulted in only in an indictment by the Venezuelan Public Ministry.[383][384]
  Allegations of Anti-semitism
  See also: Accusations of Chávez anti-Semitism

  Chavez's opposition to Zionism and close relations with Iran led to accusations of antisemitism[385][386] Such claims were made by the Venezuelan Jewish community at a World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in Jerusalem.[387] Claims of antisemitism were prompted by various remarks Chávez made, including in a 2006 Christmas speech where he complained that "a minority, the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ", now had "taken possession of all of the wealth of the world".[388][389] In 2009, attacks on a synagogue in Caracas were alleged to be influenced by "vocal denunciations of Israel" by the Venezuelan state media and Hugo Chávez even though Chavez promptly condemned the attacks blaming an "oligarchy".[387][390] A weeklong CICPC investigation revealed the synagogue attack to be an 'inside job', the motive apparently being robbery rather than anti-semitism.[391][392]
  Media and the press
  Venezuelans protesting against the closing of RCTV.

  Human Rights Watch criticized Chávez for engaging in "often discriminatory policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression".[366] Freedom House listed Venezuela's press as being "Not Free" in its 2011 Map of Press Freedom, noting that "[t]he gradual erosion of press freedom in Venezuela continued in 2010."[393] Reporters Without Borders criticized the Chávez administration for "steadily silencing its critics".[394] In the group's 2009 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders noted that "Venezuela is now among the region’s worst press freedom offenders."[394]

  In July 2005 Chávez inaugurated TeleSUR, a pan-American news channel similar to Al Jazeera, which sought to challenge the present domination of Latin American television news by Univision[citation needed] and the United States-based CNN en Español.[395] In 2006 Chávez inaugurated a state-funded movie studio called Villa del Cine (English: Cinema City).[396]

  Chávez also had a Twitter account with more than 3,200,000 followers as of August 2012.[397][398][399] A team of 200 people sorted through suggestions and comments sent via Twitter. Chávez said Twitter was "another mechanism for contact with the public, to evaluate many things and to help many people",[400] and that he saw Twitter as "a weapon that also needs to be used by the revolution".[401]
  Foreign policy
  Further information: Foreign policy of the Hugo Chávez government
  Chávez with fellow South American presidents of Argentina and Brazil

  Though Chávez inspired other movements in Latin America to follow his model of chavismo in an attempt to reshape South America, it was later seen as being erratic and his influence internationally became exaggerated.[402] He refocused Venezuelan foreign policy on Latin American economic and social integration by enacting bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements, including his so-called "oil diplomacy"[403][404] making Venezuela more dependent on using oil, its main commodity, and increasing its longterm vulnerability.[402] Chávez also aligned himself with authoritarian nations and radical movements that were seen as being anti-Western,[402] with relations with Cuba and Iran becoming a particular importance. Chávez focused on a variety of multinational institutions to promote his vision of Latin American integration, including Petrocaribe, Petrosur, and TeleSUR. Bilateral trade relationships with other Latin American countries also played a major role in his policy, with Chávez increasing arms purchases from Brazil, forming oil-for-expertise trade arrangements with Cuba, and creating unique barter arrangements that exchange Venezuelan petroleum for cash-strapped Argentina's meat and dairy products. He also befriended pariah states such as Belarus and Iran.[405] Domestic mishandling of the country under Chávez prevented Venezuela from strengthening its position in the world.[402]
  In popular culture
  Bolivarian memorabilia for sale in Venezuela, 2006

  Syndicated cartoonists from around the world created cartoons, illustrations, and videos of Hugo Chávez's controversial political career and the reactions to his death.[406][407][408][409]
  Hugo Chávez appears as a heroic character in the Latin American postmodern fantasy novel United States of Banana (2011) by Giannina Braschi; Chávez leads left-wing Latin American leaders Evo Morales, Lula, Fidel Castro, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on a quest to liberate the people of Puerto Rico from the United States.[410]
  Oliver Stone directed the 2009 documentary South of the Border, where he "sets out on a road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media's misperception of South America, while interviewing seven of its elected presidents." Chávez appears in one segment being interviewed by Stone.[411]
  On January 15, 2014, Mexican novelist Norma Gomez released Swan Song, a political thriller that points to American involvement in the death of Hugo Chávez.[412]
  On 5 March 2014, Oliver Stone and teleSUR released the documentary film Mi Amigo Hugo (My Friend Hugo), a documentary about his political life, one year after his death. The film is called a "spiritual answer" and a tribute from Stone to Chávez.[413]
  Hugo Chávez and most of the other Latin American presidents are parodied in the animated web page Isla Presidencial.[414]
  Sony Pictures Television produces a TV serie called El Comandante about the life of Hugo Chavez with 60 episodes.

  Personal life

  Chávez married twice. He first wed Nancy Colmenares, a woman from a poor family in Chávez's hometown of Sabaneta. Chávez and Colmenares remained married for 18 years, during which time they had three children: Rosa Virginia, María Gabriela, and Hugo Rafael, the latter of whom suffers from behavioural problems.[415] The couple separated soon after Chávez's 1992 coup attempt. During his first marriage, Chávez had an affair with historian Herma Marksman; their relationship lasted nine years.[416] Chávez's second wife was journalist Marisabel Rodríguez de Chávez, with whom he separated in 2002 and divorced in 2004.[417] Through that marriage, Chávez had another daughter, Rosinés.[418] Both María and Rosa provided Chávez with grandchildren.[415][419] When Chávez was released from prison, he initiated affairs with women that had been his followers.[420] Allegations were also made that Chávez was a womanizer throughout both his marriages, having encounters with actresses, journalists, ministers, and ministers' daughters.[420] The allegations remained unproven and are contradicted by statements provided by other figures close to him,[421] though one retired aide shared that while Chávez was married to Marisabel and afterward, he participated in liaisons with women and gave them gifts, with some rumors among his aides stating that some of the women bore children of Chávez.[420]

  Those who were very close to Chávez felt that he had a bipolar disorder.[422] Salvador Navarrete, a physician that treated Chávez during his first years in the presidency believed that Chávez was bipolar.[422] In 2010, Alberto Müller Rojas, then vice president of Chávez's party, PSUV, stated that Chávez had "a tendency toward cyclothymia––mood swings that range from moments of extreme euphoria to moments of despondence".[422] A different explanation was that such behavior was a tactic used by Chávez in order to attack opponents and polarize.[422]

  Chávez was a Catholic. He intended at one time to become a priest. He saw his socialist policies as having roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ (liberation theology),[423] and he publicly used the slogan of "Christ is with the Revolution!"[424] Although he traditionally kept his own faith a private matter, Chávez over the course of his presidency became increasingly open to discussing his religious views, stating that he interpreted Jesus as a Communist.[425] He was, in general, a liberal Catholic, some of whose declarations were disturbing to the religious community of his country. In 2008 he expressed his skepticism of an afterlife, saying that such an idea was false.[426] He also would declare his belief in Darwin's theory of evolution, stating that "it is a lie that God created man from the ground."[clarification needed][427] Among other things, he cursed the state of Israel,[428] and he had some disputes with both the Venezuelan Catholic clergy and Protestant groups like the New Tribes Mission,[429][430] whose evangelical leader he "condemned to hell".[431] In addition, he showed syncretistic practices such as the worship of the Venezuelan goddess María Lionza.[432][433] In his last years, after he discovered he had cancer, Chávez became more attached to the Catholic Church.[434]
  Illness
  Chávez walking with a cane accompanied by Rafael Correa in Caracas in July 2011, shortly after his first cancer surgery.
  With Dilma Rousseff in Caracas, December 1, 2011

  In June 2011, Chávez revealed in a televised address from Havana, Cuba, that he was recovering from an operation to remove an abscessed tumor with cancerous cells.[435] Vice President Elías Jaua declared that the President remained in "full exercise" of power and that there was no need to transfer power due to his absence from the country.[436] On 3 July, the Venezuelan government denied, however, that Chávez's tumour had been completely removed, further stating that he was heading for "complete recovery".[437] On 17 July 2011, television news reported that Chávez had returned to Cuba for further cancer treatments.[438]

  Chávez gave a public appearance on 28 July 2011, his 57th birthday, in which he stated that his health troubles had led him to radically reorient his life towards a "more diverse, more reflective and multi-faceted" outlook, and he went on to call on the middle classes and the private sector to get more involved in his Bolivarian Revolution, something he saw as "vital" to its success.[439] Soon after this speech, in August Chávez announced that his government would nationalize Venezuela's gold industry, taking it over from Russian-controlled company Rusoro, while at the same time also moving the country's gold stocks, which were largely stored in western banks, to banks in Venezuela's political allies like Russia, China and Brazil.[440]

  On 9 July 2012, Chávez declared himself fully recovered from cancer just three months before the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election, which he won, securing a fourth term as president.[441] In November 2012, Chávez announced plans to travel to Cuba for more medical treatment for cancer.[442]

  On 8 December 2012, Chávez announced he would undergo a new operation after doctors in Cuba detected malignant cells; the operation took place on 11 December 2012.[443] Chávez suffered a respiratory infection after undergoing the surgery but it was controlled.[444] It was announced on 20 December by the country's vice-president that Chávez had suffered complications following his surgery.[445] It was announced on 3 January 2013 that Chávez had a severe lung infection that had caused respiratory failures following a strict treatment regimen for respiratory insufficiency.[446] However he was reported to have overcome this later that month,[447] and it was reported that he was then undergoing further treatment.[448] On 18 February 2013, Chávez returned to Venezuela after 2 months of cancer treatment in Cuba.[449] On 1 March 2013, Vice President Nicolás Maduro said that Chávez had been receiving chemotherapy in Venezuela following his surgery in Cuba.[450] On 4 March, it was announced by the Venezuelan government that Chávez's breathing problems had worsened and he was suffering a new, severe respiratory infection.[451]
  Death
  Main article: Death and state funeral of Hugo Chávez

  Venezuela’s hybrid regime, after Chávez’s death, became more selectively accommodating on the inside and more explicitly repressive on the outside. This allowed the regime to survive, but not to thrive. Regime survival was purchased at the cost of policy immobilism. And policy immobilism has left Venezuela with the deepest economic crisis in Venezuela’s history.
  Corales and Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: The Legacy of Hugo Chávez[452]
  Mausoleum of Hugo Chávez in Caracas

  On 5 March 2013, Vice President Nicolás Maduro announced on state television that Chávez had died in a military hospital in Caracas at 16:25 VET (20:55 UTC).[453] The Vice President said Chávez died "after battling a tough illness for nearly two years."[453] According to the head of Venezuela's presidential guard, Chávez died from a massive heart attack, and his colon cancer was very advanced when he died.[454] Gen. Jose Ornella said that near the end of his life Chávez could not speak aloud, but mouthed his last words: "Yo no quiero morir, por favor no me dejen morir" (I don't want to die. Please don't let me die).[454] Chávez is survived by four children and four grandchildren.[455]

  Alfredo Molero, then Minister of Defense, alleged that Chávez was poisoned or infected with a cancer virus by the U.S. government.[453][456][457][458][459] A spokesman for the U.S State Department dismissed the claim as "absurd."[460]

  His death triggered a constitutional requirement that a presidential election be called within 30 days. Chavez's Vice President, Maduro, was elected president on April 14, 2013.
  Honours and awards
  Award or decoration Country Date Place Note
  Ribbon jose marti.png Order of José Marti[461] Cuba 17 November 1999 Havana Cuban highest order of merit.
  PRT Order of Prince Henry - Grand Cross BAR.png Grand Collar of the Order of Prince Henry[462] Portugal 8 November 2001 Lisbon
  Orden al Mérito IRI.png First Class of the Order of the Islamic Republic of Iran[463][464] Iran 29 July 2006 Tehran Highest national medal of Iran.
  Order of Augusto César Sandino[465] Nicaragua 11 January 2007 Managua Highest honour of the Republic of Nicaragua.
  By-order friendship of nations rib.png Order of the Friendship of Peoples[466] Belarus 23 July 2008 Minsk
  Orden Republike Srbije 2.gif Order of the Republic of Serbia[467] Serbia 6 March 2013 Belgrade Serbian highest order of merit. Awarded posthumously.
  Recognition

  The United States-based Time magazine included Hugo Chávez among their list of the world's 100 most influential people in 2005 and 2006, noting the spreading of his anti-globalization efforts and anti-US sentiment throughout Latin America.[468][469] In a 2006 list compiled by the leftist British magazine New Statesman, he was voted eleventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".[470] In 2010 the magazine included Chávez in its annual The World's 50 Most Influential Figures.[471] His biographers Marcano and Tyszka believed that within only a few years of his presidency, he "had already earned his place in history as the president most loved and most despised by the Venezuelan people, the president who inspired the greatest zeal and the deepest revulsion at the same time."[472]

  In 2008 Chávez was awarded the Blue Planet Award [473] by the Ethecon Foundation,[474] one of the comparatively very few 'grass-root' foundations.[475]

  In the Belarusian capital Minsk a park was named after Hugo Chávez on October 18, 2014.[476] In addition in Al-Bireh[477] and in Moscow,[478] streets were also named after Chavez.
  Honorary degrees

  Chávez was awarded the following honorary degrees:[479]

  Kyung Hee University, South Korea; Honorary Doctorate in Political Science – Granted by Rector Chungwon Choue on 16 October 1999.
  Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Honorary Doctorate in Jurisprudence, 9 March 2001.
  University of Brasília, Brazil; Honorary Doctorate – Granted by Rector Alberto Pérez on 3 April 2001.
  Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Nicaragua; Honorary Doctorate in Engineering – Granted by Rector Aldo Urbina on May 2001.[480]
  Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia; Honorary Doctorate, 15 May 2001.
  Beijing University, China; Honorary Doctorate in Economics, 24 May 2001.
  Higher University of San Andrés, Bolivia; Honorary Doctorate, 24 January 2006.[481]
  UARCIS, Chile; Honorary Doctorate – Granted by Rector Carlos Margotta Trincado on 7 March 2006.[482]
  University of Damascus, Syria; Honorary Doctorate – Granted by Rector Wael Moualla on 30 August 2006.[483]
  University of Tripoli, Libya; Honorary Doctorate in Economy and Human Sciences, 23 October 2010.[484][485]

• Bio. - http://www.biography.com/people/hugo-chvez-193225#synopsis

  Hugo Chávez Biography
  President (non-U.S.) (1954–2013)

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  Quick Facts

  Name
  Hugo Chávez

  Occupation
  President (non-U.S.)

  Birth Date
  July 28, 1954

  Death Date
  March 5, 2013

  Education
  Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences

  Place of Birth
  Sabaneta, Venezuela

  Place of Death
  Venezuela

  AKA
  Hugo Rafael Chávez
  Hugo Chávez
  Full Name
  Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías

  Synopsis
  Failed Coup Attempt
  Venezuelan President
  Hostility Toward the U.S.
  International Collaboration
  Declining Health and Death
  Related Videos

  Cite This Page

  Hugo Chávez served as president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. During his presidency, he sold oil to Cuba and resisted efforts to stop narcotic trafficking in Colombia, and subsequently strained relations with the United States.
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  quotes
  “The left is back, and it's the only path we have to get out of the spot to which the right has sunken us. Socialism builds and capitalism destroys.”
  —Hugo Chávez
  Synopsis

  Born in Sabaneta, Venezuela, on July 28, 1954, Hugo Chávez attended the Venezuelan military academy and served as an army officer before participating in an effort to overthrow the government in 1992, for which he was sentenced to two years in prison. Chávez became president of Venezuela in 1999. Early into his presidency, he created a new constitution for the country, which included changing its name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. He later focused his efforts on gaining control of the state-run oil company, which stirred controversy and led to protests, strained relations with the United States and other nations, and Chávez briefly being removed from power. His actions included selling oil to Cuba and resisting efforts to stop narcotic trafficking in Colombia. In 2006, Chávez helped create the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a socialist free-trade organization. He died on March 5, 2013, at age 58, following a long battle with cancer.
  Failed Coup Attempt

  Born Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías on July 28, 1954, in Sabaneta, Venezuela, Hugo Chávez was the son of schoolteachers. Before becoming known for his reform efforts and strong opinions as president of Venezuela (1999-2013), Chávez attended the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences, where he graduated in 1975 with a degree in military arts and science. He went on to serve as an officer in an army paratrooper unit.

  In 1992, Chávez, along with other disenchanted members of the military, attempted to overthrow the government of Carlos Andres Perez. The coup failed, and Chávez subsequently spent two years in prison before being pardoned. He then started the Movement of the Fifth Republic, a revolutionary political party. Chávez ran for president in 1998, campaigning against government corruption and promising economic reforms.
  Venezuelan President

  After taking office in 1999, Chávez set out to change the Venezuelan constitution, amending the powers of congress and the judicial system. As a part of the new constitution, the name of the country was changed to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

  As president, Chávez encountered challenges both at home and abroad. His efforts to tighten his hold on the state-run oil company in 2002 stirred up controversy and led to numerous protests, and he found himself removed from power briefly in April 2002 by military leaders. The protests continued after his return to power, leading to a referendum on whether Chávez should remain president. The referendum vote was held in August 2004, and a majority of voters decided to let Chávez complete his term in office.
  Hostility Toward the U.S.

  Chávez was known for being outspoken and dogmatic throughout his presidency, refusing to hold back any of his opinions or criticisms. He insulted oil executives, church officials and other world leaders, and was particularly hostile with the United States government, which, he believed, was responsible for the failed 2002 coup against him. Chávez also objected to the war in Iraq, stating his belief that the United States had abused its powers by initiating the military effort. He also called President George W. Bush an evil imperialist.

  Relations between the United States and Venezuela have been strained for some time. After taking office, Chávez sold oil to Cuba—a longtime adversary of the United States—and resisted U.S. plans to stop narcotics trafficking in nearby Colombia. He also helped guerrilla forces in neighboring countries. Additionally, during his presidency, Chávez threatened to stop supplying oil to the United States if there was another attempt to remove him from power. He did, however, donate heating oil to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which destroyed numerous fuel-processing facilities.
  International Collaboration

  Regardless of the state of Venezuela's relationship with the United States, while in office, Chávez leveraged his country's oil resources to form connections with other nations, including China and Angola. In 2006, he helped create the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a socialist free-trade organization joined by Fidel Castro, president of Cuba, and Evo Morales, president of Bolivia. Chávez was also an active member of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of more than 100 countries, including Cuba, Iran and several African nations.
  Declining Health and Death

  Chávez discovered that he had cancer in June 2011, following a surgery to remove a pelvic abscess, and from 2011 to early 2012, he underwent three surgeries to remove cancerous tumors.

  Prior to his third surgery, in February 2012, Chávez acknowledged the severity of the operation as well as the possibility of not being able to continue his service as president, and subsequently named Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his successor. Due to his declinging health, Chávez was prevented from being inaugurated for a fourth term in January 2013.

  Following his years-long battle with cancer, Hugo Chávez died on March 5, 2013, at age 58, in Venezuela. He was survived by his wife, Maria Isabel Rodriguez, and five children: Rosines, María Gabriela, Rosa Virginia and Hugo Rafael. Two days after Chavez's death, Vice President Maduro announced that Chavez's body would be preserved and permanently displayed inside a glass tomb now under construction in a Caracas museum. The site, located not far from the palace where Chavez ruled for more than a decade, has been called el Museo Histórico Militar de Caracas.
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  Hugo Chávez Biography
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  http://www.biography.com/people/hugo-chvez-193225
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  February 26, 2017
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• London Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/11385437/Hugo-Chavez-died-two-months-before-his-death-was-announced.html

  Hugo Chavez 'died two months before his death was announced'
  High-level defector Leamsy Salazar claims Venezuela covered up death of former leader to prop up the legitimacy of the Maduro government

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  Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez
  The months and weeks leading up to the announcement of Mr Chavez's death were filled with rumour and counter-rumour about whether or not he had died Photo: Manuel Mendoza/AFP/Getty Images

  By Our Foreign Staff

  7:29PM GMT 02 Feb 2015

  Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela, was dead for more than two months before his death was officially announced, the highest-level defector from the crumbling socialist petro-state has claimed.

  Leamsy Salazar, a former head of security for Mr Chavez, reportedly told US officials that the Venezuelan government hid the news of the president's death, which was officially announced to the world on March 5 2013.

  Guillermo Cochez, a former ambassador to the Organisation of American States who is currently preparing an indictment against Diosdao Cabello, the leader of Venezuela's national assembly, announced the alleged discrepancy on Twitter.

  "Leamsy Salazar confirms that Chavez died at 7:32 PM on 30 Dec 12. How many lies have they told to hide that he was dead. Shameless," he said.

  The months and weeks leading up to the announcement of Mr Chavez's death were filled with rumour and counter-rumour about whether or not he had died from the cancer with which he was first diagnosed in 2011.
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  Venezuela, the country with the world's largest proven oil reserve, is currently confronting an economic crisis caused by the collapse in world oil prices that has left the country dangerously short of foreign exchange reserves.

  In recent weeks long queues have been forming at supermarkets and hospitals as shortages of basic foods and medicines start to bite.

  Mr Salazar, who went on to become head of security for Mr Cabello, defected to the US in December and, according to leaked reports, has also accused Mr Cabello of being at the centre of a multi-billion dollar drug-running operation.

  Leamsy SalazarLeamsy Salazar

  Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan president, called the episode part of an imperialist plot, and a loyalist Venezuelan Congressman Pedro Carreno, speaking on behalf of the governing party, called the accusations "a new action by the reactionary right" aimed at overturning socialism in Venezuela.

  If proved true, the claims about Mr Chavez's death would strengthen opposition claims about the legitimacy of the Maduro government and dozens of executive orders previously believed to have been signed by Chavez between December and March 5.

• London Independent - http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/hugo-chavez-was-a-democrat-not-a-dictator-and-showed-a-progressive-alternative-to-neo-liberalism-is-8522329.html

  Hugo Chavez was a democrat, not a dictator, and showed a progressive alternative to neo-liberalism is both possible and popular

  The President's death will be mourned by millions of Venezuelans - and rightly so

  Owen Jones
  @OwenJones84
  4 years ago
  3 comments

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  The Independent Online
  web-chavez-rex.jpg
  Hugo Chavez at a campaign rally in 2003 Rex Features

  If you want to learn about human rights in Venezuela before Hugo Chavez, type “Caracazo” into Google, and do so with a strong stomach. Back in 1989, then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez won an election on a fiery platform of resisting free-market dogma: the IMF was “a neutron bomb that killed people, but left buildings standing,” he proclaimed.

  But after safely making it to the presidential palace, he dramatically u-turned, unleashing a programme of privatisation and neo-liberal shock therapy. With gas subsidies removed, petrol prices soared, and impoverished Venezuelans took to the streets. Soldiers mowed protesters down with gunfire. Up to 3,000 perished, a horrifying death toll up there with the Tienanmen Square Massacre – in a country with a population 43 times smaller.

  It was his abortive coup attempt against Pérez's murderous, rampantly corrupt government in 1992 that launched Chavez to prominence. Though locked away, Chavez became an icon for Venezuela's long-suffering poor. By the time he won a landslide victory in 1998 on a promise to use the country's vast oil wealth to help the poor, Venezuela was a mess. Per capita income had collapsed to where it had been in the early 1960s. One in three Venezuelans lived on less than $2 a day. Oil revenues were squandered.

  Over the coming days, you will be repeatedly told that Hugo Chavez was a dictator. A funny sort of dictator: there have been 17 elections and referenda since 1998. Perhaps you think they were rigged. When he won by a huge margin in 2006, former US President Jimmy Carter was among those declaring he had won “fairly and squarely”.

  At the last election in October 2012, Carter declared that, “of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” I was there: perhaps you think I was like those hopelessly naïve Western leftists who visited Potemkin villages in Stalinist Russia.

  I was with a genuinely independent election commission, staffed with both pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez sympathisers, who had previously been invited by the opposition to run their own internal elections. We met with senior opposition figures who railed against Chavez, but acknowledged that they lived in a democracy. When they lost the election, they accepted it.
  Social justice

  Indeed, Chavez himself has had to accept defeat before: back in 2007, he lost a referendum campaign, and did not quibble with the results. Until he came to power, millions of poor Venezuelans were not even registered to vote: but dramatic registration drives have nearly doubled the electorate. There are 6,000 more polling stations than there were in the pre-Chavez era.

  On the other hand, the democratic credentials of many of his opponents can certainly be questioned. In 2002, a Pinochet-style coup was launched against Chavez, and was only reversed by a popular uprising. Much of the privately owned media openly incited and supported the coup: imagine Cameron was kicked out of No 10 by British generals, with the support and incitement of rolling 24-hour news stations. But Venezuela's media is dominated by private broadcasters, some of whom make Fox News look like cuddly lefties. State television could rightly be accused of bias towards the government, which is perhaps why it has a measly 5.4 per cent audience share. Of seven major national newspapers, five support the opposition, and only one is sympathetic to the government.

  The truth is that Chavez won democratic election after democratic election, despite the often vicious hostility of the media, because his policies transformed the lives of millions of previously ignored Venezuelans. Poverty has fallen from nearly half to 27.8 per cent, while absolute poverty has been more than halved. Six million children receive free meals a day; near-universal free health care has been established; and education spending has doubled as a proportion of GDP. A housing programme launched in 2011 built over 350,000 homes, bringing hundreds of thousands of families out of sub-standard housing in thebarrios. Some of his smug foreign critics suggest Chavez effectively bought the votes of the poor – as though winning elections by delivering social justice is somehow bribery.
  Alliances

  That does not mean Chavez is beyond criticism. Venezuela was already a country with rampant crime when he came to power, but the situation has deteriorated since. Around 20,000 Venezuelans died at the hands of violent crime in 2011: an unacceptable death toll. As well as drugs, near-universal gun ownership and the destabilising impact of neighbouring Colombia, a weak (and often corrupt) police force is to blame. Although the government is beginning to roll out a national police force, endemic crime is a genuine crisis. When I spoke to Venezuelans in Caracas, the sometimes frightening lack of law-and-order was brought up by pro-Chavistas and opponents alike.

  And then there is the matter of some of Chavez's unpleasant foreign associations. Although his closest allies were his fellow democratically elected left-of-centre governments in Latin America – nearly all of whom passionately defended Chavez from foreign criticism – he also supported brutal dictators in Iran, Libya and Syria. It has certainly sullied his reputation. Of course, we in the West can hardly single out Chavez for unsavoury alliances. We support and arm dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia; Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair is paid $13 million a year to work for Kazakhstan's dictatorship. But our own hypocrisy does not absolve Chavez of criticism.

  The so-called Bolivarian Revolution was overly dependent on Chavez's own reputation, and inevitably his death raises questions about its future direction. But have no doubt: Chavez was a democratically elected champion of the poor. His policies lifted millions out of abject poverty and misery. He represented a break from years of corrupt regimes with often dire human rights records. His achievements were won in the face of an attempted military coup, an aggressively hostile media, and bitter foreign critics. He demonstrated that it is possible to resist the neo-liberal dogma that holds sway over much of humanity. He will be mourned by millions of Venezuelans – and understandably so.

QUOTED: "Although it offers some compelling insights into the mind and experiences of Chavez, much of the text is self-serving drivel."

Chavez, Hugo with Ignacio Ramonet. My First Life
Boyd Childress
141.13 (Aug. 1, 2016): p110.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/

Chavez, Hugo with Ignacio Ramonet. My First Life. Verso. Aug. 2016. 544p. tr. from Spanish by Ann Wright, notes. ISBN 9781784783839. $45; ebk. ISBN 9781784783860. POL SCI

Chavez (1954-2013) was undoubtedly one of the 21st century's most influential political figures--an ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro and a thorn in America's side. Elected president of Venezuela in 1998, Chavez brought about the Bolivarian Revolution and social change in Latin America. An army officer who led an unsuccessful coup in 1992, he was elected president four times. In a question-and-answer autobiographical format, journalist Ramonet walks Chavez through the years leading up to his first election. Following a presentation style Ramonet used with Castro in 2008, the volume is divided into three sections and 15 chapters. Although it offers some compelling insights into the mind and experiences of Chavez, much of the text is self-serving drivel, softball questions, and little analysis by Ramonet. Of more use are the extensive introduction and occasional explanatory footnotes. In the years following Chavez's death, Venezuela's experiment with socialism has failed miserably, leaving a nation on the brink of collapse and once again ripe for internal revolt. VERDICT Readers wanting a complete portrait of Chavez are better served turning to the biographies by Richard Gott, Rory Carroll, or Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka.--Boyd Childress, formerly with Auburn Univ. Libs., AL
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Childress, Boyd. "Chavez, Hugo with Ignacio Ramonet. My First Life." Library Journal, 1 Aug. 2016, p. 110. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459805097&it=r&asid=6d020337b25bf09996108431bd760136. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017.

QUOTED: "offers readers a welter of often trivial details without allowing them a clearer understanding of Chavez's significant contributions to Venezuela and beyond."

Gale Document Number: GALE|A459805097
My First Life
263.26 (June 27, 2016): p72.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/

My First Life

Hugo Chavez, with Ignacio Ramonet, trans. from the Spanish by Ann Wright.

Verso, $45 (640p) ISBN 978-1-78478-383-9

The late Chavez, president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, emerged as a powerful and eloquent opponent of imperialism and neoliberalism, particularly of the variety he associated with the U.S., and aligned his government with those of Marxist and socialist states throughout the Americas. In so doing, he earned the admiration of many and the enmity of others, both at home and abroad. This volume, based on a series of interviews with sociologist Ramonet, conducted between 2008 and 2011, immerses the reader in the most mundane details of Chavez's fascinating life, including Chavez's year as an altar boy, his favorite baseball team in his youth, and the daily routine of the tank unit in which he served during the 1970s. Frustratingly, the narrative ends at the moment that Chavez took office as president. In addition to the dreariness of the minutiae, Ramonet's admiration of Chavez verges on the comical, as he praises not only his intelligence, idealism, and determination but his "beautiful calm baritone voice," his abilities as a "natural pedagogue" and "exceptional orator," and even his knack for cooking and housecleaning. The result is a sort of hagiography that offers readers a welter of often trivial details without allowing them a clearer understanding of Chavez's significant contributions to Venezuela and beyond. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"My First Life." Publishers Weekly, 27 June 2016, p. 72. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456900937&it=r&asid=14d782ba82cd8f293297fade35fdf734. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017.

QUOTED: "Norteamericano leaders accustomed to the view of Chavez as evil incarnate may value this alternate, assuredly self-serving presentation of facts and events."

Gale Document Number: GALE|A456900937
Chavez, Hugo: MY FIRST LIFE
(June 1, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/

Chavez, Hugo MY FIRST LIFE Verso (Adult Nonfiction) $45.00 8, 23 ISBN: 978-1-78478-383-9

The late Venezuelan leader--or strongman, or dictator, if you like--tells all.Chavez's first life is over and done with, ended by a long bout with cancer in 2013. But before it ended, inspired by his friend Fidel Castro to do so, he sat down with French journalist Ramonet for what was supposed to be a "100 hours with..." portrait but wound up filling twice that many hours of tape. Ramonet is nothing if not admiring: he heralds Chavez as an intellectual who "picked out concepts, analyses, stories and examples which he engraved on his prodigious memory, and then beamed out to the public at large through his torrents of speeches and talks." He also knew his way around a machine gun (and coup d'etat, of course), a "Belorussian tractor" or Picasso-an canvas or Garcia Marquez-ian manuscript or baseball diamond, and all with a native cunning born of desperate poverty and a sharp ambition to make something of himself. Here, prompted by Ramonet's sometimes-softball inquiries--"Did you pray at night before going to bed?"; "Despite your political activity, you didn't give up baseball"--Chavez recounts his rise to the head of the Venezuelan government, a career trajectory helped along by a willing army and inspired by Bolivarian heroes such as Ezequiel Zamora, who "wanted to change Venezuela and make it a fairer, more just country." Thus it ever is with reformistas, and so it was when Chavez, early on, declared, "one of the main aims of our revolution was to distribute Venezuelan land in a fairer, more harmonious way." Venezuela's 1 percenters and the yanquis who backed them notwithstanding, Chavez seems content to have put an end to the previous oligarchy, which, in terms Castro would doubtless applaud, he calls "a false theoretical construct." Monster or savior? Norteamericano leaders accustomed to the view of Chavez as evil incarnate may value this alternate, assuredly self-serving presentation of facts and events.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Chavez, Hugo: MY FIRST LIFE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454177173&it=r&asid=9e54268241c7039c008371166a11df7b. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A454177173

Childress, Boyd. "Chavez, Hugo with Ignacio Ramonet. My First Life." Library Journal, 1 Aug. 2016, p. 110. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA459805097&asid=6d020337b25bf09996108431bd760136. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017. "My First Life." Publishers Weekly, 27 June 2016, p. 72. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA456900937&asid=14d782ba82cd8f293297fade35fdf734. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017. "Chavez, Hugo: MY FIRST LIFE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA454177173&asid=9e54268241c7039c008371166a11df7b. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017.

• Venezuelanalysis.com
  https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10167
  Word count: 766

  QUOTED: "I wanted in some way to finish with the opinion that existed of the president [Chavez], because from the outside they made him seem like a tyrant who was uncultured and didn’t know about politics."
  "He was an unbreakable man; true to his thoughts, loyal to his people, extraordinary in his thinking, and with great love for his country."

  Spanish Journalist Presents Book on How Chavez Became Chavez
  Send to friend Printer-friendly version

  By Ewan Robertson - Correo del Orinoco International
  Tags

  Ignacio Ramonet

  On Monday this week Spanish journalist and anti-globalization intellectual Ignacio Ramonet presented his book on the life of Hugo Chavez to Venezuelan media.

  The book, titled “Hugo Chavez: My First Life”, narrates the life of the late Venezuelan president from his birth up to when he assumed the country’s top office in 1999. Chavez governed from then until 5 March this year, when he lost his two-year struggle against cancer.

  During his fifteen year period of office Chavez introduced sweeping progressive political, social and economic reforms to Venezuelan society. He gained the overwhelming support of the country’s poor and won three reelections as well as several national referenda. However the domestic conservative opposition and international media painted him as heavy handed and dictatorial.

  Ramonet’s book on the iconic Latin American leader is based on the editing of a serious of interviews held between Chavez and Ramonet from 2008 to 2010. Chavez himself reviewed the book before its publication, and even had a hand in choosing the title.

  Speaking to Venezuelan media, Ramonet said that the book was “not flattering, but sincere”. “When you converse for one hundred hours, you can’t hide anything,” he added.

  Explaining the motives behind writing the book, the Spanish journalist said, “I wanted in some way to finish with the opinion that existed of the president [Chavez], because from the outside they made him seem like a tyrant who was uncultured and didn’t know about politics”.

  Specifically, the book explores Chavez’s political, intellectual and sociological formation, as well as sharing some unique personal anecdotes.

  Ignacio Ramonet said that he had been impacted by Chavez’s rise from childhood poverty in the rural town of Sabaneta to enter the National Military Academy, from where he would burst onto Venezuela’s political scene.

  The book argues that it was Chavez’s experience of poverty in early life while receiving education from his teacher parents and engaging in a great deal of self-study which formed him into the Chavez that would become the leader of the country’s Bolivarian Revolution.

  Ramonet appeared particularly interested in the late president’s intellectual development, highlighting how the young Chavez avidly read on history, politics and philosophy.

  The Spaniard concluded that despite Chavez’s image in the international media, “He was an unbreakable man; true to his thoughts, loyal to his people, extraordinary in his thinking, and with great love for his country”.

  CHAVEZ’S LEGACY WILL CONTINUE

  Ignacio Ramonet also argued that with the election of President Nicolas Maduro in April, Chavez’s political project will continue.

  According to the journalist, the right-wing opposition thought that the Bolivarian revolution would end with Chavez’s death, and after the election of Nicolas Maduro, have launched a plan to sabotage the economy and achieve that goal.

  “Because of that, this situation has been created of hoarding, electricity sabotage and difficulties in everyday life. Now the opposition says everything is the government’s fault…it’s exactly the same situation that was created before the military coup against [former Chilean president Salvador] Allende,” he said, while dismissing that a similar coup would happen in Venezuela.

  Ramonet predicted that progressive politics would continue to predominate in Venezuela and Latin America, arguing that only a few countries in the region were still governed by conservatives.

  “Thanks to Chavez this country is in the centre of Latin American dynamics once again, which curiously hadn’t happened since [Venezuela’s 19th century founder] Simon Bolivar. Venezuela is politically more important than some of the Latin American colossi!” he remarked.

  The promotional tour for “Hugo Chavez: My First Life”, which was published earlier this year, also includes visiting Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Spain. The book is to be translated to German and Portuguese.

  Published on Nov 15th 2013 at 10.01am

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