Hugo Chávez The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President by Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka
Translated by Kristina Cordero
Random House, 352 pp., $27.95
Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez has become the most dramatic political player in Latin America during recent years, the international heir apparent of Fidel Castro and the hemisphere's anti-American purveyor-in-chief of false hope. His antics finally even stirred President Bush enough to make his first-ever serious trip to Latin America last March.
The former paratrooper was overwhelmingly elected president in late 1998 by Venezuelans venting their frustration and anger with what they considered a parade of incompetent and corrupt democratic leaders. Chávez presented himself as a simple, honest, straightforward, macho fellow who believed in, and would work to benefit, all of the nation's people. He played to all the national frustrations, promising to throw out the rascals who, for 40 years, controlled the ruling parties and ran the government largely in their own interests.
But what Venezuelans got--and, in a certain perverse way, most wanted, perhaps without realizing it--was a restoration of their past, with a vengeance. As the authors of this biography, a husband-and-wife team who write for the Caracas daily El Nacional, point out, between 1830 and 1958 Venezuela had less than a decade of civilian rule. While polls show democracy is now very popular in Venezuela, one wonders what that really means. The elected leaders preceding Chávez were not, on balance, responsive to popular needs; and Chávez, though democratically elected and reelected, has increasingly become a traditional caudillo, or strongman, who is manipulating democracy to kill it and replace it with an authoritarian populist regime that he will dominate beyond the foreseeable future.
The question is whether enough Venezuelans will notice the current consolidation of power in time to thwart it--or, indeed, whether they will really wish to do so.
History, as well as current developments, suggest that Chávez may not be stopped for a long time. He has already moved quite smoothly into the centuries-old authoritarian cultural and institutional pattern that has typified Latin America since the Spanish and Portuguese arrived more than five centuries ago, and held sway in the earlier major Indian civilizations as well.
An increasing number of Venezuelans have protested the growth of state control in education, the media, political organizations, and business, and concerns are increasing even within the Chavista camp. Still, a considerable majority seem to think he will come through for them in the end, for Venezuelans overwhelmingly reelected Chávez in December 2006.
On my last visit to Venezuela some months ago, Chávez critics openly acknowledged that they lack any credibility with most Venezuelans, and many think they will just have to wait until Chávez's experiment collapses, which optimists say may be in a year or two. The paradox is that, in some respects, business has never been better, and many are benefiting in varying degrees from the billions of oil dollars that are gushing in, mostly from the United States, although it is not clear whether there are more or fewer poor today than five years ago.
The authors of this biography, which was first published in Caracas in 2004 but has been updated for this English-language edition, put Chávez the man and the phenomenon into historical, national, and international perspective with a refreshingly objective narrative and analysis. (Moses Naim adds an insightful introduction.) They cover his childhood, military career, and the past and living individuals who inspire him, ranging from the Liberator, Simon Bolivar, through Marxist intellectuals to the famous guerrilla Douglas Bravo.
Chávez long believed, with Mao, that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, a belief that led to his failed coup in 1992. As the authors show, that coup overnight transformed Chávez into a national political hero and heartthrob with a blind faith in his personal mission. He did not endorse nonviolence until two years before the 1998 election that swept him to power.
Marcano and Tyszka emphasize Chávez's "individualistic idiosyncratic style" and his appeal to Venezuela's massive underclass. His style and charisma are perhaps most obvious in his weekly television talk show-- Aló, Presidente (Hello, President)--which began in 1999: Chávez does all the talking, at times for many hours, focusing on whatever he thinks should be the big issues of the week. He is alternately earthy, funny, abusive, and profane. The world got its strongest whiff of this when Chávez told the United Nations in 2006 that the General Assembly smelled of the Devil Bush, who had spoken the previous day.
His style speaks directly to his followers, but is viewed with contempt by the opposition. In their most valuable conclusion, the authors note that "the root of Chávez's power resides in the religious and emotional bond he has forged with the popular sectors of the country."
In fact, Chávez is a caudillo-plus. Unlike most of his strongman predecessors, this Messiah figure has relentlessly pursued an international agenda with what, for now, seem to be inexhaustible financial resources. Not long ago he pledged to his dying mentor, Fidel Castro, "I take the responsibility for continuing your struggle, your endless battle. Men like Fidel end up sacrificing their lives like the Christ." In August 2006 he exclaimed, "Our task is to save the world."
In short, his sermon/message, which is gospel in many parts of Latin America, is that most of the hemisphere is mired in seemingly intractable poverty and inequality; traditional leaders and their foreign supporters, mainly the United States, are responsible for this situation; and his very own, still very incompletely concocted (though he doesn't admit this) "21st-century socialism" will turn things around.
Chávez is dead right about the poverty and inequality, partly right about the leaders and institutions that are responsible, and dead wrong about how to make things better. His "socialism" is the most recent, globalized adaptation of the late 15th-century Iberian view of God, man, and institutions that, over many centuries, implanted the stifling, stingy paternalism that has thwarted initiative and general productivity in Latin America, making and keeping it the most unequal region on earth.
Chávez's international agenda has taken him around the Americas and the world. He has won disciples of sorts in many Latin nations. Chavista-style leaders have been elected in Bolivia and Ecuador, and to some degree in Nicaragua and Argentina. Chavistas have narrowly lost presidential elections in Peru and Mexico, and could win the next time around if current governments fail.
He has given and promised extensive cooperation and aid on several continents. Beyond the hemisphere, he has sought to forge an anti-American front, so far consisting (most importantly) of Russia and Iran, with China largely watching the politics from the sidelines while investing significantly in oil. Russia has played a key role in modernizing Venezuela's military by selling Chávez Sukhoi-30 fighter-bombers, Mi-17 and Mi-35 helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles, and a factory to produce more. Recently the Putin government promised submarines and assistance in the energy field.
The United States finally became seriously interested in Hugo Chávez for one reason: his anti-Americanism, which has broad repercussions. First, Venezuela is one of the world's major oil producers, with reserves that may exceed those of Saudi Arabia, and the United States is its main customer. Chávez's move to "reduce dependence" on the United States really means he eventually wants to sell all Venezuelan oil to nations in his anti-American camp. And second, Chávez aggressively promotes political and economic ideas and institutions in Latin America and the world that are not only anti-American but antimarket and antidevelopment.
In the past year, Latin "old-leftists" who have been elected president in several countries--most importantly, Luiz Lula da Silva in Brazil, the most viable alternative to Chávez--have become more openly resistant to Chávez's efforts to create an anti-American, populist continent. Typical of this is the current dispute over Venezuela's becoming a member of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur).
Judging by his actions, Hugo Chávez does not really understand that Venezuela is filthy rich only because of its one cash cow, oil, which accounts for about half of the country's government revenues. International estimates are that production has fallen drastically under Chávez for many reasons, including the failure to reinvest in all aspects of the business, the firing of thousands of experienced workers, the termination of contracts with major international companies, the diversion of large amounts of money to social programs, foolishly generous handouts and subsidies to Cuba and other anti-American allies, and corruption.
Chávez has hijacked oil production and, for now, is taking a high-speed joyride around the world. But the cops of reality will catch up, and it will all end in grief. Above all, Chávez is the quintessential Latin, with a slightly original twist. The most effective response to the Chávez challenge is easily stated but hard to accomplish, mainly because so many Latin leaders have traditionally lacked the wisdom, will, patience, or perseverance to make it so. The answer, if people want development, is to have societies with a culture and institutions that encourage people to produce and succeed. Leaders must support reforms to that end, and the people must demand such reforms and give them time to succeed.
Until that happens, many Venezuelans and other Latins will continue to look for easy answers from demagogues like Chávez, described so well here by Marcano and Tyszka, and a movement that will take them nowhere, or backward.
William Ratliff is a fellow and curator of the Americas collection at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and an adjunct fellow at the Independent Institute.