Hugo Chávez

• 1. Introduction

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  Hugo Chávez ended the worst morning of his military career with two words. On the 4th of February 1992, he appeared on Venezuelan television in uniform, moments after an armed uprising he had planned collapsed. He told the rebels still fighting to lay down their weapons. Then he added that they had failed only "por ahora," which means "for now."

  Those two words turned a defeated officer into a household name, especially among poor Venezuelans. Six years later he won the presidency. He would hold it for fourteen years, winning four presidential elections, rewriting the constitution and putting his own name on a political movement.

  Admirers saw a leader who finally spent the country's oil money on its poorest citizens. Critics saw a strongman who dismantled the institutions that had let him rise. How does a conspirator whose first attempt failed end up governing for so long? What did he do with the oil that paid for his ambitions? And why does the argument over his legacy still divide Latin America?

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• 2. Barracks Conspirator

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  Sabaneta, a rural village in Barinas State, was where Chávez was born on the 28th of July 1954, in his paternal grandmother's modest three-room house. His parents were both schoolteachers, and he was the second of seven children. The family traced its roots to Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, Spanish and Italian ancestors. Some writers dispute the picture of a childhood in poverty, suggesting he may have reshaped his background for political reasons.

  As a boy he admired Ezequiel Zamora, a 19th-century federalist general in whose army his own great-great-grandfather had served. With no high school nearby, his parents sent him and his older brother Adán to live with their grandmother. There they attended Daniel O'Leary High School in the mid-1960s.

  At seventeen, Chávez entered the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in Caracas. Its curriculum, called the Andrés Bello Plan, had been written by progressive, nationalistic officers. It brought in civilian professors from other universities, so cadets studied far more than drills and tactics. Outside class he played baseball and softball with the Criollitos de Venezuela team, which took him to the national championships. He also wrote poetry, fiction and drama, painted, and read the memoir The Diary of Che Guevara.

  In 1974, the academy chose him to join the commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho in Peru. There he heard the leftist president, General Juan Velasco Alvarado, argue that the military should act for the working classes when ruling elites were corrupt. A friendship with the son of Panama's leader Omar Torrijos led Chávez to visit Panama and meet the general. He was impressed by Torrijos's land reform for peasants. Looking back, Chávez summed up these influences with a joke: "With Torrijos, I became a Torrijist. With Velasco I became a Velasquist. And with Pinochet, I became an anti-Pinochetist." He graduated in 1975 as one of the top graduates of his year.

  His first posting made him a communications officer with a counterinsurgency unit in Barinas. In 1977 the unit moved to Anzoátegui to fight the Red Flag Party, a Marxist-Hoxhaist insurgent group. Chávez stepped in to stop fellow soldiers from beating a suspected insurgent, and his doubts about the army began. That same year he founded the Venezuelan People's Liberation Army, a tiny group of soldiers with no plans for immediate action. He also met prominent Marxists in secret, including Alfredo Maneiro, who founded the Radical Cause, and Douglas Bravo.

  Five years later came a new secret cell, first called the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200 and later the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200, or MBR-200. Its inspirations were Simón Bolívar, Simón Rodríguez and Zamora, known as the "three roots of the tree." In 1984 he met Herma Marksman, a recently divorced history teacher, and began an affair that lasted several years. Francisco Arias Cárdenas, a soldier interested in liberation theology, joined the movement. Suspicious senior officers then reassigned Chávez to the remote barracks at Elorza in Apure State, cutting him off from fresh cadet recruits.

  The spark came in 1989, when Carlos Andrés Pérez won the presidency after promising to oppose International Monetary Fund policies. Once in office, he adopted policies the IMF favored, and public anger boiled over into looting and protests known as El Caracazo. Pérez answered with Plan Ávila, a military contingency plan, and violent repression followed. Members of the MBR-200 allegedly took part, but Chávez did not, because he was in hospital with chicken pox. He later called the crackdown "genocide."

  His own plan was Operation Zamora. Troops would seize military sites and communications centers, capture and kill Pérez, and install Rafael Caldera in power. Chávez postponed it from December until the early twilight hours of the 4th of February. Five army units under his command moved into urban Caracas. Yet he commanded the loyalty of less than 10% of the military. After betrayals, defections and errors, Chávez and a small group of rebels were stuck in the Military Museum, unable to reach their comrades. Pérez slipped away from Miraflores Palace.

  Officially, thirty-two civilians, police officers and soldiers died, and about fifty soldiers and some eighty civilians were hurt. Chávez was jailed at the San Carlos military stockade, consumed by guilt over the failure. Crowds demonstrated outside, and he was moved to Yare Prison. Journalist Rory Carroll of The Guardian later wrote that the coup failed militarily and left dozens dead, but made Chávez a media star. A second unsuccessful coup came that November, and the fighting in the two coups killed at least 143 people, and perhaps several hundred. A year later Pérez was impeached for malfeasance and misappropriating funds. Chávez's relationship with Marksman had already ended in July 1993, while he sat in prison.

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• 3. Pardon to Palace

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  Rafael Caldera, who allegedly had advance knowledge of the coup, won the presidency in 1994 and soon freed Chávez and the other jailed MBR-200 members. He did ban them from returning to the military. Chávez went straight to Havana, where on the 14th of December 1994 Fidel Castro received him with the honors due a head of state. Speaking at the University of Havana, Chávez described a long-term strategic project with a horizon of twenty to forty years, built on a sovereign economic model.

  Chávez then toured Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Colombia looking for foreign support. Journalist Patricia Poleo alleged that during his stay in Colombia he spent six months in guerrilla training. According to her, he made contacts with the FARC and the National Liberation Army, and took the nom de guerre Comandante Centeno. By then, she wrote, he favored military action because he believed the oligarchy would never let him win an election.

  He changed course. In July 1997, Chávez and his supporters founded the Fifth Republic Movement to back his run in the 1998 presidential election. On his campaign tour he met Marisabel Rodríguez. She gave birth to their daughter shortly before becoming his second wife in 1997.

  The early front-runner in 1998 was Irene Sáez, backed by Copei, one of Venezuela's two dominant parties. Chávez's revolutionary rhetoric won over Homeland for All, the Venezuelan Communist Party and the Movement for Socialism. His voters came from many directions. Poor Venezuelans felt he cared about their needs. Middle-class voters, frustrated with corruption, wanted a firm hand. The old left backed him, as did militarist right-wingers, some nostalgic for the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

  Polls put him at 30% in May and 39% by August. On election day turnout was 63%, and Chávez won with 56.2% of the vote. His inauguration on the 2nd of February 1999 would bring a new surprise before he had even finished the oath.

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• 4. Rewriting the Republic

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  At the inauguration, Chávez abandoned the standard presidential oath. Instead he proclaimed: "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."

  His first months were more pragmatic than that oath suggested. Low oil prices left his government reliant on international markets. During a visit to the United States in 1999, he rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. His administration held formal talks with the International Monetary Fund until rising oil prices removed the need for aid. He still believed capitalism could work for Venezuela, but a Rhenish version, not neoliberalism.

  Plan Bolívar 2000 began on the 27th of February 1999, the tenth anniversary of the Caracazo. Chávez said he had set aside $20.8 million for it. Some 70,000 soldiers, sailors and air force members repaired roads and hospitals, drained stagnant water where disease-carrying mosquitoes bred, gave vaccinations and free medical care, and sold cheap food. Later, allegations of corruption among the generals involved and of diverted money overshadowed the program.

  The larger project was a new constitution. A referendum asked voters whether to form a constituent assembly, and 88% said yes, though turnout was only 37.65%. Over 900 of the 1,171 candidates for the assembly opposed Chávez. A voting formula dubbed the kino, or lottery, and also called the "keys of Chávez," turned his 51% of the vote into 95% of the seats. His supporters took 125 seats, including every seat reserved for indigenous groups, and the opposition won six.

  On the 12th of August 1999 the assembly voted itself the power to abolish government institutions and dismiss officials seen as corrupt. It also declared a judicial emergency and took power to overhaul the courts. The Supreme Court ruled that the assembly held this authority, and the 1999 Constitution later replaced it with the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.

  In December 1999-72% of those voting approved the finished constitution, though more than half of registered voters stayed home. It protected the environment and indigenous peoples and guaranteed socioeconomic benefits, while giving the president more power. The presidential term grew to six years, with two consecutive terms allowed. Congress shrank to a single chamber. The military received a role in public order and national development, which the previous constitution had expressly forbidden. At Chávez's request, the Republic of Venezuela became the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

  He put allies into key posts. Jesús Urdaneta, a founder of the MBR-200, took charge of the national intelligence directorate. Hernán Grüber Odremán, one of the 1992 coup leaders, became governor of the Federal District of Caracas. Critics called this circle the "Boliburguesía," or Bolivarian bourgeoisie, and noted how many of its members lacked experience in public administration. The number of relatives in politics prompted accusations of nepotism. According to the source, his government controlled every branch of power for over 15 years, until the parliamentary election of 2015.

  In May 2000, he launched Aló Presidente, a Sunday morning radio show on state radio, after an earlier Thursday night television show called De Frente con el Presidente. On air he took calls, discussed policy, sang songs and told jokes. He also founded newspapers, among them El Correo del Presidente, which he edited, and Vea, plus Question magazine and Vive TV. El Correo was later shut down amid accusations of corruption and mismanagement. In June 2000 he separated from Marisabel, and the divorce became final in January 2004.

  The new constitution required fresh elections to re-legitimize the president. In July 2000, Venezuela held its first megaelection, with president, governors, legislators, mayors and councilmen all on one ballot. His closest challenger was Arias Cárdenas, his former friend and fellow plotter, who had turned centrist as governor of Zulia and now called Chávez autocratic. Chávez won with about 60% of the vote, a bigger margin than in 1998. That same year, he signed an oil agreement with Havana that would tie the two governments together.

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• 5. Oil and the Missions

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  At the start of the 21st century, Venezuela was the world's fifth largest exporter of crude oil, and oil made up 85% of its exports. Before Chávez, the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, known as PDVSA, ran autonomously and chased profit. Chávez turned it into an arm of the government, with its earnings channeled into social spending. Managers and executives were replaced by political allies, which drained the company of expertise.

  A Hydrocarbons Law in 2001 raised taxes on foreign oil companies in extraction to 30%. It also required the state to hold at least 51% of mixed companies. By 2006, all 32 operating agreements signed with private companies in the 1990s had been converted so that PDVSA held at least 51%.

  The oil money funded the Bolivarian missions, programs aimed at poverty, literacy, hunger and health. They built thousands of free medical clinics and added food and housing subsidies. Chávez oversaw them directly, and they were often tied to his campaigns. Critics Corrales and Penfold argued that the aid reached only some of the poor and benefited the president and his allies most.

  In 2000, Venezuela agreed to supply Cuba with 53,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates. In return it received 20,000 trained Cuban medics and educators. Over the next decade the deal grew to 90,000 barrels a day, in exchange for 40,000 Cuban medics and teachers.

  The results were real but uneven. The Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, fell from 0.495 in 1998 to 0.39 in 2011, leaving Venezuela behind only Canada in the Western Hemisphere. About 95% of Venezuelans aged fifteen and older could read and write, although some scholars dispute how much credit the government deserves. The poverty rate dropped from 48.6% in 1999 to 32.1% in 2013, according to the government's statistics institute. Within two years of his death, poverty returned to where it had stood before his presidency. A 2017 analysis in NACLA concluded that the gains were real but somewhat superficial.

  The weakness was dependence. In 2012, the World Bank warned that the economy was extremely vulnerable to oil prices, because oil supplied 96% of exports and nearly half of fiscal revenue. Foreign Policy reported that by 2008 exports of everything but oil had collapsed. Analysts described the country as suffering from Dutch disease, in which a booming resource sector crowds out the rest of the economy.

  Food was where the strain showed first. In 2003, the government capped prices on basic staples. Between 1998 and 2006, malnutrition-related deaths fell by half, and Chávez redistributed 5 million acres of farmland from large landowners. He also built the Mercal supermarket chain, with 16,600 outlets and 85,000 employees, and 6,000 soup kitchens. Shops displayed his picture prominently, and shoppers queued for scarce meat, milk and sugar.

  Merchants could not afford to import goods at capped prices, and Chávez blamed "speculators and hoarders." By 2011, food prices in Caracas were nine times higher than when the controls began, and cooking oil, chicken, powdered milk, cheese, sugar and meat ran short. From 2010 to 2013, food shortage rates ran between 10% and 20%.

  On the 5th of February 2003, the government created CADIVI, a currency control board that rationed foreign exchange to curb capital flight. A black market in dollars followed, and the bolívar kept losing value as the government printed money for social programs. In mid 2010, tons of rotten food imported through the state food network PDVAL were discovered. Official estimates put the loss at 130,000 tons, and the opposition said 170,000. On the 2nd of June 2010, Chávez declared an "economic war" on Venezuela's upper classes over shortages. In January 2013, an economic freedom index from the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal ranked Venezuela 174th of 177 countries. Some analysts argue that the troubles under Nicolás Maduro would probably have emerged even if Chávez had remained president.

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• 6. Coup, Strikes and Ballots

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  "Con mis hijos no te metas," or "Don't mess with my children," was the slogan shouted in central Caracas in January 2001. Middle-class parents whose children attended private schools marched against Resolution 259 and Decree 1.011. These education reforms would have introduced textbooks with a heavy Bolivarian bias, which parents said were Cuban books under new covers. Chávez called the marchers "selfish and individualistic." The protest worked, and the government withdrew the reforms and agreed to a consensus-based educational program.

  Later in 2001, opposition parties, business groups, most of the media, the chambers of commerce and the Central Workers Union united as the Coordinadora Democrática de Acción Cívica. Businessman Pedro Carmona became its leader. The group accused Chávez of steering the country toward dictatorship.

  In April 2002, Chávez replaced the PDVSA board with loyalists who had little or no oil experience, mocking the fired executives on television. On the 11th of April, a march heading toward the presidential palace ended with nineteen people dead and over 110 wounded. Chávez thought Plan Ávila was the way to hold power. Officers including General Raúl Baduel, a founder of the MBR-200, withdrew their support to prevent a massacre. Chávez agreed to be detained and was taken by army escort to La Orchila. Carmona declared himself interim president, abolished the 1999 constitution and named a governing committee.

  It collapsed within days. Protests for Chávez and thin support for Carmona forced Carmona to resign, and Chávez returned on the 14th of April. He softened his approach with a more centrist economic team and reinstated the old PDVSA board. At the same time, he bought 100,000 AK-47 rifles and several helicopters from Russia and Super Tucano planes from Brazil.

  Then came a two-month management strike at PDVSA. The government fired about 19,000 striking workers and replaced them with retirees, foreign contractors and the military. In 2005, a member of Venezuela's energy ministries said the company would need more than 15 years to recover.

  The 1999 constitution had introduced the recall referendum, and the opposition used it. In the 2004 vote, 70% of eligible voters turned out and 59% chose to keep Chávez. In December 2006 he won again, with 63% of the vote and 77% turnout, beating Manuel Rosales. The Organization of American States and the Carter Center judged the result free and legitimate.

  On the 15th of December 2006, he announced that his allied parties would merge into the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. Membership reached 5.7 million by 2007. The International Labour Organization expressed concern that some voters were pressured to join.

  The government declined to renew the license of the television channel RCTV, which expired on the 27th of May 2007. Marchers for and against filled the streets of Caracas. Groups including Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists voiced concern for press freedom.

  In December 2007, a referendum on constitutional changes drafted by a commission led by Luis Britto García would have allowed indefinite reelection. Voters rejected it, with 51% against and 44% of registered voters staying home. It was Chávez's first loss in thirteen electoral contests. On the 15th of February 2009, a second referendum abolished term limits for all elected offices, passing with over 54% in favor.

  On the 7th of October 2012, Chávez won a fourth election, defeating Henrique Capriles by 54% to 45% on an 80% turnout. It was his narrowest margin yet.

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• 7. Ideas and Allies

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  "I am not a Marxist, but I am not anti-Marxist. I am not communist, but I am not anti-communist," Chávez told interviewer Agustín Blanco Muñoz in May 1996. Told by the New York Times in 1999 to place himself on the political spectrum, he said: "I am none of those, but I have a bit of all of those." In 1998, he had even said he was not a socialist, only that the world needed to go beyond socialism and "savage capitalism."

  His thinking moved. In a 2005 interview, he explained that he once spoke and wrote about a "human capitalism" and the Third Way. Then he said: "I became convinced that socialism is the way." In January 2005, he began proclaiming the "socialism of the 21st century," distinct from the Marxist-Leninist socialism of the Soviet Union and China, which he considered insufficiently democratic. In a 2009 speech, he called himself a Marxist only to the degree that followers of Jesus Christ and Simón Bolívar were. In 2010, he recalled that a minister had confessed to being a Trotskyist, and replied that he was one too.

  Bolivarianism was his own blend. Its roots were Bolívar, his tutor Simón Rodríguez and the federalist general Zamora. Critics pointed out the tension with Marx, who dismissed Bolívar as a false liberator protecting the power of the old Creole nobility.

  Other heroes ranged widely. Chávez praised the former dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez for his public works, saying he was "the best president Venezuela had in a long time." He knew the traditions of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and Salvador Allende. The Argentine Peronist Norberto Ceresole advised him early in his presidency. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro shaped him, and Castro's government helped with the missions. In 2005, he praised Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. From 2004 to 2011, Marta Harnecker was his adviser.

  Some of his claims drew ridicule. In September 2006, he said 9/11 conspiracy theories were "not absurd." He also told Christopher Hitchens that he did not believe the Apollo 11 Moon landing footage was genuine.

  Abroad, the clash with Washington began in late 2001. Chávez opposed the American-led invasion of Afghanistan and showed pictures on his television show of children said to have died in a bombing attack. He called the war "fighting terrorism with terrorism." The United States recalled its ambassador for consultations.

  His trips took him from Tripoli, where he met Muammar Gaddafi, to Damascus, Minsk and Tehran. In May 2006, he visited Europe privately and announced plans to supply cheap Venezuelan oil to poor communities. London's mayor Ken Livingstone welcomed him as "the best news out of Latin America in many years."

  At home in Latin America, his presidency marked the start of the socialist "pink tide." He helped set up the 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 television network TeleSUR. He aligned himself with Raúl Castro, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Daniel Ortega.

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• 8. Death and Reckoning

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  On the 16th of July 2011, Chávez traveled to Havana for medical treatment for cancer. On the 24th of February 2012, he had surgery there for a cancerous tumour. On the 9th of December 2012, he went back to Havana for what was his fourth cancer operation.

  The inauguration for his new term was set for the 10th of January 2013. He was still being treated in Cuba and could not return in time. National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello proposed postponing the ceremony, and the Supreme Court ruled that the formality could be skipped. Venezuela's Bishops Conference objected that the constitution must be respected and that the government was not transparent about his health. Some opposition politicians suspected that orders signed by Chávez had been forged. Guillermo Cochez, a recently dismissed Panamanian ambassador to the Organization of American States, even claimed that Chávez had been brain dead since the 31st of December 2012.

  Chávez died in Caracas on the 5th of March 2013, aged 58. Vice President Nicolás Maduro took over the presidential powers for the rest of the shortened term, until elections.

  The assessment of those years is harsh on security and democracy. Four years into the Bolivarian Revolution, the murder rate had climbed to 44 per 100,000 people. By 2011, kidnappings were over twenty times higher than when Chávez was elected. Documentary filmmaker James Brabazon tied part of the rise to the release of thousands of violent prisoners under justice reforms, plus Colombian organized crime.

  Critics also record democratic backsliding. Chávez suppressed the press, manipulated electoral laws, and arrested or exiled critics. His use of enabling acts and his government's propaganda remain controversial. Across the political spectrum, he is seen as one of the most influential and controversial politicians in the modern history of Venezuela and Latin America. His ideas, programs and style live on as Chavismo, a political ideology still tied to his name.

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