Hugo Chavez: The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela
by Richard Gott
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard GottPhotographer: Georges Bartoli
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-08-25
ISBN: 1844675335
Number of pages: 315
Publisher: Verso
Book Reviews of Hugo Chavez: The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela
Book Review: Very accessible, pleasant read
Summary: 5 Stars
Gott is a veteran leftist British journalist, a Latin American specialist, who writes in a very clear and not ungraceful journalese style which I must say is very refreshing to read after just finishing a semester trying to read through dreadfully dull authors in grad school classes. The read is relatively quick.
Perhaps the biggest point in the book is the insight provided about the opposition to Chavez, the people the American media portray as great heroes for democracy struggling against Chavez. This opposition almost exclusively comes from the remnants of the old discredited elites that had run the country into the ground before Chavez's election. After the overthrow of the military dictator General Marcos Perez Jimenez in 1958, the so-called Social Democratic party, Democratic Action(Spanish acronym AD) and the Christian Democrats (COPEI) agreed to set up a political system where they would share the spoils of the bureaucracy and effectively prevent any third parties from running for president.
Carlos Andres Perez of AD was president of Venezuela during its economic high point, 1974-79. Venezuela nationalized foreign oil companies in 1976 but according to Gott the state run oil company was run as the fiefdom of its directors and its employees who seemed to have been a privileged class among Venezuelan workers. The vast majority of Venezuelans received very little from the abundant petrodollars of the 70's; a lot of the money was invested abroad or redistributed to the managers and employees of the company.. The government spent massively on infrastructure projects and used oil money to place grassroots supporters on the government payroll. The downward spiral of oil prices in the 1980's sent the economy into collapse by 1989. Andres Perez had previously denounced the International Monetary Fund as a genocidal tool against the poor of the third world but he reversed himself in early 1989 and started adopting the policies of that organization. He launched plans to privatize government owned industries, eliminate tariffs to protect small farmers, fire numerous public sector employees, and privatize the state-owned oil company. A hike in bus fares sent the residents of the shanty towns on the hills overlooking central Caracas down the hills to loot and riot. The military responded by moving into poor neighborhoods and often murdering anything that moved. Thousands were killed. This terrible riot/massacre was named the "Caracazo" in popular lingo. It scared to death Venzuela's largely white elite, this terrifying spontaneous uprising of Venezuela's largely dark-skinned poor.
In the years following the Caracazo, the shantytowns in the big cities grew with new members from the country side and the elite kept getting richer and the poor poorer. Nationalist inclined military officers and civilians led by Chavez launched a coup in February 1992 against Perez. The coup failed but, Gott writes, Venezuela's elite was terrified: for one the masses of people appeared to be not unsympathetic to the coup. Gott quotes an interesting speech in Venezuela's congress after the corup by Rafael Caldera of COPEI who had been Venezuela's president from 1969-74 and was to be elected again in December 1994. Caldera seemed to almost endorse the coup: he stated that it was understandable that the masses of people would not rally to the government's defense in this coup attempt because the political system was run by corrupt elites and the masses were becoming more and more impoverished. Caldera, continued the privatization program, with the help of some leftists in his cabinet, Gott writes, such as Teodoro Petkoff, the founder of the party, Movement to Socialism. In 1993, Andres Perez was impeached for corruption and placed under house arrest.
COPEI and AD were so discredited, according to Gott, that otherwise reasonably popular presidential candidates in 1998, such as COPEI's Irene Saez, saw their support in pre-election polls plummet to as low as two percent, when they decided to launch their presidential runs with the backing of COPEI or AD.
Gott points out that Chavez, whatever the shortcomings he may have, is opposed by Venezuela's largely white elites because he has encouraged the country's poor, its marginalized black and brown people, to enter the political process. The Americans since 2001 have opposed him for pretty much the same reasons. The country's main labor confederation, the CTV, has mainly served as a subservient arm of the AD, and never has contained more than 12 percent of the workforce, usually the more elite workers. Chavez has inspired organizing efforts amongst the majority unskilled and informal sector workers, which scared CTV leader Carlos Ortega to such an extent that he collaborated in the April 2002 coup attempt. The protestors against Chavez are made up for the most part, of the country's small upper and middle classes.
It seems that of all the measures which led the elite to conspire to launch the April 2002 coup attempt was Chavez's rollback of plans to sell off Venezuela's oil concerns to foreign companies. Such measures were part of 49 decrees Chavez launched in November 2001, which included a very small land reform. These were extremely mild Social Democratic gestures, but the elite media increased their vulgar screams about impending communist dictatorship to fever pitch. The basic concentration of wealth in the hands of the wealthy few was only being slightly affected but Venezuela's elites were quaking in their boots. Under the coordination of the business federation Fedecameras, the elite launched a coup with U.S. backing in April 2002 and an attempt to sabotage the oil industry in December 2002-January 2003.
In Gott's last section he gives an overview of the "Missions," different organizations in local areas, funded by profits from the state oil companies that provide to the masses literacy training, cheap food, health care, etc. .....to a large extent the book is interesting and nuanced and not afraid to portray some things discreditable to Chavez though I think his coverage of the incident with the Pemon Indians is inadquate, especially in covering Chavez's response to it.
Summary of Hugo Chavez: The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela
The only up-to-date book on the democratically elected president of Venezuela, and the US-assisted attempt...and failure...to depose him.
The only first-hand report on contemporary Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, by veteran correspondent Richard Gott, places the country's controversial and charismatic president in historical perspective, and examines his plans and programs. This new edition has a chapter on the attempted and failed military coup, Venezuela's recent recall election, and discusses US covert intervention against this democratically elected public official.
The spectre of Simon Bolivar hovers once again over Latin America as the aims and ambitions of the Liberator are taken up by Comandante Hugo Chavez. Welcomed by the inhabitants of the teeming shantytowns of Caracas as their potential savior, and greeted by Washington with considerable alarm, this former golpista-turned-democrat has already begun the most wide-ranging transformation of oil-rich Venezuela for half a century, and dramatically affected the political debate throughout Latin America.
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