Hugo Chávez: Venezuela’s Redeemer?

Is Hugo Chávez the revolutionary leader Venezuela needs, or is he a historical anomoly, the result of the failures of the Venezuelan political class and the pressure of the global economy? Is he carrying out the will of the people, as he claims, or is he a master politician using his charisma to whip up support while carefully constructing a political regime in which he exercises almost complete control? Only time will tell. In the meantime, the people of Venezuela are waiting.

May/June
2000
Volume: 
33
Number: 
6

Taking Note

Peru's Battle for Democracy
Jo-Marie Burt
Peru's President Alberto Fujimori was scheduled to appear at a victory celebration on the evening of May 28, after electoral authorities announced that he "won" a presidential contest in which he was the only contender. Thousands of Peruvians had been bussed in from low-income districts to the main plaza in San Martín de Porres, a popular district in northern Lima. They waited and waited, but their President was a no-show.

Intro

Hugo Chávez: Venezuela's Redeemer?
Fred Rosen & Jo-Marie Burt
Hugo Chávez was sworn in as the democratically elected president of Venezuela on February 2, 1999—seven years almost to the date that he and a group of other junior officers led a military coup against then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez. The coup, which failed in its attempt to take state power, succeeded for Chávez in another sense: It catapulted him onto the national political stage, and established his position as a man of action who was prepared to go to extreme lengths to challenge the political establishment that had come to be seen by the vast majority of Venezuelans as a bastion of elite privilege, corruption and inefficiency.

Open Forum

Globalizing Liberation
Luis Hernández Navarro
Seattle, Bangkok, Davos, Washington, D.C.: The list of protests against globalization as a project of the major transnational companies and the multilateral institutions that do their bidding continues to grow. The same can be said of the resistance to the neoliberal policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on Third World countries: the Zapatista uprising, the student protests at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and the movements against privatization in Mexico, Uruguay, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Cochabamba in Bolivia, and Porto Seguro in Brazil.

Updates

The Transformative Power of Art: Mexico's Combat Cartoonist
Rafael Barajas (El Fisgón)
Even though humor plays, or ought to play, an important role in daily life, few people consider the genre to be a worthy cultural product. Studies categorizing satire as second-rate literature abound. "Satire is not the greatest type of literature," wrote British historian Gilbert Highet. "It cannot, in spite of the ambitious claims of one of its masters, rival tragic drama and epic poetry."[1]

Report

Magical Illusions or Revolutionary Magic? Chávez in Historical Context
Fernando Coronil
Throughout his remarkable crusade to fashion himself as an anti-establishment political leader, Hugo Chávez has promised to bring about a "peaceful revolution." The meaning of this promise, made more powerful by a deep current of public rejection against the old system, has yet to be made clear.
Polarized Politics in Chávez's Venezuela
Steve Ellner
On December 15, 1999, as Venezuelans voted to ratify the country's new Constitution—a Constitution drafted by an elected Constituent Assembly overwhelmingly loyal to President Hugo Chávez—the country was hit by a devastating rainstorm that killed at least 10,000 people. The coincidence of the reaffirmation of Chávez's power and the worst natural disaster of the century was too much for the President's adversaries to resist.
Refounding the Republic: The Political Project of Chavismo
Margarita López-Maya and Luis E. Lander
"The corruption took all the money, so President Chávez has a serious problem," said an elderly man, one of hundreds of pensioners protesting in downtown Caracas on a warm summer day in March 1999. "In reality," he continued, "there is no money, but the President is looking for it. And I know he will find it because he is a very intelligent man."[1]

Reviews

Book Review Essay: Critical Passions: Selected Essays By Jean Franco Edited by Mary Louise Pratt and Kathleen Newman
Marcial Godoy-Anativia
Cultural criticism is an ambiguous and heterogeneous practice, defiant of disciplinary location and elusive of precise definition. As such, perhaps the most effective way of explaining what cultural criticism is, is by looking closely at what a cultural critic does.

In Brief

New Evidence Links Pinochet to Human Rights Abuses
Margot Olavarria
SANTIAGO—As hearings began on April 26 into the request to lift former dictator Augusto Pinochet's parliamentary immunity, a new document surfaced which appears to personally implicate him in crimes committed by his subordinates.

Article

The Two Faces of Hugo Chávez
Gabriel García Márquez
At dusk, Carlos Andrés Pérez walked off the plane that had brought him from Davos, Switzerland, and was surprised to see his defense minister, General Fernando Ochoa Antich, on the tarmac. "What's up?" he asked, concerned.