Hugo Chávez

• Born: July 28, 1954
• Birthplace: Sabaneta, Venezuela
• Died: March 5, 2013
• Place of death: Caracas, Venezuela

From Coup Leader to President

A former colonel who became the populist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez led one of the most controversial and influential political careers in Latin American history. His strong socialist philosophies endeared him to a swath of the left wing and many impoverished people throughout Latin America, while alienating large portions of the Venezuelan upper and middle classes. Using the wealth generated from Venezuela's oil reserves, he oversaw major social reforms that helped the country lower poverty and increase literacy, but he also moved toward authoritarian rule. Meanwhile, his criticisms of American diplomatic and economic policies made him a notable adversary of the United States government. His "Chavismo" ideology, which combined elements of democratic socialism and populism, remained influential even after his death.

Born on July 28, 1954, in Sabaneta, Venezuela, Hugo Rafel Chávez Frias was the son of schoolteachers who raised him in modest circumstances. His father, formerly a regional director of education and member of the Social Christian Party, went on to serve as the governor of Barinas State. Chávez himself would be married twice, and had three daughters and a son.

Chávez earned his master's degree in military science and engineering from the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in 1975, attaining the rank of second lieutenant. He then studied for a master’s degree in political science at the Simon Bolivar University, but left without completing the degree. During his military career he served as a paratrooper and had, by 1990, attained the rank of lieutenant colonel.

In the early 1980s, Chávez and a group of young military officers formed the clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, named for Simón Bolívar, the nineteenth-century populist leader who struggled for South American liberation and unity. Bolivar’s anti-imperialist stance towards Spain and commitment to empowering Latin Americans made him Chávez's primary model.

The Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement served as the basis for an attempted coup which Chávez led in February 1992. He intended to depose President Carlos Andres Perez, who had taken unpopular austerity measures and was later convicted of misappropriating government funds. The coup failed, and Chávez spent two years in prison before being pardoned. During his prison stay, other leaders of the movement attempted another coup. Seizing a television station, rebels broadcast a videotape of Chávez announcing the coup's success. The second coup, however, was also crushed.

Following his pardon, Chávez left the military and became a legitimate politician through the organization of a new left-wing political party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic. Chávez traveled throughout Venezuela giving speeches on the principles he said would define his presidency: a concern for liberty, social justice, and economic prosperity for the majority, with the goal of encouraging the general public to participate in the democratic process.

Though Venezuela, unlike many South American countries, has been ruled democratically since the late 1950s, the country's poorest classes experienced deepening poverty for over a decade. Thus Chávez's message gained support among large portions of poorer Venezuelans. Chávez was elected to the presidency in 1998.

The Presidency, 1999–2002

Chávez’s first years in office were ambitious and turbulent, culminating in a 2002 coup d’etat which ousted him briefly.

Having won the election with 56.2 percent of the vote, Chávez began his presidency with wide-reaching reforms. He first created a new assembly to rewrite the Venezuelan constitution. The assembly in turn approved a set of forty-nine laws designed to promote a Leftist economic policy, introduce land reform, improve the system of taxation, introduce free healthcare and education up to university level, and safeguard the rights of women and indigenous peoples. It also created a committee to remove judges by sole virtue of its own power, and another to undertake congressional powers while banning the Congress from holding meetings during a period of legislative emergency.

The main features of the new constitution included an extension of the president’s term by one year and an increase in his powers. The constitution was approved in 1999 in a general referendum. At the end of 2000, he pushed a bill through the new unicameral legislature (about 60 percent of which was held by his supporters) that permitted him to govern by decree for one year. During a subsequent referendum, Chávez attempted to dissolve the country’s labor unions and consolidate them into a single government union called the Bolivarian Labor Force.

Also in this period he challenged the control of land and petroleum by an elite class of wealthy Venezuelans of European descent and unscrupulous foreign companies. At the time, 2 percent of the population controlled 60 percent of the land, so Chávez introduced sweeping reforms to benefit peasant farmers. He renegotiated a long-standing agreement that had earned about 1 percent of oil revenues for the country itself while providing significant profits for foreign companies.

Such a wide-ranging program of reform and the consolidation of presidential powers brought a serious backlash. The National Chambers of Commerce called for a business strike against his policies in 2001. Opposition journalists accused Chávez supporters of threatening them with physical violence. Many of the wealthy and business class felt unrepresented in the political system and threatened by Chávez’s economic and social policies. Most significantly, he was accused of instituting policies for political motives rather than for social and economic benefit.

On an international level, Chávez took several diplomatic risks which alienated the United States. These included his visit to Saddam Hussein, the first by a democratically-elected president following the 1991 Gulf War, his encouragement of cooperative social projects between Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela, and his support of the government of Fidel Castro.

As a result of the internal and external strife, Chávez faced the strongest opposition to his rule in April of 2002, when he was very briefly deposed in a coup that started with a general business strike and quickly escalated into violence. A businessman, Pedro Carmona, was installed as the interim president. He immediately announced that he would repeal many of Chávez’s reforms, including the 1999 constitution and the forty-nine laws, and dissolve the National Assembly.

Post-Coup Presidency, 2002–13

Amid widespread protests and some international condemnation, Chávez was restored to power two days after the 2002 coup. Vowing not to seek prosecution of the coup’s instigators, he did assign blame for the coup to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the administration of US president George W. Bush, which had acknowledged the interim government, congratulated the military personnel involved, and only condemned the coup after Chávez retook his office. Given the disparity of accounts and the skewed media reports from the time, it is difficult to be certain about the extent of US involvement. However, the Bush administration’s dislike for Chávez and his policies, combined with the history of US-backed coups in South America, hinted at some element of complicity.

Though Chávez had already weathered several strikes, he was soon faced with a more wide-reaching one. In December 2002, alleging that the national oil company, PDVSA, had long suffered from corruption and mismanagement of revenue, Chávez again attempted to dislodge its upper management. A long strike ensued, and all oil exports were stopped. To break the strike, Chávez fired about 18,000 PDVSA employees and later refused to enforce a court ruling that judged the dismissals to be illegal. The strike ended after two months.

The next major obstacle to Chávez’s rule came in 2003, when the opposition began a drive to recall him. Many of the signatures generated by the first drive were deemed invalid by the National Electoral Council, due to the time frame in which they had been collected. However, the second drive generated more than the number of signatures needed to hold a referendum on the future of Chávez’s presidency. The possibility of a recall referendum, unprecedented in Venezuelan history, had been implemented by Chávez himself.

The vote took place on August 15, 2004. The event was orderly, with nearly 95 percent of the electorate voting, a record in Venezuelan history. The referendum was monitored by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center, headed by former US president Jimmy Carter. Chávez won the referendum by 60 percent of the vote, and thus won the mandate to remain in office until 2006. It was the fourth election that he had won in five years. Reports by opposition groups of fraudulent voting were not substantiated by the international observers, who endorsed the results and called on all Venezuelans to accept them. After winning the referendum, Chávez stressed the need for national reconciliation. In 2007 he also merged the Fifth Republic Movement with other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), for which he served as leader.

In March 2008, the Colombian military crossed over into Ecuador in pursuit of members of the Revolution Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Several FARC soldiers were killed in the raid. Ecuadorian officials were offended by the actions, and Chávez was particularly incensed. He stated at the time that he would consider any similar action in Venezuela as an act of war. Chávez went so far as to ready a portion of the Venezuela military in what became known as the 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis. Some analysts claimed that the FARC existed in part as a result of funding from the Venezuelan government. Diplomatic sessions resulted in the situation being resolved, but the incident proved the tempestuous nature of Chávez's Venezuela.

Critics continued to state that Chávez did not use Venezuela's oil revenues for purposes of social development, but for military spending. Some claimed that Chávez neglected to invest enough resources into the upkeep of the Venezuelan oil infrastructure.

In July of 2009, a government warning was issued to oil company employees in Venezuelan, stating that they cooperate with and join Chávez-backed unions or face termination. State oil minister and staunch Chávez ally Rafael Ramirez detailed the warning in a televised speech. Meanwhile, officials in the administration of US president Barack Obama criticized the lack of effort on the part of the Venezuelan government to limit the trafficking of drugs out of Colombia.

Chávez announced on June 30, 2011 that he had had a cancerous tumor removed in Cuba. He returned to Cuba in August 2011 for chemotherapy. After the cancer recurred in February 2012 he had further treatment, fueling speculation about the results of the October 2012 presidential elections. A challenger to Chávez's candidacy, Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, won the opposition party coalition primary in June 2012, but Chávez defeated Capriles in the general election and won a fourth term. Chávez's cancer returned later in 2012, however. He had surgery in Cuba and announced that if he became unable to serve his fourth term, his supporters should choose his vice president, Nicolás Maduro, as president in his stead.

Chávez's absence at his January 2013 inauguration prompted debate about the legitimacy of his presidency. He returned to Caracas, Venezuela, in February and died there on March 5, 2013, at the age of fifty-eight. He was indeed succeeded by Maduro, who continued many of his controversial policies. After his death Chávez remained an iconic figure in Venezuela, venerated by many citizens and institutions.

Bibliography

"Hugo Chavez Fast Facts." CNN, 27 Apr. 2017, www.cnn.com/2012/12/11/world/americas/hugo-chavez---fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 28 Aug. 2020.

"Profile: Hugo Chavez." BBC News, 18 Feb. 2013, www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-10086210. Accessed 28 Aug. 2020.

Romero, Simon. "Hugo Chávez: 1954–2013: A Polarizing Figure Who Led a Movement." The New York Times, 5 Mar. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/world/americas/hugo-Chávez-venezuelas-polarizing-leader-dies-at-58.html. Accessed 28 Aug. 2020.

"Venezuela's Chavez Era." Council on Foreign Relations, 2020, www.cfr.org/timeline/venezuelas-Chávez-era. Accessed 28 Aug. 2020.