CHAVEZ II

Hugo Chavez Frias was born in Sabaneta, Barinas State on July 28th, 1954. He has a mulatto background which gives him a common link to the 67% majority of Venezuelans. After he finished high school, he would have to travel to Caracas to continue his education. Chavez attended Venezuela’s Military Academy, where he graduated with a degree in Military Sciences and Arts on July 5, 1975. Having both parents as teachers its easy to see why he is an intellectual person, and why they weren't wealthy. Apparently his family also sold bananas and sowed corn for income. Chavez’ love for baseball is also easy to see. When he was a kid he played baseball like all children in Venezuela, and apparently he was a good pitcher. It was the desire to become a major league pitcher that initially led him into the military. After gaining his degree and his hopes of being a major leaguer gone, he continued on with his military career. During that time, he had various assignments, an armored unit, anti-guerilla duty along the Colombian border, and then as a military ethics instructor. Soon after that he began sowing the seeds for a coup in 1992.

In 1982 he founded the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement. Through 1989-1990, he studied Political Science at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. “He led an unsuccessful military coup against President Carlos Andres Perez on February 4th, 1992, that launched him onto the political scene and, at the same time, earned him two short years in what he refers to as the ‘prison of dignity’" ( www.gosouthamerica.about.com ). In a display of support, “While Chavez was in prison, he videotaped a call for insurrection that was broadcasted at around four in the morning on November 27th, 1992, when a second unsuccessful coup d’etat was attempted” ( www.gosouthamerica.about.com ). Two years later, he was pardoned by President Caldera.

Once Chavez was released from his conviction, he started to organize a political party called the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), which would lead him to power four years later. “In November, 1998, a coalition of small leftist parties led by the MVR and under the umbrella of the Patriotic Pole won 34% of the seats in the National Congress and presented Chavez as its presidential candidate. After campaigning as ‘the scourge of the oligarchy and the champion of the poor’, Chavez came out victorious from the 1998 Presidential Elections with 56% of the votesthe largest majority in four decades ( www.gosouthamerica.about.com ).

Chavez’ speeches and actions are extreme to the right wing political parties of Venezuela and the United States, causing skepticism about his policies. The following description of Chavez is not how most politicians would like to be viewed, "A populist leader backed by leftist parties, Chavez has advocated a ‘third way’ between communism and capitalism", wrote Patrick Moser for the Agence France Presse. Since being elected, Chavez’ stile and personality have been very apparent. He has even managed to extend his love for baseball into politics. Chavez and Fedel Castro have played two baseball games, one when Chavez went to Cuba, another when Castro came to Caracas, with Cuba winning both games. Chavez pitched in both games for a few innings, while Castro, when he was in Venezuela took a turn at the plate. “To accelerate cooperation in Latin America, he visited Cuba, which has an antagonistic relationship with the United States, and he has a cordial personal relationship with Fidel Castro” ( www.bjreview.com ). Chavez’ relationship with Castro has been discouraged by the U.S. Chavez was also the first dignitary in ten years to visit Saddam Hussein in Iraq. These are the types of policies that have made him stand out.

Chavez is very much a peoples man; he has a weekly radio show that is called “Hello President”, and television show dubbed “Face to Face with the President, as well as a paper. Through each one he talks to the people, giving his opinions and the agenda for the Government, he also takes phone calls during the radio show to hear peoples problems and responds to letters. “Chavez also likes to spice his often lengthy and unusual speeches with quotes from the Bible, French poets, military overtones and repeated references to Simon Bolivar” ( www.bjreview.com ). Chavez also displays a very hands on approach to his presidency. On several occasions he has been out in the poor communities giving land deeds to people for newly allotted land, inspecting the work of the military, and talking to the common men and women of Venezuela. In his personal life he is married and has five children. His wife works as a public official also; she was elected in 2000. He also enjoys going home, where his father is currently the mayor of the town.

They call him the the new Che Guevara. Loved and loathed in equal measure, Venezuela's President Hugo Ch?z has become the poster boy of the international left, revered by his disciples at home but reviled in Washington. On the eve of Chavez's visit to Britain, foreign affairs editor Peter Beaumont travels to Caracas and asks if the Castro-loving, Bush-hating, head of state is a revolutionary democrat or a dictator in the making?

It is Sunday, and in Venezuela it's time to watch President Hugo Chávez's television program. This week he has taken his media roadshow to the town of El Tigre, where Aló Presidente is being broadcast from one of the cost-price supermarkets - known as Mercals - that he has set up to provide cheap food for the poor. As always, the show's main interest, its star, is the President himself.

In a red shirt worn over a red T-shirt, Chávez leaves his anchor's table and strides through the store. He picks goods off the shelf and reads aloud from the packets, which are printed with extracts from his constitution, and offers a little homily on each. He is accompanied by a wilting and sweating Daniel Ortega, the former Nicaraguan President and Sandinista leader, who looks on baffled as Chávez maintains a breathless commentary on the micro-management of his "Bolívarian revolution" by way of the food basket.

"I shouldn't say I hope you win, because they will accuse me of sticking my nose into Nicaraguan internal affairs," Chávez jokes with Ortega at one point. "But I hope you win!" However, it is not Nicaragua's elections in November Chávez has on his mind but Venezuela's presidential elections the following month. For that reason, he is showing off the quality of food he is providing for the poor, who he can reasonably expect to keep him in power. "Mmm ... smell that," says the President, opening a bottle of ketchup. "Mmmm!" Ortega affirms when the bottle is shoved under his nose.

A packet of coffee is presented next. "We should put on the packet that it is 100 per cent Venezuelan," says Chávez. "We are going to keep increasing production every year. First for national consumption, then we are going to do something else. Maybe start exporting. Dunno where..."

The whirlwind of words continues. Chávez talks to checkout staff . He puts his hand on a woman's arm as she explains that she has just completed her high school degree in one of the special schools Chávez has set up. "In July, 30,000 people are going to graduate," Chávez tells her. "Then you are going to go to a college of further education. Then you'll study nursing..." He greets and kisses other staff before returning to where he started, at his desk.

But there is another side to this touchy-feely President, friend of Venezuela's poor. That is the international revolutionary firebrand who talks about the "coming war with the U.S." for which he has warned his people to prepare; the friend of Cuba's Fidel Castro; and the figure at the apex of the rapid left-wing swing of South America. This is the man described by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as "Hitler" and by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the "most dangerous in the region" - a role that Chávez has gleefully and aggressively played up to, in turn calling Bush "Mr. Danger" and occasionally "asshole". (On Rice, Chávez has suggested "her problem" is sexual frustration.)

The ability of Chávez to prick the U.S. has been made possible not by a large and modern army, or weapons of mass destruction, or support for terror, but by the simple fact of America's large dependence on Venezuelan oil in the middle of an oil crisis. Chávez, a visceral opponent of the influence of America in a Latin America that, like his 19th-century predecessor Simón Bolívar, he would like to lead, has found his dangerous global stage.

As self-appointed champion against "the murderer" Bush, he has acted as ringmaster to those who loathe America's First Man: film stars, musicians, unionists, statesmen and writers. Later this month he arrives in London where he will be entertained by Mayor Ken Livingstone, a long-time Chávez supporter who has accused the U.S. of trying to undermine democracy in Venezuela. Chávez has constructed alliances with everyone the White House hates most - including the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Evo Morales, the left -wing Bolivian President and former coca farmers' leader. And Chávez has included Morales in his "axis of good" with Castro in his struggle with the U.S.

In doing so, Chávez has plugged himself into a series of key international issues that have given him an influence way beyond Venezuela's normal status in world affairs. On issues as diverse as the anti-globalization movement, Latin America's future political shape, oil, Iran, and even America's relationships with India and China, Chávez is there stirring it up.

At home, the people will tell you that all you need to know about the Presidente is on display in Aló Presidente. There he is: enthusiastic, verbose and sometimes staccato - the Castro of an era brought up on soap operas and reality TV. He grazes on ideas as they occur to him. Sometimes they run into the sand. He encourages and fires officials. He sketches the line of planned roads and jokes about his sex life. There are lengthy denunciations of the evils of capitalism and the U.S. He relates anecdotes from his life appropriate to the day's message. Sometimes he sings in a not unpleasant voice. But what keeps Venezuela's media and political classes glued to The Voice for hours on end is the knowledge that Chávez governs his country via his show. If it has not happened on Aló Presidente on Sunday, Venezuelans think, it has not really happened.

I start watching Aló Presidente near the ugly concrete center of the capital, Caracas, in a fast food restaurant smelling of criollo, the national dish. One customer stands staring at Chávez on the overhead TV screen. Later he says proudly: "That's my President, that is." I recognize the same look later, when I watch more of the show in an apartment in a slum barrio. It is the expression worn by many of those poor and ordinary Venezuelans invited on to Chávez's show and it borders on adoration. It is also a look of deep familiarity. He may be President, the faces say, but he's also one of us.

On average, Chávez's voice is present in their lives for 40 hours a week in speeches, proclamations and media events, including Aló Presidente. His critics, largely in the middle class-led opposition, have wondered when he finds time to be President . The chavistas (Chávez's supporters) call his opponents escualidos - "squalid-ones", after their efforts to depose him. They tried once with a farcical coup that lasted two days in 2002 and was defeated by street power when his supporters among the poor demanded to speak to Chávez: to hear from him that he had really "resigned". The escualidos tried again by way of the constitution, trying to force early elections with a recall referendum - a gambit that also failed.

Chávez's supporters have no doubts about how he spends his time. They are the main beneficiaries of his misiones, the multi-billion dollar programs that have provided the Mercals and schools and universities for the poor, financial benefits and healthcare at the hands of 17,000 guest Cuban doctors housed in the poorest areas. It is a support that verges on religious devotion. I hear, but cannot confirm, that there are some who pray to images of Chávez. And nowhere is that devotion more strongly felt than in the Caracas barrio of 23 de Enero (January 23 ) where Chávez himself votes. This is a place of decrepit tower blocks and box houses that hang precariously from the slopes of the hills surrounding the city. It is not just the danger of landslide that makes this a risky place. One housing block is known as the Seven Men and is home to the barrio's most dangerous gangsters. Across the barrio, huge colorful murals depict Chávez flanked by the two key figures in the mythology of his revolution: Che Guevara and Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century Venezuelan "liberator" of South America from Spanish colonial rule. It is to this slum that revolutionary tourists from around the world are taken by the chavistas to see Hugo's good works. For Chávez, like Ortega and the Sandinistas in the 1980s, has become a totem for the international left. They come to study for a few months at the "Bolívarian" University, live in the barrios or volunteer for one of his projects before going home as apostles of his revolution.

Many visitors are led first into the presence of Lisandro Perez, better known by his nom de guerre of "Mao", the chief of the municipality. "Mao's" office sums up the postmodern complexities of Chávez's idea of "21st -century socialism". The former high school teacher and left-wing guerrilla's walls are decorated with pictures of Chairman Mao, Che and Bolívar. There is a poster of Chávez too along with religious statuary and a wanted poster from "Mao's" days on the run.

Perez, 47, tells me he has been a rebel since the age of 12, imprisoned five times and tortured while in jail. As we talk, he reaches across to a tape recorder. I anticipate a revolutionary song, perhaps sung by Chávez . Instead it is the Beatles singing "With a Little Help from My Friends".

Chávez's Bolívarian revolution , as retold by "Mao", is a mishmash of contradictory ideas. Perez says: "Christ was the first and greatest communist," that multiparty politics have had their day, but that the revolution is also democratic. If the opposition won in December's presidential elections the chavistas would respect that victory.

He claims that the movement does not want to export its revolution to other countries in Latin America and then concludes by saying that it does. "In the phase that we are in, Hugo Chávez is very important because he has dared to set the agenda . ... Chávez is the absolute leader because in his role he has permitted the process to go forward. Political parties need to be abolished. We need mass organizations. People should direct the government. That's why Chávez says, 'You the people should govern'." But the truth, as everybody knows, is that Chávez governs almost alone through a politics of improvisation. Venezuelans see it weekly on TV.

Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the Tal Cual newspaper and putative presidential candidate, describes Chávez (in an introduction to Hugo Chávez sin Uniforme, a biography published last year) as a latterday Zelig - forever changing and forever interposing himself in each scene in history. Other Chávez watchers suggest a different model: that of Argentina's great populist, Juan Perón, and his wife Evita. The authors of Hugo Chávez sin Uniforme - Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka - cite the President's own psychiatrist, who credited Chávez with a "narcissistic personality".

While both Marcano and Barrera Tyszka are critics of Chávez, they believe he should be given credit for putting poverty on the agenda. I meet the authors, who are husband and wife, in a cafe in Los Palos Grandes, not far from the huge square with its obelisk, typically the scene of opposition rallies. It is the polar opposite to the blocks and narrow alleyways of the barrios. Here air-conditioned restaurants serve chilled wine to ladies who lunch and busy young executives and lawyers.

Though middle-class themselves, Marcano and Barrera Tyszka place themselves in the rare, and little populated, center of Venezuela's polarized political life. "I think most of the time he simply looks and behaves in the way he wants to be perceived," says Marcano. "When Chávez is meeting businessmen he dresses like a businessman. If he goes to meet the poor he wears his red shirt open at the neck. He wants to be loved."

But not loved by everyone of course. "He has always had the necessity of an enemy both external and internal," says Marcano. "It is an old trick of his. He calls Bush a murderer and gets the attention of the world and captivates the left." "How can you be a big hero," interjects Barrera Tyszka, "in the mould of Bolívar or Guevara, without an enemy?" Marcano believes, moreover, that beyond the theatrics there is a real Chávez who remains as yet unseen and untested. "I have always said that we will get to know the real Chávez only when he stops being popular... What will he do then?"

That is the big question. His bellicose rhetoric in opposition to the U.S. has seen an increase from 10 per cent to 30 per cent of Venezuelans who believe the U.S. will eventually invade. And fear is useful. Citing the U.S. threat, Chávez is militarizing Venezuelan society, raising a new territorial guard, which can be seen assiduously training in Venezuela's public spaces.

What does Chávez's revolution stand for? Is it Marxist or religious in its inspiration? Does it represent a new economics, as he insists, or is it dependent on the old capitalism he claims to despise? Then there is Chávez himself. Is he democratic or authoritarian? Above all, where does the rhetoric of his struggle with the U.S., with its threats, its risky alliances and ominous warnings of invasions and 1,000-year resistance wars, begin and end? Above all, what is real, and what theatrical performance? Certainly his left-wing credentials are not in doubt. Born in 1953 of mixed Amerindian, African and Spanish descent (his parents were schoolteachers in Sabineta), Chávez came from the group to whom he now appeals: the poor. As a boy he was sent to live with his grandmother, but it was the army - which he joined at 17 - that molded him, giving him the education that would otherwise have been unavailable. And it was as a young officer that Chávez first developed his ideas about "Bolívarianism" that later were forged into his Revolutionary Bolívarian Movement-200.

It was founded on a combination of the romantic ideals of South America's anti-colonial struggles and a strong sense of social justice. It found its expression amid the economic stagnation and collapse of party politics in the late 1980s, culminating in a failed neo-liberal experiment that made Venezuela's poor more impoverished.

The scene was set, in 1992, for an attempted coup by Chávez and his supporters in the military. It ran into the ground when the unit commanded by Chávez failed to seize the initiative in the capital. To avoid further bloodshed, the captured Chávez was put on TV. What happened next was to launch his career as a popular leader. The handsome and media-friendly young officer asked his soldiers to stand down, famously telling the country that he had failed "por ahora" - for now. And, as Chávez the failed golpista was jailed, Chávez the democrat was born. The two characters have never been reconciled.

As a democrat, Chávez has won election after election largely fair and square since his first campaign in 1998. There are few egregious human rights abuses, little serious repression and, despite a new media law, Venezuela enjoys a lively and usually critical press.

If the middle class-led opposition has failed to remove him democratically it is not because of widespread skulduggery; it is because its movement is fragmented and represents, for all its claims to the contrary, a minority . But there is another prism through which Chávez's democratic credentials look more dubious. On top of his leadership of the failed coup, and his relationships with left-wing revolutionary guerrillas, there is the fact that in his seven years in power he has consolidated personal control over all of Venezuela's institutions.

The army answers to Chávez, as does the central bank, the treasury and the state oil-company PDVSA, which provides the vast bulk of Venezuela's revenue as the world's fifth-largest oil exporter. In 2002, when many members of the 19,000-strong company joined a lock-out strike in support of calling early elections to oust him, he fired them all, replacing them with chavistas. He has packed the judiciary with his supporters and rewritten the constitution to suit his ends. Most worryingly, he has talked about finessing the constitution to enable him to stay in office until 2030.

And it is not just because of his political inclinations that Chávez appears to be being pulled in contrary directions - between the authoritarianism of the classic South American caudillo (strongman) and democrat. His personality too appears to be elusive and, say observers, deeply unpredictable.

For a dictator in the making, as his opponents claim he is, he may have the rhetoric and perhaps some of the inclinations of a caudillo, but his record in confrontation has been more mixed. When Chávez began reallocating land from major landowners to the poor , whom he had encouraged to squat, it looked like the end for Venezuela's major estates - the latifundios - including the British-owned Vesty. But Chávez stopped short. For now the policy is one of negotiation, allowing the big businesses to keep some land in exchange for giving up a little. Then there was the confrontation with the middle classes, which resulted in the names of anyone who had signed a petition for a referendum demanding Chávez's recall (popularly known as la lista) being published by a prominent Chávez supporter. This so-called "Tascón list" was subsequently used to deny signatories government jobs and contracts. It looked like an old-fashioned purge.

On the steep, grassy banks of the busy autopista linking Caracas and the coast, I meet a victim of the Tascón list at an opposition demonstration. They are a strange group, mostly older and well-dressed professionals and well-to-do Caracas housewives, some of them in T-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to the "National Commando of the Resistance". It is not a formation, you imagine, that scares Chávez.

Among them is Rodello Gonzales Martinez, 55, a former commercial pilot who had signed la lista in 2003-04. "When I went to reapply for my license and medical, nothing happened for a long time. I didn't get a reply," he says. "When I finally went to the Ministry of Transportation in person the girl asked for my I.D. She typed in my name and said: 'You're on the list' and ripped up my application in front of my face."

It is a familiar story, although whether it is as widespread as the opposition claims is impossible to tell. Again Chávez backed down, publicly calling on his supporters to stop using the list to punish escualidos - one of a series of measures to court the middle classes.

Most telling , there is evidence that, despite his tough language with the U.S. and a flurry of "deals" to sell his oil elsewhere, he has done little to restructure Venezuela's oil business and steer it away from the convenient flow of America's billions that are paying for his revolution.

It is contradictory, like so much in the Bolívarian Revolution. Yet Alberto Garrido, one of Venezuela's most respected political analysts, believes it is possible to reconcile the two Chávezes. "Chávez has threatened to blow up his own oil installations in the event of an American invasion. You can consider it rhetoric, but it is not really that. He is intent on destroying imperialism. By that he means the 'empire of the U.S.'. His discourse doesn't include Europe. It is very localized. But while the reality is Latin America's independence from U.S. influence, the reality is changeable. Chávez is tactically pragmatic, but strategically obsessive. Since he is pragmatic, he will continue selling oil to the U.S. and resist pressure from more radical sectors of his movement to stop.

"What needs to be understood is that his main interest is geopolitical. Everything that can be seen as ambiguous needs to be recognized as the fact he is leading a transitional phase. He will allow the U.S. to keep paying for his oil to strengthen his project. His project - he has said it himself - will be 20-30 years in the making."

It is the message that is visible on children's singlets being sold by a street vendor at a chavista rally. Beneath screenprinted images of Chávez's face the legend reads : 2030. But what you realize, walking with these young people through Caracas's dirty streets behind lorries blasting out music and bands of drummers, is that, for all the contradictions of his revolution, Chávez has harnessed the energy of the impoverished majority. The noisy good humor of the thousands who march, the dynamism, is in stark contrast to a rival rally called by the opposition. The chavistas march and sing and fill the capital's streets, the middle classes opt to lie down and play dead.

It is hot and humid in Caracas: the rainy season has yet to come. It is a national holiday and so those who can afford it have driven to the beaches. The alternative is the Magic Mountain, an amusement park in the foothills of the Andes, a cable car ride above the capital. It is not cheap, so most of those queuing for the ride up above the forested slopes are middle class. They stroll along paths above a plunging valley filled with the weekend villas of the wealthy. Inside its alpine-themed restaurant, Juan Garcia, an electrical engineer, is eating a picnic with his two children.

"We like to come when it's cool," says Juan, 43, a fierce opponent of Chávez. "I am completely against him. He is pushing our country into something that it's not. The social struggle that he talks about among Venezuela's classes - before he came it did not exist. He has strengthened the hate between the poor and the rich. He gives the impression that if they follow him they can all wear white clothes and drive nice cars. Unfortunately I don't think that it is going to stop. Once the idea has been sold there is no end to it."

Not everyone on the Magic Mountain agrees. Vanessa Aular, a student and a single mother, has taken her four-yearold son Antoine Escobar up the cable car for a treat. An admirer of Chávez, Vanessa was sent to Cuba on a government scheme to train as a social worker. "Where I have really benefited," she says, "is with my son. He needed to have his tonsils out, which would have been difficult for us before Chávez. Our neighbors have got housing benefit for the first time and a neighbor is going to Cuba for an eye operation."

Chávez's popularity is not, as the fragmenting opposition desperately hopes, built on a fake premise. What Venezuela's underclasses recognize is that he is no forgery. They see it in his dark skin, his poor background and in his manners. His aspirations are also theirs: the poor boy who joined the army in the hope of becoming a baseball star, who instead got himself the kind of education he is now offering to them. He is the child from the shack who rose to the stuccoed grandeur of the Miraflores Palace.

This resonates with his core constituency. For the poor, who have benefited from his seven years in power, democracy means social inclusion - not who controls the institutions that in Venezuela have often been either weak or hopelessly corrupt.

At present that social inclusion means Chávez's misiones, which like the Mercals alleviate poverty, offering free and widespread healthcare, provided by 17,000 Cuban doctors, access to education, housing titles, land ownership and cheap start-up loans for businesses. It is on these schemes - paid for by the oil receipts of the past two years - that Chávez's popularity is based. And it is not just in Venezuela. Chávez spends his billions elsewhere in the region. He buys debt from neighboring countries, funds projects, supports parties in the left's new rise to power in Latin America. It is this that is the real source of friction with the U.S. - that a revolutionary regime, with deep pockets filled with its own dollars, is undermining U.S. policy, not least in fronting the resistance to the creation of the neo-liberal Free Trade Area of the Americas. Chávez's message, as in the barrios, is social justice. But is that social justice policy working?

I went to the barrio of Petare, without the presence of chavista minders, where people were more free to talk, to try to find out. It is a place not much different from the 23 de Enero barrio - though it lacks the high-rises. The hairdressing salon where Miriam Josefina Mejillas, 34, works is open to the street. She shops in the local Mercal and gets free medical treatment for her family from the Cuban doctors. She is defensive about criticism of Chávez, although she recognizes the country's deep and lasting problems.

Mostly, however, she is grateful. "I don't think everything in this country is his fault. He is a human being just like us. There are lots of crises but they are not his fault. There are all these people who say because of Chávez they don't have work. But there are people around him who are traitors to him." It is a familiar refrain among Chávez's least well-off supporters . If there are faults with the Bolívarian Revolution, they say, it is only because the President is surrounded by bad advisers and is not hearing about their problems. If he knew, they argue, he would intervene.

There may be some truth in this. In a movement largely suspicious of the technocrats and political classes who once ran the country, there is a shortage of expertise. "Chávez has said in his own words that the three enemies of his revolution are corruption, inefficiency and bureaucracy," says Alberto Garrido. "He also criticizes nepotism. The management of this state is absolutely terrible. He trusts a small group of allies unconditionally.

"Chávez is still in the 'charismatic phase' where he is above good and bad for his people and he has cleverly separated himself from the image of inefficiency and corruption of his government. But that cannot be eternal. If he does not quickly succeed in restructuring the country's problems, people will start losing hope in him. That is his black spot. If he doesn't stop that mismanagement it will stop him." While Chávez has undertaken a remarkable intervention on the level of primary assistance, many even among those who support him are concerned that, if and when oil prices drop from their record levels, there will be little left to see of his revolution. One day the Cuban doctors, who have transformed primary healthcare, will go home. While Chávez has been busy educating a few thousand Venezuelan doctors, all his billions of oil money have not rebuilt the decrepit hospitals.

The Mercals are dependent on oil largesse and there is evidence that the importing of cheaper food is undermining the fragile farming and agriculture sectors. While the Bolívarian schools and universities have transformed the literacy of the poor, the biggest problem is highlighted by their adult graduates. Few new jobs have been created by the revolution, which has done little to diversify the economy.

The chavistas say that this is missing the point. Chávez's vision is not about outdated Western political and economic models; it is about creating revolutionary "fusion" and breaking new ground. In Latin America, at least, his example is influential most notably with Bolivia's Evo Morales. Just last week Morales nationalized his natural gas industry, sending in troops to secure production and telling foreign companies to leave if they did not comply.

Amid all the threats of economic meltdown and utopian promises, it is Lopez Maya who seems to present the most honest assessment of the likely prospects. "Venezuela has a lot of money because of oil," she says. "But in two years the prospects could be very different. It is very difficult to assess the performance of the government. In the past, when the oil price has dropped the defects of our government strategy have emerged. Now the question is: is Chávez doing a good job or is it just the same again?"

Hugo's there: A presidential life.

Born: July 28, 1954.

Education: Graduated at 17 with science degree from Daniel Florencio O'Leary School in Barinas, masters in military science and engineering by the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in 1975. Also studied political science at Simon Bolivar University.

Family: Two daughters and a son by his first marriage; a daughter by his second marriage to Marisabel Rodriguez de Chavez, a journalist, from whom he is now separated.

They say: "He's a person who was elected legally - just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally." - U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

News: A veteran Latin America correspondent on the past, present, and possible future of Venezuela's president.

What to make of Hugo Chavez? By the lights of the Bush administration, the President of Venezuela is an anti-American rabble rouser, a devoted friend to the loathed Fidel Castro, a rogue state unto himself, given to playing politics with Venezuela's oil industry, which supplies about 15 percent of the U.S.'s crude. To his increasingly frustrated political opponents in Venezuela, Chavez, a former army colonel, is a leftist demagogue who stirred up a wave of class and racial resentments and rode it to the presidency, and who, in office, has dealt himself new powers at every chance, on his way to becoming an out-and-out caudillo. And to a certain school of international opinion, exemplified by The Economist magazine, Chavez is an wacky utopian who sooner or later will run the Venezuelan economy into the ground.

True, Chavez is, for a world leader, refreshingly free with his opinions of the Bush administration. (And often, as at the United Nations last month, entertainingly so.) He makes a show of railing against US "imperialism," cheerfully baits and ridicules George W. Bush, and matter-of-factly denounces the U.S. as a "terrorist state." Most days, it seems, he surfaces somewhere in the media alleging dark White House plots against his life. (Pace Pat Robertson, this seems farfetched.) And he's quite convinced that the Bush administration backed, or at least countenanced, a coup attempt against him in 2002 (which seems quite plausible). Also true, his governing style is frankly populist, and he routinely excoriates Venezuela's elite class, which dominates the political opposition and which, until the rise of Chavez, dominated the country's politics. Certain of his reform laws—in particular one regulating the media and another reshuffling the judiciary—have drawn protests from international rights groups. And yes, there's the matter of la lista, the list of signatures submitted in 2004 to demand a referendum on Chavez's recall, which, so signatories claim, now functions as a black list, deployed by the Chavez government to deny them jobs and services.

Then again, there's no gainsaying the fact that Chavez first won office, in 1998, in a fair election with 56 percent of the vote, or that since then he has prevailed in several electoral tests—not to mention a general strike and a coup attempt—growing steadily in popularity each time. Nor is there any denying that he has brought into the democratic process, for the first time, large numbers of Venezuela's poor, most of whom live in the ranchos, or shanty towns, that ring the cities. (As for his alleged class baiting, in a country where the poor account for about 80 percent of the population and where income inequality is extreme and glaring, democratic politics can’t help but involve issues of class—and race: Venezuela's poor are disproportionately black and indigenous.) Through a string of "missions" the Chavez government has brought healthcare and education to many of the ranchos and rural areas, which before now have seen little of either. The missions are financed by proceeds from Venezuela's oil industry, control of which Chavez seized after the 2002 (another sore point for opponents), and which, against expectation, is humming along quite nicely. (Also worth noting: for all that he fulminates against "neo-liberalist" free trade, and for all that he has expanded the role of the state in Venezuela's economy, Chavez's economic policy is fairly eclectic: he's pushed hard to have Venezuela admitted to Mercosur, the South American free trade bloc, and he's an energetic courtier of foreign investment.)

That Chavez is genuinely popular in Venezuela, and increasingly throughout Latin America, is cause for neither surprise nor alarm, according to Richard Gott, whose book, Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution (Verso), recently updated and reissued, is the first account in English to place Chavez in historical and intellectual perspective. In Gott’s sympathetic account, Chavez is a magnetic personality of the Clintonian type, “a genuinely original figure in Latin America,” a radical left-wing nationalist, to be sure, but a pragmatic improviser, and certainly no dogmatic socialist. Chavez’s program for Venezuela remains somewhat vague, even to the man himself, but his concern for the country’s poor and marginalized is, in Gott's view, sincere and his vocation is essentially democratic.

Gott, who has been reporting on Latin America for four decades, is a former correspondent and features editor for the London Guardian. He’s the author of Guerrilla Movements in Latin America and Cuba: A New History, among other books. He talked to Mother Jones recently by phone from his home in London.

Richard Gott: You have to understand the fear that sweeps Latin America whenever a progressive government comes to power. Chavez has to take the possibility of assassination very seriously. He has now expressed his great solidarity with the Cuban revolution and gone so far as to say that if the United States were to invade Cuba then Venezuela would be at Cuba's side. Even so, to my mind, the idea that the United States is planning to do assassinate him seems highly improbable. But I think for Chavez it's a very real possibility.

MJ: Still, there's clearly no love lost between Chavez and the United States government. Why does Chavez delight in provoking the Americans?

RG: Well, I think he gets out of it a lot of popularity at home. People in the United States tend not to appreciate how extremely disliked they are in much of the world and particularly in Latin America, for old-fashioned historical reasons. The United States has intervened all over Latin America for more than 100 years. They're still in Cuba at the base in Guantanamo, since 1898. So there's this tremendous legacy of hostility that's absolutely open to any progressive regime to exploit.

MJ:And Pat Robertson's recent comments—that the US should go ahead and take him out—presumably played into that hostility.

RG: Yes, it's obviously very convenient when the United States lives up to its stereotype as a Big Brother that's prone to intervene at any given moment. But when Chavez started six or seven years ago he didn't have this fearsome anti-American rhetoric that he has today. He unleashes it today because he has good reason to believe the Americans knew about the coup in 2002 and didn't do anything to warn him, or prevent it. So he gets a lot of mileage out of pushing a strongly anti-American line, and specifically an anti-Bush, anti-neoconservative line. But gets on well with Jimmy Carter and with Clinton—you know, with less extreme figures.

MJ: A big irritant for the United States, of course, is Chavez's closeness to Fidel Castro. What should we make of that relationship?

RG: One tends to forget in the United States or in Europe how popular and significant Castro is for Latin America. He remains this extraordinary bulwark against the United States, and he's regarded as the great Latin American figure of the 20th century. And Chavez belongs to a strand in Venezuelan life, and Latin American life, essentially of nationalism, and socialism, and support for the Cuban revolution, and he's never made any secret of that. But of course he has no plans to emulate the particular Soviet form of the Cuban economy, or the particular form of Cuba's political arrangements, which owe a lot to the fact that it's under an embargo and in a sort of state of war. But he does appreciate Castro's advice; they talk on the phone every night. They're very, very close.

RG: No. Anyone who is friendly to Cuba becomes an enemy of the Miami-Cuban mafia, and that's what's wagging the American policy towards Latin America. Chavez, who has teamed up with Castro on many many things, is implicitly just another enemy. But when you look at it—has Chavez expropriated American companies? No. Has he affected American business interests? No, he hasn't. There's still McDonald's in Caracas, and you can still be an American businessman in Venezuela.

MJ: But it's not just the Miami Cubans who dislike Chavez. The English-language media is pretty hostile towards him.

RG: Yes, that's true. For example, the correspondents for the Economist and the Financial Times in Caracas during the Chavez era—it's been the same guys throughout--are essentially disillusioned leftists of yesteryear who've moved over to the right. They've accepted the arguments of the opposition and have been endlessly critical of Chavez since the beginning, but always adopting the latest opposition line. And the opposition, which is essentially the Venezuelan elite, is now saying Chavez is moving to the left and he's going to show his true socialist colors. Okay, it's true that Chavez, for the first time this year, has used the word "socialism"—he talks about a "21st Century Socialism"—but he's given absolutely no indication that he wants to emulate Soviet socialism, Cuban socialism, or indeed the sort of state capitalism that existed in Europe for much of the late 20th century.

MJ: Do you have a sense—for that matter, does he have a sense—of what he means by "21st century socialism"?

RG: No, I don't think he does. He is keen on buzzwords like "participation," he talks a lot about "participatory democracy," but he hasn't really fleshed out these ideas. He likes the idea that workers' representatives should be on the boards of companies, which is quite an old-fashioned and interesting idea. But he's not particularly interested in trade unions themselves becoming a significant force. He's a very unusual leftist in the sense that he's not much interested in trade unions or political parties.

MJ: Early on in the book you call him a "genuinely original figure" in Latin America. In what sense is he that?

RG: He certainly comes from an unusual background. It's unusual to have a progressive military figure, although there have been half a dozen or so figures in the 20th century—[Omar] Torrijos, in Panama, for example—who emerged from the military and established progressive military regimes. What I find interesting about him is his open-mindedness and his willingness to experiment. He arrived on the scene without any dogmatic ideas. One of his principal heroes is Simon Rodriguez, this extraordinary 19th century figure who was Simon Bolivar's tutor. He had this wonderful slogan that Latin America had to be "original." He had a debate with Bolivar, who was a child of the European Enlightenment, influenced by the French Revolution, and who wanted to import a lot of those ideas into Latin America. Simon Rodriguez said, No, we can't import them wholesale into Latin America; we have to think of original ways of dealing with the problems of our continent on our own. I think Chavez has taken that to heart. He's always casting around for ideas. He's one of the most open-minded Latin American leaders I've ever come across. Whenever you see him he says, "What's new? What's happening? What books should I be reading?"

MJ: And yet he very deliberately styles himself as an heir to Simon Bolivar, the great 19th century hero of Latin American independence. In what sense are Chavez and his project for Venezuela "Bolivarian"?

RG: I think he still recognizes the significance of the ideas of Bolivar. He's more interested in culture than in economics. All leftist revolutions in the past have been based on an economic restructuring of society. Chavez isn't so fascinated by that, but he is fascinated by the need for Latin America to reestablish its cultural identity outside of American cultural imperialism—everybody watching American TV and American movies. He's saying No, we should be thinking about Latin America and thinking about our own culture. He's set up a television channel called Vive, which is devoted to bringing aspects of Venezuelan culture to the screen. He has also promoted the television station Telesur, the idea being to have a Latin American perspective on the news, and he's made a deal with Iran whereby Venezuelans are learning from the Iranians how to make cartoon films, in order to escape from the American idea that everything has to be Walt Disney.

MJ: Chavez remains popular in Venezuela. How is he viewed in Latin America more broadly?

RG: Yes, I think it's changed significantly in the years he's been in power. To begin with they didn't really know what to make of him, and it took them quite a long time to figure out that he was a very serious and intelligent politician. I suppose, too, that after a while his capacity to survive in itself becomes impressive, and the fact that he has not only survived but continues to be high in the opinion polls, winning election after election, gives him added credibility in the rest of Latin America.

MJ: As you say, his resiliency has been extraordinary. How has he managed to survive—thrive, even?

RG: Well, two things are absolutely crucial. One is that he has the support of the great mass of the people, who are poor, and also black and Indian. There’s a really interesting racist element to politics in Venezuela, and in the rest of Latin America. So Chavez has this huge popularity among the poor, and he’s seen to be delivering. And even where he’s not delivering, they believe that he will. The other thing of course is that he has the absolutely solid backing of the armed forces. The coup in 2002 allowed him to fire 60 generals and to get rid of the entire upper reaches of the armed forces. So the people running the army today are absolutely unconditional supporters of Chavez. Not only that, he's extremely popular with the troops, because they come from the poor and forgotten parts of the population, and Chavez always makes huge efforts to make sure he talks not just to the generals but also to the troops.

MJ: Of course Chavez is a former soldier himself. To what extent does that explain who he is and where he comes from?

RG: I think it's very significant indeed. The Venezuelan military is unlike other militaries. They've often had relationships with the left. They are simply not the sort of generals with dark glasses that one associates with Chile and Argentina, say, and they tend to come not necessarily from the higher social strata, they often come from the provinces. It's been quite a democratic army. They also in the 1970s and 1980s started studying at the universities and colleges, and became somewhat integrated into civilian life.

You have to bear in mind, too, that entire political structure of Venezuela has collapsed, the old political parties have disappeared, evaporated, and Chavez hasn't really created much of a new organized political movement of his own. The bureaucracy is in the hands of the middle-class opposition, and it's very difficult to get any sort of reform through the existing government machine, so Chavez does rely on the military to get things done, as his own political party.

MJ: The military aside, lacking an organized political movement he seems to hold on in part through sheer force of personality. Is there a danger that when he withdraws from the scene, voluntarily or not, his reforms and achievements will go with him?

RG: I think that's a very legitimate question. Things are better from that point of view than they were four or five years ago. I think if Chavez had disappeared even two or three years ago, that would have been the end of that. I think now that things are becoming more organized, less chaotic, the regime looks stable, and people are beginning to join in on the grounds that this is going to last. For a long time members of the opposition said, we're going to get rid of Chavez tomorrow, and so they waited till tomorrow came. But when that didn't happen, I think a lot of people who weren't particularly keen on Chavez are now beginning to realize that this is the government they're going to have to deal with for the next ten years. And I think that if Chavez disappeared tomorrow, there are enough good, competent people, and that the system is now stable enough, and that it will continue. I think what is significant is that there has been a revolution, a collapse of the ancien regime, so it's impossible to imagine going back to the system that existed before.

MJ: Not least because Chavez has brought into politics a large portion of the population—the poor—that wasn't involved before.

RG: Yes, I think that may turn out to be Chavez's most significant achievement. In a way that's what made the old, elitist opposition unhappy -- this democratization of the country, bringing in this underclass, even a lumpen class, into the body politic. A lot of the programs, the projects he's developed—not just the health programs but the education programs, too—they're really aimed at the 16-25 age group, the young people who weren't getting into college or into training. He's making sure that a huge amount of money will be spent on this one generation to get them into education, into work, and essentially into politics, because they're the people who will ultimately decide the nature of the system.

MJ: Now, he's able to make this huge investment because Venezuela is flush with oil money. What happens if and when that flow of money slows?

RG: Well, I don't think the price of oil is going to come down in the foreseeable future, and anyway he is only trying to do this as a crash program for one generation. After that, Venezuelans will have to decide which direction to go in. But he will have a much larger group of motivated people than existed in the 20th century.

MJ: You talk about Chavez's "new politics of oil." What's been his innovation there?

RG: First of all came the discovery, in the 1980s, that simply nationalizing the oil industry didn't result in huge flows of money for development, for the simple reason that the people who took over the industry ran it the same way it had been run in the days of Shell and Exxon, when the money disappeared into speculation or into the hands of the directors. Chavez has completely altered the way the oil company is run, pointing out that the money ought to be invested in Venezuela.

MJ: It's never healthy for an economy to rely to heavily on one industry, as Venezuela does on oil. Is the Chavez government working to diversify the economy?

RG: Absolutely. A lot depends on this new generation of people emerging, and then the possibility of investing in other activities. Chavez has the old, sort of 19th century belief in trying to develop the infrastructure all over the country, to try to reverse the movement of people from the countryside to the cities. And I think his scheme is to try to revive local economies and make the countryside more of a pole of development so that people don't endlessly drift into the cities, which is of course the bane of the whole of Latin America, not just Venezuela.

MJ: So, Chavez came into office promising radical reform—a Bolivarian revolution. Has he delivered?

RG: I think the jury is still out on the entire project. It's extremely open-ended as to where it's going to go, and I'm sure it's going to change and develop in time. Chavez is a very pragmatic leader who's moving forward gradually on a number of fronts but doesn't have any kind of blueprint for the eventual organization of society in Venezuela. For example, on two or three cases they've taken over factories that have collapsed and the workers have demanded that they should be taken over. I don't think that's the model, but it's happening. So I think there'll be a sort of pluralism of different projects, some cooperative, some state-owned, some privately owned. That's more or less what's happening at the moment and I expect that to continue. I think that because they depend so much on oil and it takes time to develop alternative economic activities it remains to be seen how all that will work.

MJ: Have the poor and historically disenfranchised seen real gains under Chavez?

RG: They've seen a large amount in terms of health and education in the shanty towns. That is very visible, and it's extraordinary. And the ones who haven't got it yet know about it and they're waiting for it and agitating for it to arrive. So, for example, I went to a shanty town outside Caracas next two or three months ago and nothing had happened, and they were extremely anxious for it to happen. They were sending protest demonstrations to the local mayor asking, when are the Cuban doctors going to come, and when is the education scheme going to reach our village. They are very well aware that improvements are in the offing and that they're going to come, though they obviously haven't got everywhere yet. I think the employment program is still in its infancy; getting people into jobs—that still has a long way to go.

MJ: The standard US line on Chavez is that his instincts are essentially autocratic. What do you make of that?

RG: I think it's entirely invented. It's true that he is a military figure who expects his orders to be obeyed. The two items that are endlessly picked on by the opposition are [his reforms of] the media and the judiciary. The judiciary was an unbelievable mess under the ancien regime. It has been reformed, they have managed to get control of it, and I think you'd expect any government to do that if it's building on the ruins of the past. You're not going to get a situation where the corrupt judges of the past have an influence over the system. You can call it raison d'etat if you like, but it seems to me to be a perfectly understandable measure for the government to take. I seem to remember that Franklin D. Roosevelt did something similar in the 1930s.

The complaint about the media law is a completely ridiculous red herring. All they've done is introduce some legislation that's probably less repressive than what we have in Western Europe. It's really the modern way of introducing a certain amount of regulation into television in a world that had hitherto been totally unbridled. And indeed anyone knows who's been there the media are having a field day and are about 80 percent anti-Chavez. So there isn't much to complain about there.

MJ: If Chavez's revolution succeeds, what do you think Venezuela look like ten years from now?

RG: I think Venezuela will be a model for the rest of Latin America—a society that's come to terms with its black and indigenous poverty-stricken populations, and where those populations participate fully in the democratic process. Because it's a new generation it's a little open-ended as to what will happen, but Chavez recognizes that. He says "Let the people decide," and I think he means it.

'I have more optimism every day. Joyful! Taking care of people! Solving problems. Looking to the future.' Alma Guillermoprieto hears an upbeat Hugo Chavez address his nation on the radio, and assesses his career On the reality show that Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, stages at irregular but frequent intervals for the benefit of his nation, he is the only star. Most Sundays, he can be seen on the all-day programme Alo Presidente. He might reminisce about an episode of his past life, like the failed military golpe, or coup, that first brought him to public attention back in 1992, when he was an idealistic lieutenant colonel.

Chavez discourses on politics, Jesus Christ, history, the week's events, baseball and, at great length, himself. When he takes over all the private television stations for a talk – forming a "national network" – he is usually on his own.

"Hello, my friends! A very good evening to you... We're living in a peak moment of Venezuela's history, and all Venezolanas must be worthy of the peak of this supreme moment. Keep your eye peeled. Alert. Careful, because there's many campaigns that try to disinform, every day. So we revolutionaries must be clear about this. We Bolivarians must be very clear. What is going on? What path is the revolution taking?

"I have more optimism every day. More joyfulness every day: this morning I was singing, and this evening I was singing, some song or another. Perhaps I'll remember it later. Singing! Joyful! Taking care of people! Solving problems. Looking to the future."

Ten years ago, a failed golpista and retired military man, Chavez was dependent on friends for pocket money and transportation. Today, at 51, he heads a state with one of the world's great cash flows, enjoys popularity ratings of 80 per cent, faces a vehement but demoralised and perhaps terminally disorganised opposition, and appears to be a magnet to women.

Hugo Chavez was born into a dirt-poor family at a time when oil was making his country immensely rich. His father, Hugo Sr, qualified as a rural schoolteacher, but he still didn't earn enough to keep his family. The younger Chavez decided to apply to the army academy in Caracas.

In their indispensable biography, Hugo Chavez sin uniforme, Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka provide an account of the backcountry cadet. He loves the army, feels at home in it, graduates eighth in his class. He plays baseball, the national sport, better than well. He is articulate and likable, and by the age of 21, having obtained a degree in army engineering, with a major in communications, he is the star of his own radio programme.

For nearly 20 years Chavez would foster his vague, romantic plot, inspired not by Marxism or any other ideology but by intellectual politicians and 19th century fighters who were his heroes.

Supreme among them is Simon Bolivar the daring, restless hero who liberated the Andean provinces one by one from the Spanish crown, and who realised too late that, once separated, the new nations of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia would never coalesce into the grand union he had dreamed of.

Chavez worships Bolivar, memorises his proclamations. Once in power, he would also amend the name of his country to "The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela".

At 23, Chavez formed his first clandestine cell within the army, worked constantly to expand it, travelled the country consolidating a core group of leftist conspirators who dreamed with him of a better Venezuela and of their heroic role in creating it.

As Chavez grew up he benefited from the stability and modernisation provided by the civilian regimes that followed the Perez military dictatorship. The country's enviable political stability was made possible in large part by the abundance of oil that left its seaports in those years.

But there was a great deal of corruption, a great deal of waste, and, as the rural population migrated toward the oil territories and Caracas, a huge accumulation of urban poverty and a dearth of public policy to deal with the needs of the poor.

Not all the oil income was lost to corruption and profligacy, though: ambitious educational systems, highways, museums, dams, and health and housing programs were created for a population that multiplied too quickly. (The last census counted some 25 million people.)

The last of the big public spenders was Carlos Andres Perez (CAP, as he is called), who nationalised the oil industry. Corruption became a way of life, and by the time Perez left office in 1979, the two-party system in Venezuela seemed bankrupt.

Venezuela produces very little of export value other than oil. The state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, SA, or PDVSA, accounts for 80 per cent of export income, 27 per cent of the gross national product, and 40 per cent of the government budget.

Those funds were insufficient to finance CAP's tireless spending: he left his successor to deal with the resulting inflation, crushing debt, high unemployment, and an empty treasury.

In 1988, CAP campaigned for, and won, a second term in office. A convert by then to the market approach known as the Washington consensus, he declared himself in favour of a currency devaluation, price hikes on all public services and an end to governement subsidies.

Three weeks later, the inhabitants of Caracas staged the first riot of the century. Descending from the steep hills to which they are normally confined, thousands of caraquenos set fire to entire city blocks and looted whatever they could find.

Dozens of people had already died by the time the president called out the troops and declared a state of siege. When it was all over, more than 250 people were dead, and Hugo Chavez was left with the feeling that, as he told Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he had missed "the strategic minute": desperately poor people were in worse straits than usual and the government was failing them, imposing austerity measures when it was emergency aid that was called for and then shooting them when they rebelled. Politicians were corrupt, at the service of the rich, and incompetent to boot. The civilian two-party system Chavez had known all his life was exhausted. It was time for him to make his entrance, he thought, and he had missed his cue.

When he at last staged his coup attempt on 4 February, 1992, the uprising itself was a complete failure.

His longtime co-conspirators fought bravely in other parts of the country, but the army did not split, and in Caracas itself Chavez surrendered with barely a shot fired.

Nevertheless, his fortune was made. On the morning following his surrender the army leaders allowed him to make a live televised statement about the failed coup, intending that he would discourage the remaining rebels. He talked for less than 90 seconds, but it was enough for him to establish an emotional connection with his viewers so intense as to guarantee him a permanent place in national politics.

"For now", the conspiracy had failed, he said. He and his comrades were charged merely with "rebellion". Two years later he was released from jail, and granted an honorable retirement from the service. Four years after that, in 1998, he put himself at the front of his movement, and won 56 per cent of the vote in the December presidential elections.

The size of Chavez' victory is interesting, because in the six years he has been in power he has held various sorts of elections (including one presidential election, one to elect a constituent assembly, and two referendums) and the percentage of his vote has never reached 60.

In a country where his target audience of the poor and the very poor together made up around 68 per cent of the population last year, nearly half the people who show up at the polls on election day still refuse to vote for him. And nearly three quarters of the adult population has stayed away from recent elections.

Chavez, who knows the voting results well, plays a high-risk game: he governs not as if he were the president of a divided nation, but as if he had a national mandate to carry out his Bolivarian revolution.

The definition of the president's ongoing Revolucion Bolivariana remains hazy. Like Bolivar, he would like to unify Latin America. In Venezuela he is the centre of power: Chavez has said in various contexts and in several ways that he is not averse to the word caudillo, or strongman.

The revolution's first priority is the poor. It has some elements of socialism. Sometimes it is anti-capitalist, and sometimes not: Chavez, who talks often of his own religious faith, has referred to capitalism as el demonio, but a great many businessmen have prospered under his rule, and he has made it clear that he sees a significant role for the private sector and, most particularly, for foreign investment. What there does not appear to be much room for is the opposition.

Within three months of his inauguration the new president won a referendum authorising him to call a constitutional convention, which replaced the "moribund" old charter with one that concentrates a great deal of power in his hands, and also threatens the very existence of an opposition: government financing of political parties' electoral campaigns is now outlawed.

In the course of a lengthy and high-risk, confrontation with the state oil company, PDVSA, Chavez also replaced the old meritocracy with his own directorate. This has, essentially, allowed him to run a foreign policy based on oil sales to poor countries on highly favorable terms (and in exchange for their support in international politics), and to use oil income to finance his various domestic projects.

Washington, in turn, is hampered in its foreign policy toward Caracas. Although the Bush administration appears to loathe Chavez and his pro-Castro policies, nearly 15 per cent of the US oil supply comes from Venezuela.

The instrument most frequently used by Hugo Chavez against his opponents is known everywhere simply as la lista – the list of signatures submitted in 2004 to demand a referendum on Chavez's recall.

People on the list cannot get government jobs, or qualify for many of Chavez's public welfare programs, or obtain government contracts. Its use was once surreptitious; officials asked for one's cedula, or ID/voter registration card, and the number was checked against la lista. But since December, when the list was put on the Internet by a chavista member of the National Assembly, it is used openly.

It is too soon to judge how well the many ambitious social welfare and education programs launched by Chavez – they are known as misiones – have succeeded in redressing Venezuela's deep inequalities, but they suffer already from an essential flaw: as with everything else Chavez creates, their existence depends on him.

This would seem to be a reflection of the President's apparent sense that everything that happens, that has happened – in Venezuela, and in this hemisphere as well – in some way relates to him.

In Caracas today it often seems as if there were no issues, only bilious anger or unconditional devotion – or gasping bafflement – all provoked by the President, who takes up so much oxygen that there is no breathing room left for a discussion of, say, the merits of his neighbourhood health policy, his relations with Cuba, or oher policies.

The President has no visible worries: the various misiones – in favour of ethnic culture, literacy, college equivalency, medical care in the barrios, in defence of street children – are thriving, in no small part because there are tens of thousands of highly skilled Cubans who have been assigned by Fidel to staff them, and also because they are lavishly financed in ways the health and education ministries could benefit from.

Who knows, Chavez says, he might even remain in power through the year 2024, or even 2030. And why not? In a country with an economy the size of the Czech Republic's, the value of Venezuela's currency reserves is now $30 billion. Oil prices are not expected to decline anytime soon. The Bush administration, for all its hostility to Chavez, does not seem able to hurt him seriously.

There are local and national elections of various kinds scheduled every single year between now and 2013, and Chavez and his political party can reasonably expect to win in all of them. Best of all, he has no local politicians – certainly none in his own movement – threatening his popularity. He can smile and go forward, singing. Joyful. Solving problems. Looking to the future.

Caracas, Oct 12 (Prensa Latina) Venezuela Anti-corruption Ministerial Commission announced that a new website at http://www.coma.gob.ve is at the population's disposal to denounce corruption.

According to the release, the site allows online communication with staff designated to investigate and to be informed of the circumstances of denunciations.

The initiative is the result of President Hugo Chavez's call to fight corruption, which he considers a cancer on society.

The Anti-Corruption Commission website has a database of national and international news related to the issue and a virtual library as well.

The US government has been accused of trying to undermine the Chávez government in Venezuela by funding anonymous groups via its main international aid agency.

Millions of dollars have been provided in a "pro-democracy programme" that Chávez supporters claim is a covert attempt to bankroll an opposition to defeat the government. The money is being provided by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Office of Transition Initiatives. The row follows the recent announcement that the US had made $80m (£42m) available for groups seeking to bring about change in Cuba, whose leader, Fidel Castro, is a close ally of Mr Chávez.

Information about the grants has been obtained following a Freedom of Information request by the Associated Press. USAID released copies of 132 contracts but obscured the names and other identifying details of nearly half the organisations.

The Office of Transition Initiatives, which also works in such "priority countries" as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bolivia and Haiti, has overseen more than $26m in grants to groups in Venezuela since 2002.

Among the grants detailed in the information are: one for $47,459 for a "democratic leadership campaign"; $37,614 for citizen meetings to discuss a "shared vision" for society; and one of $56,124 to analyse Venezuela's new constitution. "What this indicates is that there is a great deal of money, a great deal of concern to oust or neutralise Chávez," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (Coha) in Washington yesterday. "The US is waging diplomatic warfare against Venezuela."

He said that while the US had accused Mr Chávez of destabilising Latin American countries, the term "destabilisation" more aptly applied to what the US was trying to do to Mr Chávez.

"It's trying to implement regime change," Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer who wrote The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela, told AP. "There's no doubt about it. I think the US government tries to mask it by saying it's a noble mission." She added: "It's too suspicious to have such a high level of secrecy." President Chávez has also accused groups of taking American money and predicted that the US will seek to use its influence in Venezuela's December polls. USAID officials denied any suggestion the money had any political aim and said the reason for anonymity for some groups was to protect them from potential harassment.

"The goal of the programme is to strengthen democracy, which is consistent with President Bush's 'Freedom Agenda'," said a USAID official yesterday. "A strong civil society is a critical part of any healthy democracy, just as it is in the United States, England or anywhere else in the world."

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Chavez Carries the Torch