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COVER STORYA man

who made his revolution

JOHN CHERIAN
Hugo Chavez, who made a revolution in Venezuela in the face
of serious challenges and became the standard-bearer of the
radical change taking place in Latin America, leaves behind
an unfinished agenda.

ARIANA CUBILLOS/AP

JANUARY 23, 2002: HUGO CHAVEZ at a march in

Caracas to mark the 44th anniversary of democracy in
Venezuela. The government of Marcos Perez Jimenez fell,
ending a period of dictatorship, on January 23, 1958.
Fidel Castro: Not even he knew how great he was.
On March 8, the Venezuelan people bid a final farewell to their
beloved commandante and leader, Hugo Rafael Chavez Friaz. It
was one of the biggest funerals ever witnessed in Latin America.
More than two million people waited patiently in the hot Caracas
sun to pay their respects to a man whom they had elected three
times in a row as President and who had been an integral part of
their lives for the past 15 years. An eight-kilometre-long march,
with hundreds of thousands of Chavistas (Chavez supporters),
dressed in red, accompanied the procession of the Presidents
coffin from the hospital to the military academy in Caracas. The
academy itself is situated on Heroes Avenue, which is dedicated
to patriots such as Simon Bolivar, who led Latin Americas
liberation struggle in the 19th century. The queues were so long

that the government extended the period available for the

viewing of the body by seven days. If the outpouring of grief and
praise in Venezuela and the rest of the world is any indicator,
Chavez seems to have already joined the pantheon of
revolutionary leaders like Che Guevara and other Latin
American historical icons like Bolivar. Like his hero, Bolivar,
Chavez too has left his task unfinished, but he has revived
Bolivars dream of a united Latin America by laying the
groundwork.
Fidel Castro, who was a hero to the late Venezuelan President,
said that the Cuban people lost the best friend they ever had.
Writing in the second week of March, Castro said that the bitter
news of Chavezs death was a heavy blow despite his being
aware of the dire medical condition of the Venezuelan President.
Not even he knew how great he was, Fidel Castro observed,
while emphasising that he had the honour of having shared with
the Bolivarian leader the same ideals of social justice and
support for the oppressed. The Cuban government said in a
statement that his heroic and indefatigable battle against death
is an unsurpassable example of fortitude. For the last two years,
Chavez had been in and out of Cuban hospitals, undergoing
treatment for cancer. The Cuban government paid tribute to the
extraordinary generosity of Chavez during Cubas difficult
times and pledged eternal loyalty to the goals of revolutionary
unity and the integration of the region. Chavez, the statement
said, revived and spearheaded Bolivars dream of a unified
Patria Grande (Grand Homeland) in South America.
Among his supporters in Venezuela and the wider region,
Chavez was known as the Peoples President and the Christ
of the Poor. He drew his inspiration from Christian liberation
theology and socialist ideology. First of all I am a Christian and
then a socialist, the late Venezuelan leader was fond of saying.
He always carried a small cross and a copy of the socialist
Bolivarian Constitution in his shirt pocket.
Chavez was born in the Venezuelan hinterland 58 years ago and
grew up poor in a house with mud walls. By dint of hard work
and his own brilliance, he acquired the qualifications to get
admission into the military school. The first time he won the
national limelight was as a lieutenant colonel in the paratroop
regiment that headed a failed coup in 1992. Venezuela was in
ferment: people had taken to the streets to protest against the
neoliberal economic polices implemented by Carlos Andres
Perezs government. Some 3,000 Venezuelans were killed in the
uprising, dubbed the Caracazo, against policies dictated by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Political career
Chavez and his comrades in the abortive coup were sentenced to
long prison terms. Before going to jail, he said, wearing his

trademark red beret, that unfortunately for the moment the

movement he had spearheaded had not achieved the objectives
but predicted that new possibilities will arise and the country
will be able to move definitively to a new future. He was
released after two years following the victory of the opposition
in the 1994 elections. Chavez then formed his own party, the
Fifth Republic Party, and criss-crossed the country, propagating
a Bolivarian and socialist message. He won the elections in
1998, sidelining the Democratic Action and Copei, the two
parties that had alternated in power from the 1950s. Thereafter,
he faced the electorate 16 times, tasting victory by wide margins
in all but one election. He was described as the most elected
President in recent world history. The election process in
Venezuela is recognised as being among the most transparent
and fair in the world. Jimmy Carter, former United States
President, considered it the best in the world.
Once in power, Chavez started implementing cautiously his
vision for transforming Venezuelan society. In December 1999,
he successfully persuaded the Venezuelan public to approve a
new Constitution. That gave more representation to marginalised
indigenous communities and women. Chavez once described
himself as a feminist socialist. The country was renamed the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The ideology of
Bolivarianism, inspired by Bolivars dream of a united Latin
America and the ideals of what Chavez chose to describe as 21st
century socialism, became the guiding principles. After the
approval of the new Constitution a new election was held in
2000, which Chavez won. The year also marked the beginning of
strong bilateral ties with Cuba. Venezuela gave oil to Cuba at
preferential rates in exchange for trained Cuban doctors and
educators. Where Castro tried and failed in the 20th century,
Chavez succeeded in the 21st, transforming Latin America into a
progressive and economically dynamic region.

On
March 8, in Caracas, world leaders at Chavez's funeral:

Spain's Crown Prince Felipe de Borbon (standing), Iran's

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left, front row), Cuban
President Raul Castro (right, front row), Ecuador's
President Rafael Correa (centre), Chile's President Sebastian
Pinera (second from right) and Colombia's President Juan
Manuel Santos (right).
He loved to talk
The elite, still in control of the commanding heights of the
economy, did not take kindly to the political ground slipping
under their feet. The media, both print and electronic, which the
elite had monopolised, criticised and ridiculed the government.
Indeed, 95 per cent of the media continue to be in private hands.
Chavez responded with his own weekly programme, Alo
Presidente, which soon acquired a mass following. He spoke for
hours to a national audience, allowing them to ask questions and
participate in the discussions pertaining to key issues. Chavez
loved to talk. On an average his public speeches accounted for
45 hours every week. This correspondent was witness to a fivehour talk by Chavez in Caracas in 2006. His sense of humour,
humility and deep understanding of international issues were on
full display as he held the rapt attention of a hall full of foreign
delegates. He ate frugally, slept little, drank endless cups of
coffee, and worked until midnight. He never smoked or drank.
During his 2005 India visit, he charmed everybody by his
oratory and humanism. Chavez was given one of the biggest
welcomes of his life when he visited Kolkata. He was visibly
moved while visiting a primary school in West Bengal where the
children were eating their frugal midday meal of rice and lentils.
Chavez wanted to visit India again and was especially keen on
going to Kerala. But the Indian government, possibly wary of his
anti-imperialist rhetoric, was not too eager to host him. Chavez,
however, put great emphasis on bilateral relations with India. In
his efforts to diversify energy links, which currently are heavily
dependent on the American market, he reached out to India and
China. Indian petroleum companies have signed big contracts in
Venezuela, but China has emerged as a much larger investor and
one of the countrys biggest trading partners.
An unnatural death?
Nicolas Maduro, Chavezs designated political heir, said in his
emotional funeral oration that Chavezs soul and spirit are so
strong that his body could not handle it, and now his soul and
spirit roam the universe, spreading and filling us with blessing
and love. He added that Chavez had left us with the task of
continuing to build this democratic socialist model that he
began. Earlier, Maduro pledged on state television that he
would order an inquiry into the circumstances leading to
Chavezs death. There have been too many historical cases of
such clandestine assassinations, Maduro said. Chavez himself

had accused the United States of hatching plots to assassinate

him. If they kill me, the name of the person responsible is
George Bush, he said in 2005. Maduro did not name any
country but said that the U.S. had set up laboratories in the 1940s
where they experimented with causing cancerseventy years
have passed. Could they have progressed from there? Among
the numerous U.S. attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, one was
with radiation. The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, reacted to
Chavezs suspicious death by saying that if the imperialists
did not achieve their goals either with a democratic election or a
putschthen they are trying different methodsthat is, ending
someones life. Speaking to reporters in Quito, Morales said
that Chavez was only 58 years old and added that sooner or
later it would be proved that there was an attempt on his life.
The Venezuelan government has announced that it is forming a
commission to inquire into the illness that caused the death.
Maduro said that important scientists from different countries
would help in the investigations.
Friends galore
Many countries, including Iran and Nigeria, decreed days of
official mourning for Chavez. Presidents and leaders from
around the world were present at the state funeral. Fifty-five
countries sent official delegations. Thirty-three of the delegations
were led by heads of state or government. There was very little
high-profile representation from the West, where Chavez was
routinely demonised.
All the Presidents from Latin America were present, which in
itself was a tribute to the man who was instrumental in the
forging of the new Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States (CELAC). This grouping explicitly excludes the U.S. and
Canada. CELAC is meant to act as a counterweight to U.S.
political and economic hegemony on the continent. It is currently
chaired by Cuban President Raul Castro, signalling the countrys
full integration into the region.
Chavez was also instrumental in the formation of the Union of
South American Nations (UNASUR) in 2008, patterned after the
European Union (EU). He was, too, the moving spirit behind the
creation of another, smaller, regional groupingALBA (the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) in 2004. Venezuela set
up Bank of the South to combat the World Bank and the
Washington Consensus, which had made the region a free market
area from where resources were extracted and where goods were
marketed. In 2005, he created Petrocaribe to supply subsidised
fuel to 18 needy countries in the region. Not many people know
that Venezuela provides fuel at highly subsidised rates to
disadvantaged communities in the U.S. also.
Transforming role

Before Chavez came on the scene, it was the Washingtondominated Organisation of American States (OAS) that held
centre stage in the region. Since Chavez took over the leadership
in Venezuela, there has been what sections of the media describe
as a pink revolution sweeping over the continent. In the last
decade, most of Latin America has distanced itself from
Washington. Chavez was the standard-bearer of the radical
changes taking place in Latin America. He was of course ably
assisted in the task by the other left-wing leaders in the region,
like the Presidents of Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina.
The President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, highlighted
Chavezs key role in facilitating the ongoing peace talks with the
FARC guerillas. Colombia and Venezuela were on the verge of
war only a few years ago.
The former Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, wrote
that history would justifiably affirm the role played by Chavez
in the political and economic integration of Latin America. Lula
said that even those disagreeing with the ideology espoused by
Chavez could not deny the level of camaraderie, of trust and
even of love that Chavez felt for the poor of Venezuela and for
the cause of Latin American integration. Lula also pointed out
that among Chavezs important priorities was the improvement
of ties between Latin American and the African and Asian
continents. When many of the leaders of the Non-Aligned
Movement and the global South capitulated to the hegemonism
of the West after the Cold War, Chavez dared to blaze a counterhegemonistic trail of his own, championing anti-imperialism. It
was the support of the Venezuelan people that undermined the
military coup, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), that deposed Chavez briefly in 2002. That defining
moment changed Venezuelan and Latin American history.
One of the key factors that precipitated the coup was a new
Hydro-carbon Law that was passed in 2001, which sharply
raised the royalty prices paid by Western oil companies for
heavy crude from the Orinoco basin from 1 per cent to 16 per
cent. There was a serious attempt by the management of the state
oil company, Petroleus de Venezuela (PDVSA), which was run
by technocrats mostly trained in the U.S., to sabotage Chavezs
wide-ranging reform of the petroleum industry. There were
strikes and sabotage attempts in 2002 and 2003. Venezuelan oil
exports were affected, but the government finally managed to
assert full control over the PDVSAs functioning.
Social projects
With the price of oil rising, Chavez began his ambitious social
projects to empower the poor. In 2007, the hydrocarbon sector
was nationalised. Western oil companies like ConocoPhillips and
ExxonMobil, which refused to accede to the governments terms,
were asked to leave the country. Other foreign companies from

Europe, Asia and Africa rushed in to fill the vacuum.

The government expenditure on social projects increased by
more than 66 per cent. Some three million hectares of land was
redistributed, enabling tens of thousands peasants to own land.
Hospitals, schools and cooperatives were set up in urban and
rural areas populated by the poor, and doctors and medical
workers from Cuba came in to give a helping hand. A National
Public Health System was created to ensure free access to health
care for all Venezuelans. The malnutrition rate fell from 21 per
cent in 1998 to less than 3 per cent in 2012. The infant mortality
rate fell from 19.1 per thousand in 1999 to 10 per thousand in
2012. In the same period, poverty rates decreased from 42.8 per
cent to 26.5 per cent. According to the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), Venezuela is the country
with least income inequality in Latin America. Universal access
to education was introduced in 2008.
In December 2005, UNESCO said that Venezuela had eradicated
illiteracy. Forty thousand communal councils in urban barrios
and rural areas have been established. The communal councils
consist of 150-400 families in urban areas and are financed
directly by state institutions. There were many more sterling
achievements during the Chavez era, too numerous to be
outlined here.
Chavez on world stage
Carter, whose foundation regularly sent observers to the
elections and referendums that Chavez organised almost on a
yearly basis, was among the few American leaders who were
liberal in their tributes to the departed leader. He highlighted the
gains made by the poor and vulnerable during the Chavez
presidency. President Barack Obama, on the other hand, did not
bother to offer condolences to Chavezs family or the people of
Venezuela. Only a message conveying an interest in developing
constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government and a
homily on the importance of democracy and the rule of law was
sent. Obama chose to disregard the fact that Venezuela under
Chavez was the most democratic country in the Western
hemisphere.
Chavezs visceral dislike for the war crimes committed during
the presidency of George W. Bush was epitomised by his
statement in the U.N. General Assembly comparing the U.S.
President to the devil. And it smells of sulphur even today,
he had mocked while speaking some hours after Bush had
addressed the General Assembly. Chavez tried to repair relations
with Bushs successor. At the OAS summit in Trinidad in 2009,
he went up to the new President and told him I want to be your
friend. Chavez also presented Eduardo Galleanos book Open
Veins of Latin America: Four Centuries of the Pillage of the

Continent to Obama.
Chavez went to Iraq in August 2000, two years after he was first
elected to the presidency, crossing over into Iraq from Iran: he
visited both the countries to discuss issues relating to the
Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Chavez played a key role in strengthening OPEC, which had
become dysfunctional after the Iran-Iraq war and then the first
Gulf war. He was the first head of state to visit Iraq after the
1991 Gulf war and the U.S. had warned him against doing so.
Chavez responded by reminding Washington that Venezuela was
a sovereign country.
From then on, Chavez charted his independent course on the
international stage, never hesitating to speak out on the causes
that he considered just. He was among the few world leaders to
criticise the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. policies
towards Iran. A visibly distraught President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was present at the funeral in Caracas. In a
statement, the Iranian President said that Chavez was only
symbolically dead. I have no doubt he will come again along
with all the righteous people and the Prophet Jesus.
After the 2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza, Venezuela withdrew its
ambassador to Israel. Chavez declared that henceforth
diplomatic ties with Israel would be reduced to the lowest level
and said that there is no point in dealing with that country.
Chavez was a vociferous critic of the regime change in Libya
sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
and the current attempts at something similar in Syria. This
correspondent saw in the barrios in Caracas posters of Muammar
Qaddafi along with literature explaining the circumstances
leading to his overthrow.
Legacy in safe hands
There is little doubt that Chavezs legacy is in safe hands, at least
for the time being. I swear in the name of absolute loyalty to the
Commandante Hugo Chavez that we will obey and defend the
Bolivarian Constitution with the firm hand of the people
determined to be free, Maduro said while being sworn in as
interim President. Maduro, who started his political career as a
trade union leader, was one of Chavezs closest confidants. His
wife, Cilia Flores, was Chavezs lawyer after his arrest for
leading the failed military coup in 1992. She was the countrys
Attorney General before resigning to help Maduro in the
elections.
Maduro was by Chavezs side when he began his quest for the
presidency in the mid-1990s. He was the countrys Foreign
Minister from 2006 until he was named the Vice-President in
October 2012. This correspondent met Maduro in New Delhi in
September last year. Like his mentor Chavez, he was articulate

and outspoken in his views. He told Frontline that with the

formation of CELAC, Latin America was poised to forge a new
alliance that would build a multipolar world, free from the
influence of the Empire [the U.S.]. The U.S., he averred, should
not be allowed to use the the trump card of war against the rest
of the world whenever it chose. He said that before Chavez came
to power 15 years ago, the U.S. treated Venezuela like an oil
company. He added that Venezuela was witnessing the making
of socialism of the 21st century. Cuba was the model that first
inspired revolutionaries in the region but Venezuela was building
its own model of socialism. It will be socialism with
Venezuelan and Bolivarian characteristics, Maduro said.
MARCELO GARCIAAFP

ON
MARCH 6, THOUSANDS OF WEEPING SUPPORTERS
walk with Chavez's flag-draped coffin on its way from the
hospital where he died to the military academy where his
body remained until his funeral.
The government, the army, the ruling United Socialist Party all
stand united behind Maduros leadership. But there are interested
parties trying to sow discord. Just before Chavezs demise, the
Venezuelan government expelled two U.S. military attaches for
meddling in the countrys internal affairs. In the second week of
March, the U.S., in a reciprocal action, expelled two
Venezuelan diplomats. The Western media have started
spreading stories about the pivotal role the Venezuelan armed
forces are playing in the current situation and claiming that
Maduros future depends on their goodwill.
A special election is scheduled to be held on April 14 to elect a
new President. Maduro, who will face the candidate of the united
right wing opposition, Henrique Caprilles, is expected to win by
a wide margin. A sympathy wave should help him to widen the
lead that Chavez had registered over Caprilles. Chavez won the
election in October last year with over 10 percentage points.
Caprilles has accused his rival of using the body of a dead
President to stage a campaign. He insinuated that Chavezs
death and funeral were all plannedWho knows when he

died. His latest charge came after there was a proposal to

embalm the body of Chavez. They want to use the Presidents
body for campaigning, he said, an allegation that Maduro called
disgusting. Caprilles and his Justice First Party were key
participants in the abortive U.S.-backed coup against Chavez in
2002.
Polarised polity and other challenges
Venezuelas polity remains polarised, with a significant minority
still unreconciled to Chavezs social and economic programmes.
There were no representatives from the main opposition parties
at the funeral ceremony. In fact, there were celebrations and
fireworks in some affluent areas in Caracas when Chavezs death
was announced. All the same, it is widely felt that few
Venezuelans want a return to the old style of politics. Caprilles
himself had pledged during the last election to continue with
Chavezs social policies if he was elected to the presidency.

MARCELO GARCIAAFP

ACTING PRESIDENT and Chavez's chosen successor

Nicolas Maduro speaks after registering his candidacy for
the presidential election in Caracas on March 11.
Maduro, of course, will face a daunting task in the absence of the
larger-than-life figure of Chavez. A lot has still to be fulfilled if
Chavezs dream of 21st century socialism has to become a
reality. The ruling United Socialist Party that Chavez had forged
contains many currentsthe old leftist parties, a new Bolivarian
class, businessmen, military interests and social movements.
There could be a struggle for the control of state institutions and
bigger slices of the national budget. The U.S. will be working
overtime to sow seeds of disunity among the Chavistas to
undermine the socialist revolution. Since 2002, Washington has
channelled more than $100 million to opposition groups. Some
Venezuelans are not ruling out a Syria-type scenario of
encouraging a civil war to restore American influence in the
region. The private sector still controls 70 per cent of the
economy.

The countrys overall well-being rests predominantly on the

performance of the hydrocarbon sector and the high price of oil
in the international market. Venezuela has low debts, high
petroleum reserves and high savings. It has proven oil reserves
of over 500 billion barrels, the largest in the world. In the last 14
years, the government has invested in large industrial and
agricultural projects, which will soon be paying dividends to the
public at large. The state now gets as much revenue from
domestic tax collection as it does from oil revenues.
The problems of corruption and crime, however, are yet to be
tackled adequately. The opposition had highlighted these two
issues with some success in last years elections. The high
standards President Chavez adhered to personally on ethical
issues do not everywhere mark the top levels of the government
and the ruling party. Maduro has pledged to deepen Chavezs
social programmes and promised a vigorous drive against the
rising crime rate.
The world will be watching.

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COVER STORYEvolution of a practical visionary
AIJAZ AHMAD
Steering clear of neoliberalism as well as classical communist
traditions, Hugo Chavez has sown the seeds of institutions
rooted in the Venezuelan reality. Their transformative
potential has already turned the country into one of the more
equitable societies in the world today.
DOUGLAS ENGLE/AP

February
4, 1999: Chavez after he was first sworn-in President, with
his wife, Marisabel.
HUGO CHAVEZ lived a short, inspired, inspiring life,
unfinished, and, in a profound sense, unfinishable. Such as
him always die much too soon. When the time eventually
comes for Fidel Castro to go, he too will have departed too
soon. Chavez was, of course, cut down in the prime of his life,
quickly, at barely 58, in the best of health until that
mysterious, fatal cancer started doing its evil work, and the
end then came very quickly, despite the best efforts of Cubas
legendary health system.
Some say there was more to that cancer than meets the eye;
that certainly is the implication of the words used by Nicolas
Maduro, the former bus driver and union leader who served
as Vice-President of Venezuela until recently and whom
Chavez designated as his successor. What can be said without
any doubt, however, is this: when the Latin American Left
the global Left, for that matterlooks back at its own
history a hundred years from now, the one name that will
loom the largest for the opening decade of the 21st century
will be that of Hugo Chavez.
The effective life, the life for which posterity shall chiefly
remember him, was in fact very much shorter than it seems
barely a decade, I would say, which earnestly began only
in 2004 after he had beaten back three major challenges to
his authority. The first of these challenges came in the shape
of a full-fledged, United States-backed military coup in April
2002 which almost succeeded. Then, having failed to dislodge
him through military means, they tried to overthrow him
through a two-month-long attempt at massive national chaos
and disruption, beginning in December that same year, with
the so-called strike at the state-run oil company PDVS
which was formally staged by the management but really

stage-managed by the traditional ruling classes, their

partiers, media monopolies and support bases among the
affluent sections of the urban middle class. When the
extraconstitutional means failed, those same forces resorted
to a provision that Chavez himself had introduced into the
Constitution, namely the right to recall a serving President
through a popular referendum. In the event, Chavez won
that referendum by 59 per cent, just as he had previously
won two presidential electionsas well as the referendum on
the new Constitution he had put in place soon after getting
elected the first timewith similar margins. The putting in
place of that enabling Constitution was undoubtedly a major
achievement, as was the chain of electoral victories; it added
up to an enormous reservoir of democratic legitimacy which
Chavez was careful to go on refurbishing at every turn for
the rest of his life. However, it was only with the full
consolidation of power in 2004 that he was then able to lead
the historic, multifaceted transformations for which
Venezuela was to become so justly famous in our time. Nine
years later, he was dead.

REUTERS
AT A PARTY during his years at the Military Academy in
Caracas in this undated photo.
Before we delve into some details of this extraordinary life, it
might be useful to emphasise an aspect of his personality that
appears to have been absolutely central to his personality
and his visionary capacity and which gets mentioned very
rarely: his very broad intellectual culture, and his
extraordinary receptivity to a wide spectrum of ideas, from
all kinds of quarters, in order to think through the many
kinds of experimentations that would be required to find our
way into what may one day become a post-Soviet socialism
of the 21st century. To illustrate the first point, let me quote
a few sentences from Emir Sader, the formidable Brazilian
intellectual:

Hugo Chavez always said that a key book he had read during
his prison years was Beyond Capital by his friend Istvn
Mszros. The last time I was able to be with Chavez was
on the occasion of the Forum of So Paulo during his
electoral campaign last year. At the closing ceremony at the
Teresa Carreo Theater, he had a copy of Mszros's book
with him and told an old Venezuelan man, who had recently
managed to learn to read, that one day he should read
Beyond Capital . The intellectual restlessness of Hugo
Chavez was always impressive. In any conversation with
him, Chavez immediately took interest in what people were
saying, asking for reading suggestions and other information.
In his TV programme Al Presidente, he mentioned that he
was reading authors like Gramsci and Rosa Luxemburg,
beyond, as always, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. He
read during his constant air travels.
His restless theoretical curiosity was always tied to the
concrete reality of Venezuela and Latin America.
As one who has actually grappled with Beyond Capital I can
testify that the reading of it is arduous labour.
And, of course, there was that famous day in 2006 when
Chavez addressed the U.N. General Assembly and said of
George W. Bush: Yesterday, the devil came here. And it
smells of sulphur still today; as antidote, he recommended
to the assembled delegates that they read Noam Chomskys
book Hegemony or Survival, helping to make the book an
international bestseller. He also got a million copies of Don
Quixote published at state expenditure and had them
distributed to a million households that were new
beneficiaries of popular literary campaigns. He would
routinely discuss two or three books in every session of his
weekly talk show, Alo Presidente, which he kept up for
more than a decade. Such stories are myriad.
As for his openness to new ideas regarding social
transformation and his penchant for translating conceptual
abstraction into practical possibilities, the kind of reforms
that were initiated under his guidance in a variety of areas,
from economic production and distribution to the reorganisation of social and political power, will tell their own
story when we briefly turn to them later. To give but one
small example: as some women have reminded us, it is only
fitting that Chavez received his tumultuous funeral on
March 8, the International Womens Day, since he was the
first President of any country who argued that womens
unpaid domestic labour was productive labour and deserved
remuneration like any other form of labour.
Beginnings
Before winning his first presidential election in 1998
(inaugurated on February 2, 1999), Chavez had gone
through a prolonged, often quixotic political apprenticeship

over roughly two decades, starting in 1977 when, at the

young age of 23, he established a conspiratorial group with a
small number of friends and gave it the grand name of the
Venezuelan Peoples Liberation Army (ELPV, in Spanish
acronym). Like many other Latin American countries,
Venezuela too was rife with a variety of militant, though not
very large, left-wing organisations, including the communist
party as well as guerilla groups; Chavezs brother was
himself part of one of such groups. Chavez and his friends
were clearly aware of these groups and were even in contact
with some of them. The range of left-wing ideas circulating in
the air was bewilderingly wide: Peronist populism and
liberation theology, Communism and Trotskyism, anarchosyndicalism and Guevarism, revolutionary nationalism and
continental unification, and just plain radical opposition to
military dictatorships, neoliberal policies, the U.S. and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). There was even a
tradition of military radicalism, especially among officers
drawn from peasant backgrounds such as Chavez himself.
He and his friends were clearly caught in this vortex.
However, it is equally clear that they were largely clueless as
to any precise social vision, political strategy or even military
planning for a left-wing officers coup until well after the
early ELVP had metamorphosed into what was now called
the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) five
years later. The catalysing event for Chavez came in 1989
with the famous popular uprising in Caracas and the
regimes suppression of it, generally known as El Caracazo,
with thousands massacred; Chavez was out of action that
day, lying in a hospital with chicken pox, but referred to that
massacre later as a genocide. Events of that kind rarely
lead to theoretical illumination or any programmatic clarity
as to what would come after the seizure of power in case one
actually succeeded. Chavez and his friends seem to have
drawn two conclusions, though: to expedite preparations for
a military coup from the Left (what Chavez was to call
Bolivarian military uprising); and, that the level of
popular anger was such that they were likely to gain rapid
acceptance and wide popularity in case they succeeded in
their audacious bid. The coup was duly mounted three years
later, in 1992, and it failed. However, the other calculation
proved correct. As the undisputed leader of a heroic bid to
overthrow the regime and redeem the nation, and
commanding an exceptional degree of eloquence in public
speech, Chavez won instant popularity and, even as he
languished in prison for the next two years, he was on his
way to becoming a folk hero.
JORGE SILVA/REUTERS

OCTOBE
R 4, 2012: Speaking in the rain during his closing campaign
rally for the presidential election, in Caracas.
That failure and the fact that he managed to survive so as to
fight another day also did something else: it seems to have
tilted the balance in the internal dialogue, among Chavez
and his widening circle of comrades and cohorts, over the
legitimacy and efficacy of relying primarily on military
means. The great importance of military power was not at
issue. For instance, once the U.S. had made up its mind to
have the elected socialist government of President Salvatore
Allende overthrown by military force, the fatal coup of 1973,
one of the most murderous in history, proved unstoppable
precisely because the elected government had no effective
control over the armed forces if they decided to defy that
government. Conversely, when an almost successful coup
was staged against Chavez himself in 2002, what saved the
day was his own independent political base among key
sections of the military. Ultimate power is state power, and
the heart of all state power, in all decisive moments, is the
control over means of violence, that is, the military and
security forces.
That much is clear enough. But the lessons of the failed coup
also had to be learned. And, what happens if a coup from the
Left succeeds without building a mass base, and without an
organised political instrumentality to fight a war of position
and realise its objectives? Can an isolated regime of that kind
survive? Can it survive without itself becoming a machinery
of violence against its own people? And, what are the
objectives of such a military insurrection anyway?
The two years in prison ended in 1994 by virtue of a pardon
by the new government, and the next elections were due in
1998. If the 15 years up to 1992 were the years of
apprenticeship in revolutionary enthusiasm, with putschist
plans for the seizure of power and an amalgam of widely
divergent inspirations in lieu of an ideology, the next six

years between the failed coup and the decisive victory in

presidential election were a transitional phase in which
Chavez deepened his political education, started thinking
programmatically about an alternative model of state
formation, initiated new alliances and, once released from
prison, travelled widely inside the country as well as
elsewhere in Latin America for intensive, wide-ranging
dialogue over political strategy. His MBR-200 increasingly
became the centre of attraction for a spectrum of leftwing
forces to congregate in a unified movement, and Chavez, the
audacious hero of a failed coup, emerged by far as the most
popular and credible candidate to take on the established
political parties in electoral contest. By then, Chavez and his
group had become fully committed to the electoral road, with
organised military cells in the background. The principal
Left groupings in the country dissolved themselves into the
much broader front of forces, though not exactly a political
party, and called it the Movement of the Fifth Republic
(MVR, in Spanish initials), while MBR-200 too ceased to
exist and became a part of this broader Movement.
As the name of the Movement itself would suggest,
abrogating the old Constitution and electing a new
Constituent Assembly to draft a politically more radical,
more pro-people Constitution was a key promise in Chavezs
electoral plank. So when he took the oath of office at the time
of presidential inauguration in February 1999, he departed
from the wording of the oath to assert: I swear before my
people that upon this moribund constitution I shall drive
forth the necessary democratic transformations so that the
Republic will have a Magna Carta befitting these times. The
flamboyance of the gesture was emblematic of Chavezian
audacity but the wording was shrewd. Reference to the
Magna Carta was meant to reassure that popular liberties
shall be respected and arbitrary government shunned, but
Magna Carta befitting these times could have meant any
number of things, ranging from Maos New Democracy to
all manner of social democratic claims and reform platforms.
What it actually meant got clarified gradually, first in the
new Constitution itself, then in the strict observance of
constitutional provision that Chavez then sought rigorously
to uphold, and then over roughly a decade, through trial and
error, in an open process, through wide-ranging reforms, not
all of them successfully implemented but, in sum, producing
cumulative results that are impressive in their augmentation
of social justice and democratisation of effective political
power.
Growing into revolutionary shoes
We shall come shortly to some of the statistical reflection of
those changes. Certain things need to be said right away.
Chavez was first elected in 1998 at the head of a newly

formed Movement that was by any standards quite modest

in size, and he got elected largely because of his personal
charisma and populist invocations; upon his death 15 years
later, he has left behind a cohesive, highly motivated, wellorganised party of seven million which intersects with
numerous organs of popular power of various kinds.
As a young man, when he was forming his conspiratorial
groups, he was certainly exposed to left-wing ideas and
currents of anti-imperialist nationalism, but he was equally
opposed to both neoliberalism and the communist tradition.
As he matured, his dislike of U.S. imperialism and the core
institutions and policies of neoliberalism deepened, while he
softened on issues relating to the complex of communist
legacies. He brought the communist party into his alliance,
formed very close personal ties with Fidel Castro and
established extensive cooperation between Cuba and
Venezuela; Fidel is said to have remarked several years ago,
even before Chavez was fully in command, that his coming to
power in Venezuela was the first time that encirclement of
the Cuban revolution was to any degree broken.
None of it means that Chavez was in any sense a communist;
he never claimed to be and said openly, again and again, that
in his view ours was not a period of working class
revolutions. When he spoke of 21st century socialism, one
of the meanings of the term undoubtedly was that anything
that could decently be called socialist in this new century
will have to depart radically from the organisational forms of
state and society that gave us socialisms of the previous
century. In a sense, this is not very different from Marxs
famous postulate, in his own time, that revolutions of the
19th century can only go forward by criticising the
revolutions of the 18th century. But Chavez never claimed to
be strictly a Marxist either. It is accurate to say, in my view,
that Chavez was a truly revolutionary nationalist and that it
was the revolutionary character of his anti-imperialist
nationalism that kept pushing him in the direction of
socialism. It needs to be added, though, that initiating his
own political project in the immediate aftermath of the
collapse of the whole Soviet system, Chavez was not at all
sure that he knew what a socialist society would be like. So
he opened himself up to a very wide range of ideas that could
in any way be associated with projects of radical social
change, and he absorbed like a sponge the ones he thought
best and most translatable into practice within Venezuelan
reality.
Virtually everyone in Latin America waxes eloquent on the
need for continental unity; dating back to Simon Bolivar and
Jose Marti; there is a powerful tradition of revolutionary
transcontinental nationalism that has seen this unity as the
precondition for effective resistance against the predatory

power of the U.S. Chavez pushed forward this project of

continental unity more energetically than any other leader in
our time. This is owed to three factors. The first is a
profound personal commitment to this project since the early
days of his politicisation; the self-image of the Movement
since its very inception as Bolivarian indicates that
commitment. Second, and uniquely, as the President of
Venezuela with its oil wealth, he had access to material
means for promoting such a policy; whether in Venezuelas
relations with Cuba, or with other Carribean countries, or
elsewhere in South America, oil as commodity and as source
of finance has been of central importance. The point
nevertheless remains that Venezuela had this oil in the past
as well, and Brazil and Argentina, for instance, have in their
own way the continents more powerful economies, none ever
financed projects of this kind; Chavez at least initiated a
whole range of concrete programmes for various kinds of
regional integrations, challenging all the North American
plans to craft pro-imperialist policies under U.S. tutelage.
JOSE GOITIA/AP

WITH
FRIEND AND MENTOR FIDEL CASTRO in Barinas,
Venezuela, near his hometown Sabaneta on October 28, 2000.
Thirdly, the historical conjuncture itself favoured this new
configuration. The contrast with Cuba could not be sharper.
The Cuban revolution occurred at the height of U.S.
prosperity, well before it got bogged down in Vietnam or its
economic stagnation began; Cuba was an impoverished little
island, a little neo-colony 145 kilometres off the Florida
coast; successful U.S.-sponsored military coups across Latin
America preceded the Cuban revolution (in Guatemala) and
followed it (in Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina). By contrast,
Venezuela was potentially a very wealthy country (not only
oil), and by the time Chavez stabilised his power in 2004, the
U.S. was fully mired in Afghanistan and Iraq, its foreign
policy largely mortgaged to Israel and, to a far lesser degree,

amenable to manipulation by the Gulf monarchies. After the

U.S. tried and failed to overthrow Chavez through military
means in 2002, it was left with really only two options:
undermining him politically by manipulating the
extraordinary degree of freedom that prevailed in Venezuela,
or assassination. Various U.S. outfits are known to have
funded more than 130 pro-democracy organisations
against the totalitarian regime of Hugo Chavezthis, in a
country where Chavez won 15 consecutive elections and
referendums through a process that Jimmy Carter, former
U.S. President, calls the best in the world.
As for assassination, that was always an eerie possibility.
Chavez, be careful, Fidel Castro used to admonish him,
They have technology. A seasoned security detail was
despatched for him from Cuba. I had the occasion to witness
those security officers in action. Chavez was holding his
famous radio show in the compound of a high school in his
native town, from where it was being televised nationally,
with large numbers of local people in attendance, including
his parents. After about three hours, torrential tropical rains
suddenly started. In the chaos, the adoring crowd surged
forth, to be close to their President, possibly to touch him,
possibly to tear off a piece of his shirt to take home as a
souvenir. The security guards moved in and whisked him
away but many were able to come close, and touch. Anyone
of them might have easily come with a needle; that day, no
one did.
While this tussle was going on between the U.S. and the man
who had called its vengeful President a devil from the
podium of the U.N. General Assembly, this sea change in
Venezuelan affairs followed, not by pro-U.S. coups but by a
series of electoral victories for left-wing Presidents. Brazil,
Argentina and Bolivia were significant in this regard. They
had suffered brutal military dictatorships in the wake of the
Cuban revolution, so as to suppress generalised leftwing
militancy during that period; now, as Chavez won the
Venezuelan elections, it was followed by the election of leftist
Presidents in all three countries, followed by similar elections
elsewhere. Times were auspicious for Chavez to start again
dreaming the dream of anti-imperialist unity across the
continent.
We could go into details of the number of organisations that
came into being to buttress this unitysuch as the
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA,
in Spanish acronym), among othersand numerous
initiatives for greater regional integration in various areas,
ranging from finance (Bank of the South, for instance) to
culture and information (for example, Telesur). Others have
written on these issues and will continue to do so. A few
broad points can be made, however. First, no such practical

steps, certainly not a coherent series of them, were proposed

before Chavez and his colleagues started pushing the project,
in whatever imperfect shape. No one should believe that
anything of this magnitude can succeed quickly, in even a
decade or a generation. What matters is the idea, the
proposition, the seed, and as many practical beginnings as
possible to nurse the seed and to nourish the saplings. The
beginnings might take a century before real fruition; or it
may all be crushed the next year. Audacious plans of this
nature are essentially a wager against the imperialist tide of
our times. Chavez, in any case, did not have much time and,
like everything else that is original and visionary, this too has
been prone to trial and error.
In Chavezs eventual understanding of it, revolutionary antiimperialist nationalism required some semblance of the
broadest possible united front that was comprised of, as it
were, concentric circles. As the head of a state, he could do
something positive in the construction of such a united front,
mainly at the state-to-state level. At the heart of his efforts
was what he could achieve, or at least set in motion, inside
Venezuela. Beyond that was the special relationship with
Cuba, the really radical move that ended forever any
possibility of compromise with the U.S. Beyond that was the
meeting of minds and coordination of policies with Bolivia
and Ecuador; then the immense effort that went into keeping
the alliance with Brazil and Argentina vibrant, despite
differences, not to speak of several other overlaps as well, as
with Ortegas Nicaragua or Bachelets Chileso as to build
a force so irresistible that even Colombia, a U.S. client if
there ever was one, was forced to join the Community of
Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, in Spanish
initials), the last and widest initiative undertaken to realise
that envisioned unity while Chavez was still alive.
FERNANDO LLANO/AP

CUBAN
DOCTOR Vivian Iglesias examining a child at a medical
centre in Caracas on July 15, 2003. Iglesias was one of the
1,000 Cuban doctors who lived and worked in Venezuelan
slums in a project sponsored by Chavez.
But there was another level as well, beyond Latin America
and the Caribbean: a general, methodical anti-imperialist
stance and an effort to cultivate relationships across the
world wherever there was any opening for what I have
described as state-to-state broadest possible anti-imperialist
front. He denounced Americas most recent war against the
Afghan people as soon as it began (you cannot fight
terrorism with terrorism) and followed it up with vigorous
opposition to every imperialist stratagem in the region. This
had already offended every branch of the U.S. government.
But then he also went ahead with building cordial relations
with Iran, China and Russiacountries which are viewed by
much of the U.S. Left the same way as their government
does: outposts of barbarism, remnants of the evil empire.
Large sections of that Left got disillusioned with Chavez on
that score and showered all kinds of epithets on him for
being cordial towards Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President;
many of the same people would enthusiastically support
Barack Obama against Mitt Romney as the lesser evil. Is
Ahmadinejad not a lesser evil than Obama? All kinds of
racist stereotypes begin to haunt such leftists when faced
with questions of that kind.
The point again is not to build up a ledger of successes and
failures on any of this during the brief tenure of office that
Chavez was able to command. There was always the issue of
the learning curve, step by step; the brevity of time available
to him to pursue his ideas; the paucity of resources with

which to shape events at home and abroad. The issue, simply,

is the vision we need to recognise, share and inherit.
A brief balance sheet
It is somewhat easier to draw up at least a brief ledger for
some of the transformations that occurred inside Venezuela
over roughly 15 years while Chavez was President. Facts are
actually very well known, many of them attested by various
international agencies, from the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) to the World Health Organisation
(WHO), and repeated across the spectrum of Left writings
on Chavez. Some may be mentioned here for illustrative
purposes.
Chavez was often accused of authoritarianism, and he surely
had an egoistic, authoritarian streak in him. However, for a
man whose only extended practical experience was in the
hierarchical organisation of the military and who shot to the
presidency of the country largely on the basis of personal
charisma and mass adulation, and who then had to rely
substantially on the moribund, corrupt state bureaucracy for
having his reform programs implemented, he had
exceptionally high regard for the peoples rights and
liberties, for the construction of popular organs of power and
communication, for the sanctity of constitutional guarantees
and genuine electoral processes, for initiatives undertaken by
countless young activists who were getting constantly
inducted into the Bolivarian processes and mobilisations. The
writing of a new Constitution that Chavez initiated and
which has been emulated in Bolivia and Ecuador was
designed precisely to ensure democratisation in the exercise
of power, protection of popular entitlements, reaffirming
national sovereign power over the utilisation of the countrys
natural resources and the structures of its economy, and the
utilisation of public wealth for the well-being of the
heretofore deprived classes.
ANDRES LEIGHTON/AP

CHAVEZ
(RIGHT) BEING ESCORTED by military intelligence
officers after being arrested for trying to overthrow
Venezuela's government in a coup on February 5, 1992.
From communal councils to worker-run factories, from
community radio stations and TV channels to tens of
thousands of business cooperatives, Venezuela under Chavez
initiated some of the most sophisticated experiments in direct
democracy, socialisation and workers control in the world.
The communal councils, for example, were created to form a
direct link between the central state and local communities,
bypassing state- and district-level bureaucrats. In the urban
areas, such councils were expected to include 150 or more
families, in the rural areas 30 families, and anyone above the
age of 15 was entitled to participate in its deliberations over
common needs in areas such as health, education, and
sanitation, draw up projects, acquire funds directly from the
central government and implement those plans. There are
now said to be 30,000 such councils. Mismanagement was of
course common, as all such experiments in new forms of
planning and execution at the popular level must necessarily
go through, but such mismanagement was surely less than
was routinely the case with the more traditional bureaucratic
structures. The point, in any case, is that the authoritarian
President was extraordinarily devoted to undermining the
familiar patterns of authoritarian rule.
Imperfections and problems were countless. It nevertheless is
the case that Venezuela is now the least unequal country in
the region, where, over a decade or so, poverty has been
reduced from 70 per cent to 21 per cent and extreme poverty
from 40 per cent to 7 per cent. The UNESCO recognises that
illiteracy has been eradicated altogether and tuition-free

education is available from day-care up to the university

level; one out of every three Venezuelans are currently
enrolled in one educational programme or another, and the
number of tertiary level students rose from 895,000 in 2000
to 2.3 million in 2011. While 90 per cent of the food was
imported in 1980, now it is below 30 per cent, even though
per capita food consumption has more than doubled during
the Chavez years. Five million Venezuelans receive free food,
and the state has been establishing an expanding network of
subsidised food distribution through grocery stores and
supermarkets. Meanwhile, tax collection has grown so
rapidly that the state now collects as much revenue through
such collection as through the sale of oil.
We can go on multiplying such statistics in a whole range of
areas from health to agriculture. Great gains in the wellbeing of the masses of Venezuelan people and their sense of
having greater control of their own lives is undeniable. That
is no mean achievement for so novel and beleaguered an
experiment, in defiance of imperialist pressure.
Conclusion
I have repeatedly argued that the collapse of the Soviet
Union signalled the end of a whole historical period, and this
sense of an ending is only compounded by the further
collapse or seeping disarray among other socialist states that
arose in the course of the 20th century. A certain history of
making revolutions and attempting to build socialist systems
is now behind us and cannot be resurrected in those forms.
Large sections of humanity have therefore embarked on
countless experiments in forms of action, seeking radical
social transformation, so that, theoretically and practically,
altogether new revolutionary forms may be discovered that
would be appropriate for revolutions of the future.
No advanced capitalist country shows any signs of even the
beginning of such a transformation. Latin America is the
chief locus for these stirrings in our time, and Venezuela has
been at the cutting edge of it all. So far the combination of
concrete reforms for the peoples welfare are here combined
with far-reaching experimentation in what one day may
become an adequate revolutionary form. There is no end to
the number of faults we can find but in these days of
mourning, when a whole continent grieves for its most
illustrious son, solidarity and salutation is the primary duty.

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COVER STORYBolivarian revolutionary

PRAKASH KARAT
No other leader in the world did so much as Hugo Chavez to
set the 21st century on a new course. Without him Venezuela
will face big challenges in the days to come.
BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

With
Prakash Karat, CPI(M) general secretary, in Caracas in
2004.
HUGO CHAVEZ, revolutionary leader and symbol of the
new wave of the Left in Latin America, is dead. Cancer,
which he fought since June 2011, finally took away the life of
the 58-year-old leader. He died less than six months after his
historic re-election, for the fourth consecutive term, as the
President of Venezuela. His loss has plunged the people of
Venezuela and the rest of Latin Americaand, indeed,
people of the Left and other progressive people all over the
worldinto grief.
The death of Chavez has come at a time when he is needed
the most. After the election of October 2012, which he won
with a 55 per cent majority, he was set to serve another term
of six years, from 2013 to 2019, a period crucial for
consolidating the revolutionary process that he had initiated
and to advance the regional integration of Latin America, a
process in which he had played a key role. But that was not
to be.
ARIANA CUBILLOS/AP

A copy of
the Constitutionin hand, a woman watches on a big screen
Nicolas Maduro being sworn in President.
The accomplishments of Hugo Chavez in the 14 years after
he became President are truly extraordinary. His
achievement has two dimensions: the domestic one, or his
impact on Venezuelas economy, society and polity; and the
external dimension, or his impact on Latin America and
international relations in general.
Alternative to neoliberalism
In Venezuela, Chavez strove to build an alternative to the
neoliberal model. The success he achieved made him a
powerful source of inspiration and a magnet that attracted
the entire Left in Latin America. After he took office in 1999,
Chavez first embarked on the establishment of a new
Constitution, one that truly devolved power to the people.
Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world. From
2002, after the coup against him was foiled by popular
upsurge, Chavez went about the task of asserting national
sovereignty over the oil resources of the country. He brought
the giant oil company, PDVSA, under government control
and made Western oil companies conform to stringent terms.
He defied the conventional pattern followed by oil-exporting
countries, that of parking their petro-dollars in U.S. and
Western banks. Nationalisation of the electricity and telecom
industries followed.
Land reforms were implemented and three million hectares
of land was distributed to tens of thousands of farmers.
The next step Chavez took was to use the oil revenues for the
welfare of the people. A number of social missions were set
up. The missions, named Mission Robinson, Sucre, and so
on, after the liberators of South America, were designed to
eradicate illiteracy, to promote education and health, and to
provide food and housing facilities for the people.
BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

On a tour
of rural West Bengal when he visited India in 2005.
The results of these pro-people policies have been
remarkable. The Bolivarian Republic reduced poverty by
half; the poverty rate dropped from 42.8 per cent in 1999 to
26.5 per cent in 2011. Extreme poverty fell by 70 per cent,
from 16.6 per cent to 7 per cent, in the same period. Illiteracy
was eradicated and the number of teachers went up from
65,000 to 350,000.
When I visited Venezuela in 2004, I saw how life in the
barrios (slums) that ring Caracas was changing. There was a
network of primary health centres. These clinics were
manned by Cuban doctors and medical personnel and they
provided first-class medical care. There was a food
programme which provided lunch six days a week for
children, pregnant women, the elderly, the disabled and
those in extreme poverty.
According to the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), Venezuela, which was the country with the highest
income inequality in the 1990s, became the least unequal in
Latin America (with a Gini coefficient of 0.39 in 2011).
These major social changes were accomplished by harnessing
the power of the people. The Bolivarian revolutionary
process involved the creation of 35,000 community councils
and a network of popular organisations at the grass-roots
level. Chavez recognised the need to organise a party and
converted the Movement for the Fifth Republic into a
political party, the United Socialist Party (PSUV).
ESTEBAN FELIX/AP

IN
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA, in December 2012, people hold
up images of Chavez in his support during a concert to mark
the eighth anniversary of ALBA
Chavez and the revolutionary process faced intense hostility
and constant attacks from the oligarchy, which comprises big
business, the landed elite and the upper echelons of the
bureaucracy. The oligarchy is backed by the United States
and foreign capital. Their hatred for Chavez was all the more
since he rallied the army and remoulded it into a popular
nationalist force. With the support of the working people and
the armed forces, Chavez foiled one conspiracy after another
to destabilise the revolutionary process.
External Relations
Externally, Chavez built a close and strong alliance with
Cuba. He embraced the revolutionary philosophy of Fidel
Castro and soon became its successful practitioner. It is clear
that his leadership of Venezuela helped the Left advance in
Latin America: following his first victory in 1998, Left
electoral victories followed in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador,
Uruguay, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and other
countries.
Uniting Latin America
Chavez propounded a Bolivarian vision, a vision inspired
by Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America from
Spanish rulethat of a united Latin America free from
imperialist domination. He was instrumental in establishing
the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America
(ALBA), a grouping that comprises eight countries
(Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia were the core countries that
initiated the formation of the alliance). ALBA was followed
by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and
finally by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States (CELAC), whose establishment at Caracas in
December 2011 was Chavezs last major step in this
direction. (All these regional bodies, it must be noted, have
excluded the United States and Canada.) The establishment
of Bank of the South, the television station Telasur, and the
virtual currency sucre are all products of regional

cooperation. Chavez also set up Petrocaribe in order to

provide oil at favourable financial terms to the poor
countries of the region, such as Haiti.
Above all, Chavez forged an alliance with Cuba that helped
the latter tide over the difficult period that followed the fall
of the Soviet Union. In a letter to Chavez, written when he
left Cuba for the last time on February 17, before he died in
Venezuela, Fidel Castro wrote: When the socialist camp
collapsed and the USSR disintegrated and imperialism with
its sharpened knife tried to drown the Cuban revolution in
blood, Venezuela, a relatively small country in a divided
America, was capable of preventing that.
Revolutionary vision
Such was the revolutionary, internationalist vision of Chavez.
His foreign policy was guided by a central point, how to
resist imperialist hegemony and protect the sovereignty of
Third World countries in order that they are able to develop
independently.
No other leader in the world did so much as Hugo Chavez to
set the 21st century on a new course.
I met Hugo Chavez in December 2004 in Caracas. In a
nearly hour-long meeting, he set out his vision of SouthSouth cooperation and of how to revive the Non-Aligned
Movement, and spoke of his own evolving ideas about
socialism. He discussed his forthcoming visit to India in 2005
and expressed a keen interest to visit Kolkata.
Chavez did visit India in March 2005. He also went to
Kolkata where he received a big reception from the people
who lined the route from the airport to the stadium where a
public reception was held. Chavez was greatly enthused and
he told the media that he had not got such a big response
from the people anywhere else outside Venezuela except
Porto Alegre in Brazil.
The Left and popular forces in Venezuela are determined to
carry on along the path built by Hugo Chavez. Without
Chavez they will have to face big challenges in the days to
come. They will have to maintain the broad unity of the Left
and progressive forces which Chavez, with his unique
qualities, had forged.
The civil-military alliance which is the bedrock of the
Bolivarian revolution has to be continued. The efforts of the
right-wing forces and the U.S. to roll back Chavismo has to
be countered. The days ahead will be testing. But the people
who turned out in their tens of thousands proclaiming
Chavez lives, the struggle continues will keep the vision of
Chavez alive.

Vol:30 Iss:06 URL:

http://www.flonnet.com/fl3006/stories/20130405300602000.ht

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COVER STORYKolkata remembers
WHEN he said in clear Bengali in his rich baritone, Aami
apnader bhalobashi (I love you all), President Hugo Chavez
of Venezuela stole the hearts of the people of Kolkata. They
had been counting the days, and when he arrived on March
5, 2005, exactly eight years before the day he passed away,
they made sure he received a welcome he would never forget.
Chavez was delayed by a few hours and the heat was
oppressive, but the thousands of people who had gathered on
both sides of the road to greet him as his motorcade drove by
from the airport waited. If the reception on the streets was
warm, the one at the Rabindra Sarovar Stadium in south
Kolkata was overwhelming. The venue was not big enough to
accommodate all those who had come to see him, and a sea of
humanity waited outside patiently just for a glimpse of the
man.
He did not let them down. In an inspiring and emotional
speech delivered with the help of a young interpreter, Chavez
expressed his wonder at the similarities he perceived between
Venezuela and West Bengal. Everything here looks so
familiar to me as if I am still in Caracas, he said to the
delight of the crowd. One of the most memorable moments in
the public reception was when Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee,
Chief Minister of the then Communist Party of India
(Marxist)-led Left Front government, stepped forward to
rescue the hapless interpreter foundering on Chavezs
rendition in Spanish of Where the Mind is Without Fear by
Rabindranath Tagore and recited the entire poem from
memory to cheers from the crowd. The CPI(M) youth leader
Satarup Ghosh, a teenager then, reminisced, To me that was
the high point of the occasion. It was so spontaneous and
unscripted. After Buddhada finished his recitation, the way
he hugged him, it was so moving.
Silent grief
Away from Kolkata, the news of Chavezs death was a
poignant moment of silent grief for the people of Bagu village
in North 24 Paraganas district. Eight years ago, Chavez
touched their lives as no other VIP had done when he visited
the village. He mingled with the people, served the midday
meal to children of the primary school and joined the
children in a dance, oblivious of the security and protocol
requirements. I will carry the message of West Bengal to
Venezuela, he told the people before leaving. Eight years
later, the people of Bagu, too, did not forget their special
guest. Spontaneously, they held a condolence meeting in his
honour.
SUHRID SANKAR CHATTOPADHYAY