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In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela

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Since there is no extended analysis of Chávez in English that I know of, this is the most complete version that can be found of the history of the Chávez phenomenon. The reader should be aware that the author makes little effort to hide his admiration for Hugo Chávez, and accepts without question the Chávez interpretation of Venezuela, which is to say that absolutely nothing good ever happened in Venezuela between the death of Bolívar and the coup attempt led by Chávez. No credit is given at all to any attempts to develop the country in the last 100 years, except perhaps during the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship. Just about all previous leaders were corrupt. The author fails entirely to see the continuities between the Chávez movement and previous political movements, which are many. In short, the book is totally biased. Despite its obvious defects, however, Gott does cover the basic facts of Chávez' origins and his strategy to gain power, so if the reader wants to find out what Chávez is all about, this is a good and even fascinating source. It's fun to read. If the reader wants to understand what Venezuela is all about, it is much less reliable. The book only takes us up to the approval of the new Constitution at the end of 1999 and really only covers the period up until about mid-1999. The author's biases mean that he is unable to see the fractures within the Chávez coalition which would eventually lead to the break with Arias Cárdenas and which will surely mean further fissures in the future. He also assumes that all opponents to Chávez are hopeless reactionaries, which is only about 50% true. Surely someone will write a better book soon, but for now, this book will be useful for anyone who wants to know what has been going on in Venezuela. But let the buyer beware. Gott obviously doesn't care much about democratic processes and seems to think that coups are okay means of bringing about change.

As the author says, few books have been written in English about contemporary Venezuela, and a lot of what is being written in Spanish, for readers abroad, is too biased, incidental and poorly researched to be of any help in order to understand the deep political changes that are taking place in Simón Bolívar's nation. With his book "In the Shadow of the Liberator, Hugo Chávez and the Transformation of Venezuela" Professor Gott contributes to foster an objective and deeper knowledge of the Venezuelan political process led by President Chávez. Gott analyzes Venezuela's recent history;the Carlos Andrés Pérez's Presidency and the "Caracazo" of 1989, the military rebellions of 1992, the Rafael Caldera's government, the fall of the Ancien Régime and the election of Hugo Chávez as President, the formation of the Constituent Assembly and the future of the Bolivarian dream that Chávez endorses, the economy, the Legacy of Bolívar, and the impact of Chávez in Latin America, in a well docummented story enriched with on-site experiences and interviews with leading Venezuelan politicians. Gott also writes about the Reform of the Judiciary, the rights of indigenous peoples, the military and civil society and other changes that Chávez is pushing through his political agenda to conclude, as a majority of Venezuelans do, that President Chávez is an honest man "with the interest of his people at heart" It is an excellent book, not the last word in English - I hope- about a history that is still being written, but a first and rather good approach by an English writing scholar that will undoubtedly help in understanding the present and future of Venezuela.

After more than 50 years of extremely corrupt leaders, Venezuelans finally got tired, and elected this former paratroop officer/attempted coup leader as their president. This book portrays the reason for his election, and the way in which he was brought to power quite accurately, if not totally unbiased. However, this book is not just some attempt from Chavez to hire a biographer to change his image (as some readers suggested), but an attempt to show that perhaps president Chavez isn't a spawn of satan, like the opposition claims. Taxing, anti-corruption campaigns, and communicating with the people who elected him (the true average Venezuelan) on TV every Sunday are just a few things that have led him to be called everything from a Fascist (in the pre-election era) to a Communist (in the post-election era). Definitely a good book.

Since there is no extended analysis of Chávez in English that I know of, this is the most complete version that can be found of the history of the Chávez phenomenon. The reader should be aware that the author makes little effort to hide his admiration for Hugo Chávez, and accepts without question the Chávez interpretation of Venezuela, which is to say that practically nothing good ever happened in Venezuela between the death of Bolívar and the coup attempt led by Chávez. Just about all previous leaders were corrupt. The author fails entirely to see the historical continuities between the Chávez movement and previous political movements, which are many. In short, the book is biased. Despite its obvious defects, however, Gott does cover the basic facts of Chávez' origins and his strategy to gain power, so if the reader wants to find out what Chávez is all about, this is a good and even fascinating source. It's fun to read and permits access to information only available in Spanish. If the reader wants to understand what Venezuela is all about, it is much less reliable, since there is no space for a critical view. The book only takes us up to the approval of the new Constitution at the end of 1999 and really only covers the period up until about mid-1999. The author's biases mean that he is unable to foresee the fractures within the Chávez coalition which would eventually lead to the break with Arias Cárdenas and which will surely mean further fissures in the future. He also assumes that all opponents to Chávez are hopeless reactionaries, which is only about 50% true... Surely someone will write a better book soon, but for now, this book will be useful for anyone who wants to know what has been going on in Venezuela. But let the buyer beware. Gott is presenting the Chávez brief and the book should be read as such.

This book is pretty true to the Venezuelan political system. Although no one likes to admit it, one of the main things that worries the racist "middle class" (as is typical of Middle classes in Latin America, they consist of about 10% of the population) in Venezuela (perhaps the only middle class that lived for much of its life supported by the incumbent, plundering governments, until Chavez arrived: hence one of their reasons to hate him) is the fact that Chavez is not "white, blonde, and green eyed". The truth of the matter is that Chavez has not wrecked the Venezuelan economy. The people striking and closing down other's businesses at gunpoint have. And yes, history has already told: he's the only president (perhaps in the world?) to have won 5 consecutive elections by landslide in 2 years. It's funny how his opposition have gone from calling him a Hitlerite to a Castro-Communist (do these supposedly intelligent people realise that they are opposite ends of a political spectrum?!)

President Hugo Chavez has been a fantastic leader for all people with a progressive, social conscience. He inherited a land where the overwhelming majority of the population lived in dismal poverty despite being the 5th largest oil producing nation in the world. A small, elite group of oligarchs, mostly white in a country largely mulatto and black, controlled the wealth and the country's valuable resources. As Richard Gott makes clear in his excellent book, appropriately titled, that not only documents modern Venezuelan history, but brings us all the way back to the very beginning: Spanish colonization, resistence and finally, liberation at the hands of revolutionary Simon Bolivar.

Now I must get into some of the vile responses and outright lies that have been made by other reviewers of this book. Some of their comments, like repeating the same exact quote over and over again, makes me wonder if it's one than one person writing this. Others define themselves as "Venezuelan exiles" who are now living in Florida. Let me tell you right now, if there are people going around calling themselves Venezuelan exiles and living in South Florida typing away on a computer, you better believe they are white and make up that top upper-income bracket that I alluded to earlier. Take a look at some of their obvious disdain and downright loathing of the poor, oppressed masses of poor Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority (thus showing their distaste for the Venezuelan people themselves) "I emphasize the word "educated", because it is no surprise that his demagogical approach results appealing to the lower-income strata of Venezuela"

Because Chavez nationalized the oil industry and decided to make Venezuela's resources to the benefit of the Venezuelan people, he has made enemies among the infamously right wing, and pro business corporate media in Latin America and its cousin in the United States, who relies on the general ignorance of most Americans on Latin America to defame a great leader. First off, Hugo Chavez is NOT a dictator! The man has had 6 or 7 elections in the past 5 years and has won each and every won of them! And might I add, with overwhelming majorities to the tune of 58% and 60%. In the latest recall effort, that was defeated by nearly 60% of the vote, it was affirmed as being fair by international observers, including former US President Jimmy Carter. NOW, let's compare that with the Bush regime and its "democratic" credientials. 2 Elections in 8 years. NO recall possible under the US Constitution (It was only possible in Venezuela thanks to the Constitution that the "dictator" Chavez made as a way of removing unpopular leaders and keeping them in check! Boy that Chavez! What a funny way of showing what a dictator is!) In 2000, Bush gets controversially "elected", loses the popular vote, no international observers, and needs the Supreme Court to do him in. Yet Bush and his reactionary allies on this board, have NO problem with calling Chavez "anti democratic" and "Totalitarian"

By the way, remember that coup of 2002? Supported by the Bush administration and the oligarchy? One of the first things the coup plotters did was DISBAND the Congress and the Supreme Court! Venezuela's democratic foundations. So who is the "authoritiarian" again? Not only that, but try asking the oligarchs where those coup plotters, those that tried to overthrow the democratically elected gov of Venezuela by force, are doing now? In America, they'd probably be sitting on death row. So where are they in Venezuela? In a mass grave? Sitting in a jail cell??? No! THEY ARE FREE! The Supreme Court of Venezuela let them go! And they walk as free men today! What a horrible dictator that Chavez is! An opposition media, an opposition mayor in Caracas, and COUP PLOTTERS GO FREE!

Hugo Chavez is anything but what his opponents claim and for the love of God, please don't believe everything you hear in the corporate media..of from wealthy, right wing Venezuelan exiles. Read Richard Gott.

Perhaps the greatest misfortune of Gott's book is that it was published in the year 2000, before Chavez and his close followers showed - to the few that still could not see it - their true authoritarian face. Therefore, it presents to the English reader, an interpretation of the contemporary political situation in Venezuela from a very narrow point of view.

Many crutial events have happend since Chavez came into power, which make this book not only obsolete, but misguiding.

Most of - not to say all - "best people in the country summoned by his side" (p. 228) mentioned in the book have abandoned his personal project of power. Among them, just to mentioned two insignificant ones, Luis Miquilena "the principal political brain...and the key figure of the Fifth Republic movement" (p.222), and his wife.

"Chavez, it was claimed, was against the political parties, against the business community, against the media, and hostile to the Catholic Church". Now, after three years of constant violent and sometimes physical attacks on all of these groups, it cannot be just "claimed", it is a daily fact that Venezuela has to live under the government of Chavez.

"His intelligent and discrimitating attitud towards the politics of oil" (p 229) have taken PDVSA from one of the most prestigious oil companies in the world, manage almost exclusively by Venezuelans, to one that at the moment(2003) is forced to hire workers from Argelia and India because more than 40% of its employees have bee fired because they participated in a strike against Chavez, who considers anybody who says anything againts him an enemy that only deserves to be destroyed and humilliated.

At the end, even Gott himself admits that his book is bias since "reporters have always been susceptible to the charms of Latin America's radical strongmen, and I am no exeption" (p. 226). Hence, by writing a book following a obviously strong and self-admitted subjective perspective Gott simply failed to see that "Venezuela is still a society of gangsters and looters" (p. 227) and that Chavez is one of them.

Towards the end of this dreadfully ill-conceived book, Richard Gott relates a telling annecdote. The president has just invited him on a trip to a small town in the West of the country. Gott explains that he has to catch a plane back to England two days before the trip is to take place. Wasting no time, Chavez gets on the phone, calls the head of the army, and brings the entire junket a few days forward to accommodate him - wreaking havoc with the plans and schedules of his bulky entourage of ministers, aides, transport workers, etc. on a whim. Venezuelans have since had plenty of time to get used to this sort of mindless impulsivity, showcasing as it does the president's near pathological impulsivity and indifference to planning, not to mention lack of respect for his staff's time. Dozens of meetings were certainly disrupted by the decision, family dinners canceled, plans of every form had to be changed. Those of us who live in Venezuela have long since caught on that the megalomania and disorder this sort of decision betrays is one of the main causes the Chavez administration is failing so disastrously here. But not Gott. His take on the episode is rather different,

"I was given a private introduction," he explains, to Chávez's "military attention to detail and his capacity to make rapid decisions and demand instant action. For most of the things he wants done, today is already too late."

And so it is throughout the book. Gott goes to extraordinary lengths to paint even Chávez's most blatant shortcomings in the most positive light. His authoritarianism becomes decisiveness, his absurd determination to micromanage everything becomes "military attention to detail", etc. etc. Like a third rate propagandist, Gott whitewashes the story of Latin America's newest and most dangerous dictator. A compendium of soft-focus, soft-ball journalistic blather, the book comprehensibly fails to question even the most blatantly anti-democratic aspects of Chavez's leadership style. At this point, no one outside Chávez's payroll who's watched his government up close really buys it anymore.

It's a real shame that this shambles of a book is now the only book on Chavez available in English. Gott will have to answer to no one but his own conscience for buying into the laughable myth of Chávez and lionizing a dictator in the making.

It is uasually that the dictators in Latin America Pay some foreign writer to write an apology of their personality and their governments;usually English-spoken writers excells on it, because the fact that the apology is written in English or by one English or American person gives to the book an aura of objectivity, that does not have if is written by a Spanish speaking person, that is the culture of underdeveloped countries!. So you can find apologetic biographies of Somoza, Baptista, Trujillo, Pinochet, Videla, Fidel, Ortega, Vargas, Rojas Pinilla,and so on. But anyone had arrived at the shameful position that Gott did. Compare a semi-illiterate, megalomane and authoritarian "Caudillo" as is Chavez with the cultured, pasonate and liberal(in the Political Theory sense, not the American one) hero that is Bolivar is a simply craziness that shows that it is a paid work. To begin with there is not a consolidated ideology in the program of the felons of 4F, the tree of the three roots is a miserable foolishness that tries to combine three very different thinkers: Bolivar , the Liberal(again not in the American sense), Rodriguez , the progressive social reformer, and Zamora, the paysan guerilla "caudillo". Combine this undoable mix, with the apologies that Chaves does to Fidel, Gadaffi, Mao and Hussein and tou can find the perfect schizophrenic guide that only has been matched in this century by the craziness of Stalin. If you like to read a perfect, very well written paid apology of a dictator by a consumated socialdemocrat European intellectual buy it. Buy if you want to know the real situation of the Venezuela nowadays just read any objective international publication as The Economist, and you will see what a disastrous situation this country has now.

This book is a double edged sword. On the one hand it is the first and only(to my knowledge) account of the Hugo Chavez debacle in Venezuela. This volume documents the rise of Chavez. The failed coup, the army, the prison term and his present role as dictator-in-making of Venezuela. This is a fine account of the life of this controversial leader who embodies the 1970s communist idealism with the standard Latin American coup mentality and obsession with military strongmen. He is a caudillo in every sense of the word, except he is living in modern times when Caudilloism is no longer appreciated because it subverts democracy.

This book highlights the present problems in Venezuela. The major flaw here is the authors opinion that Chavez is a romantic communist who is reforming his country. Well this is just not true. Average Bolivians, especially the urban unions hate Mr. Chavez and the oil workers walked off the job to protest his treatment of them. Mr. Chavez is a typical leftist who has used divisive politics to `help' indigenous rural Indians and divide the country along race and wealth lines. In this he has failed, which is why the country came to an economic standstill last year. Chavez suspended the rule of law, arrested his political opponents and pounded his chest in daily 4 hour TV broadcasts. He is a disgusting gutter like gangster and the author doesn't look at this side of him at all. The author in point of fact was a writer on the guerrilla movements of the 60s in Latin America and has apparently been taken under the Chavez spell, because Chavez once met Castro, who is the authors hero. The book is terribly biased and does not tell the whole truth, namely that ordinary proletariat factory workers in Venezuela hate Chavez and his programs. He has systematically crushed the unions in his attempt at dictatorship.