Profile: Hugo Chavez

Profile: Hugo Chavez
AljazeeraAljazeera

Considered a blustering authoritarian by critics and a champion of the
poor by supporters, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is one of the most
bombastic and polarising leaders in the world today.

Known for brash statements aimed at other world readers and rousing
televised speeches, Chavez, 58, faces one of his toughest challenges yet
when Venezuelans go to the polls in presidential elections on October 7.

Chavez and his policies of "21st-century socialism" are facing off
against a united opposition led by Henrique Capriles.

"This is not just an ordinary election where if one party gets elected
you have slight changes in policy," Gregory Wilpert, author of Changing
Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chavez
Government, told Al Jazeera. "They represent different visions for the
society and economic and political systems."

Humble origins

Born in 1954, the second son of two impoverished schoolteachers in the
village of Sabaneta, the young Chavez was interested in becoming a
baseball star, not a politician. He joined the military at 17,
apparently in order to be moved to Caracas, Venezuela's capital, where
he could be viewed by talent scouts.

Lacking major league skills, he ended up staying with the military and
was deployed to fight a rag-tag rebel army. After hearing suspected
rebels being tortured - allegedly beaten with baseball bats covered in
wet cloths and speaking with his brother, a Marxist professor, Chavez
apparently had an epiphany.

He co-founded a group known as the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement,
named after Venezuela's independence hero Simon Bolivar, and began
organising soldiers to take over the government.

"When he first came on the scene as this army officer… he seemed to be
trying to forge a liberal approach between neoliberalism and Marxism,"
Kirk Hawkins, author of Venezuela's Chavismo and Populism in Comparative
Perspective, told Al Jazeera. "His experiences over the past few years
have led him down the Marxist road."

In 1992, during a period of repression known as El Caracazo under then
president Carlos Andres Peres, Chavez, along with several army units,
attempted to initiate a coup.

The coup failed miserably and Chavez was imprisoned. But he was allowed
to address the nation on television for one minute before being taken
away and took full responsibility for the failed operation. As most
politicians blamed their problems on others, many Venezuelans saw his
admission as inspiring and began organising for his release.

Chavez spent two years in prison before being pardoned in 1994 by then
president Rafael Caldera.

Intense polarisation

He was elected president in 1998, promising to better distribute
Venezuela's vast oil wealth to the poor, sparking a backlash from the
country's former power brokers and beginning a period of intense
polarisation.

"Chávez frequently refers to the bourgeoisie, the oligarchy and US
imperialism," Sujatha Fernandes, professor of sociology at City
University of New York, told Al Jazeera. "The opposition invokes the
threat of communism and socialism, and scares the middle classes by
saying that Chávez plans to expropriate private property.

"Each side creates labels and stereotypes about the other side,
inflaming the situation."

In 2002, following a bitter strike at the national oil company, the
opposition attempted a coup. The plan, which saw Chavez shuttled off to
a military base and his reforms rescinded, only lasted 47 hours.

The coup government, lacking any democratic legitimacy, was swiftly
recognised by the US, further souring relations between the countries
and leading Chavez to believe the US was conspiring against him.

After being reinstated, Chavez began clamping down on the private media,
which - in some cases - provided intentionally distorted coverage of
unrest in Caracas in order to help the opposition.

He pushed ahead with socialist-minded reforms, nationalising some
industries, and increased his anti-US rhetoric. He called former
President George W Bush "the devil" during an address to the UN and
urged the world to read Noam Chomsky's book Hegemony or Survival,
causing sales to skyrocket.

Despite his anti-US positions, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq turned out
to be a boon for the populist leader, as it led to a massive spike in
oil prices, and thus government revenue. "Oil rents create the unique
possibility to undertake the project he is creating," Hawkins said.

He has provided oil to Cuba in exchange for doctors who work in poor
areas of Venezuela, and has sent subsided petroleum to Latin American
allies and even poor residents of the US. Critics accuse him of wasting
oil wealth on foreigners at the expense of Venezuelans.

Poverty has decreased during his tenure, according to most studies. The
United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index, for
example, which combines measures of income, health and educational
attainment from 0 to 1, with higher levels of prosperity being closer to
1, has gone from 0.656 in 2000 to 0.735 in 2011, an increase of 1 per
cent each year during Chavez's tenure.

'Messianic framing'

Recently, Chavez has battled cancer in Cuba, and although he claims to
have recovered, supporters worry about his health. Secrecy surrounding
his physical state and the treatment itself have provided more fodder
for the opposition.

In July 2012, Human Rights Watch accused the Chavez government of
censoring the press and intimidating critics. "For years, President
Chávez and his followers have been building a system in which the
government has free rein to threaten and punish Venezuelans who
interfere with their political agenda," the New York-based group said in
a 133-page report .

"Today that system is firmly entrenched, and the risks for judges,
journalists, and rights defenders are greater than they've ever been
under Chávez."

Supporters of Chavez say the "Bolivarian Revolution" is under attack
from unelected elites, backed by foreign powers, and that defending it
is necessary.

"He wants to see great moral stakes in everything going on and to see
himself as something very important," Hawkins said. "I am sure this is
partly messianic, but plenty of other activists share that vision and
way of framing things."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Prize winning Colombian author, flew
with Chavez before "El Commandante" first won the presidency. "I was
struck by the impression that I had traveled and talked delightfully
with two opposite men," Marquez wrote. "One who good luck had given the
opportunity to save his nation -- and the other, an illusionist, who
could go down in history as just another despot."

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