BOOK REVIEW: What Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez left behind

Posted on Sunday, 03.24.13

BOOK REVIEW: What Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez left behind

In his latest book, Irish journalist Rory Carroll delivers an
authoritative account of the complicated legacy of Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez, who died this month. In Comandante, Carroll — who served as
The Guardian correspondent in Caracas from 2006 until 2012 — describes
in minute detail how Chávez, who ruled Venezuela from 1999 until his
death on March 5, created something unique, "an authoritarian democracy
. . . . a hybrid system of personality cult and one-man rule." Here is
Chávez not as a one-dimensional symbol but in all his complexity: The
utopian socialist, the voracious reader, the vainglorious militarist,
the bad husband, the doting father.

Even as he describes how Chávez empowered poor communities in Venezuela
by creating communal councils and building homes for thousands of people
who had never known decent shelter, Carroll succinctly outlines how the
president squandered the great opportunity for durable development
afforded to him by record-high oil prices, failing to diversify the
country's economy.

At the heart of this failure proves to be a desire — above all else —
for power.

Chávez had a digital record of the names of three million people who had
voted against him in a 2004 recall referendum, which was then used "to
purge signatories from the state payroll, to deny jobs, contracts,
loans, documents, to harass and punish, to make sectarianism official."
The mastermind behind the list, Luis Tascón, went on to become a
strident critic of government corruption and was banished from Chávez's
inner circle before his own death in 2010.

Chávez's opposition — a diffuse and disorganized group of former
military allies, civil libertarians, the country's besieged middle class
and what Chávez would doubtless refer to as the country's rancid
oligarchy — never managed to unseat him. This is perhaps not surprising.
They were faced with the cheerleading omnipotence of the ubiquitous
state media — the result of Chávez's war against Venezuela's virulently
hostile private media — and massive slush funds paid for with money
siphoned from the state oil company.

Chávez did not ascend to and retain power alone, though, and contained
in Carroll's book are revealing snapshots of those who accompanied the
president: The Machiavellian academic-turned-government-official Jorge
Giordani; the gruff bus driver who would become foreign minister (and
now president) Nicolás Maduro; the slippery former army officer Diosdado
Cabello.

Outside the sphere of officialdom, those in the Chávez camp are a
diverse bunch, with some appearing earnest and committed, such as
members of an agricultural cooperative Carroll visits in Chávez's native
state of Barnias. Others, such as the Venezuelan-American attorney and
government apparatchik Eva Golinger, coming across as slightly mad in
their cultish devotion to El Comandante. Those who fall out of favor,
such as former Minister of Defense Raúl Baduel, who helped crush a 2002
coup attempt against Chávez but then denounced the president's 2007 bid
for perpetual reelection, are dealt with harshly.

But despite Chávez's political domination of the country, many of his
grandiose ideas came to naught.

After the 2002 coup attempt, Chávez fell ever-more under the spell of
Cuban leader Fidel Castro ("The Cubans took us over" states a former
ally glumly), who supplied revolutionary manpower in exchange for cheap
Venezuelan oil. Cuban doctors poured into Venezuela to provide their
services in the slums of Caracas, but soon enough they returned to Cuba,
moved on to work in Bolivia or defected to Colombia or the United
States, leaving their clinics abandoned. Government officials,
meanwhile, sought care from elite private hospitals. Roads, bridges and
factories all crumbled due to mismanagement and lack of maintenance.

And as Chávez's revolution went along, Venezuelans killed one another in
ever greater numbers. In 1998, there were 4,500 murders. In 2008, there
were more than 17,000, less than 1 percent of which were solved. The
prison population tripled to 50,000 in a prison system built for 12,000.

"The revolution inherited grave social problems and made them worse,"
Carroll writes. "The maximum leader who liked to micromanage everything
lost control of society's most fundamental requirement, security."

To compare Chávez to allies such as Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
or Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus is absurd, and Carroll does not fall
into this trap. Rather, Carroll reveals a creaking authoritarian edifice
that may or may not outlive its maker. A leader who once filled the
television screens of his country non-stop has now fallen silent. And
Venezuela is left to wonder what will come and fill the void.

Michael Deibert is the author of "Democratic of Congo: Between Hope and
Despair."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/24/v-fullstory/3304106/what-venezuelan-president-hugo.html