£7.99) reviewed by #you want a quick romp through the recent history of Venezuela, this is it. In just 150 pages Michael McCaughan's book will take you through all the twists and turns of the last five years of stand-off between President Hugo Chavez and one of the most corrupt and reactionary ruling classes in the world.
After some background on Chavez' role model, Simon Bolivar, the 19th century independence hero who spent his family's fortune fighting for Latin American unity, then died a pauper, the book takes you rapidly through Venezuela's 20th century, including the charismatic Colonel Chavez' own failed coup attempt in 1992.
But the meat of the story begins with his unexpected, landslide, election victory in December 1998 and then takes you through the reshaping of the constitution, the organisation of Bolivarian Circles, the projects for agrarian, urban, educational and health reform and of course the attempt to bring oil revenues back under control.
Chavez' remarkable talent for getting up the nose of the US administration is given rather little space. But you'll hardly be able to miss the wrath of Washington lurking just off-stage, as the book recounts in detail the increasingly hysterical reaction of the opposition, from early protests through the 2002 coup attempt and the failed general strike, or 'general lockout", to the beginnings of the present confrontation over whether or not there will be a referendum on Hugo Chavez rule.
You'll discover what really happened when Venezuelan TV. followed by the rest of the word's media showed Chavez support. ers apparency shooting at an oppositon -are r Aori 2002
-nese Doures were mmediaten sec = he venezuear appostor ans me S Sace coup attempt which was only stopped in its cracks by an immense uprising of the Venezuelan poor.
It's true that the brazen manipulation of these images - the way they were edited to avoid showing that the Chavez supporters were in fact firing into an empty avenue, amost certainly at snipers who had already shot several of them - as well as the drama and double talk of the confrontation that folowed, is revealed more clearly and excitingly by another group of Irish journalists, filmTakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain. But their extraordinary TV documentary,
'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", support base, which fuels the fear and hatred felt for the mestizo president and the darkskinned masses that populate their nightmares - pouring down from the shanty towns above Caracas to impose Castroinspired communism.
This paranoia is partly explained by the way the prejudices of the traditional Hispanic ruling class have been reinforced in a way that hasn't happened anywhere else in
First, in the 1950s, there were the hundreds of thousands of white immigrants brought from southern Europe to bolster the dictatorship of the Perez Jimenez. Then in the | 960s Venezuela became home to the largest community of Cuban emigrés outside Florida.
It is they that dominate the super-biased Venezuelan media and provide the link with the ultra neo-con, Cuban Americans that run the Bush administration's Latin America policy, like Roger Noriega and Otto Reich.
The long tradition of deceit and fraud that has kept this elite .... long hours and do unheard-of home visits doctors refuse to work. that supported President Chavez' inclusion of indigenous rights in his new Bolivarian rificed to the needs of big electricity powersharing projects with neighbouring Brazil.
The book does have limitations. It was jumping backwards and forwards without guaranteed to lose any readers that don't already know the story. that it offers little help in reaching a clear political understanding of the Chavez phenomenon. In this, of course it's not alone. this either. This is true of the best existing work in English, by Richard Gott ('In The the one thousand Cuban doctors who work bringing basic health care for the first time to the poor neighbourhoods where Venezuelan
Or of the Pemon indigenous communities constitution, but now feel they've been sacobviously written and edited in a hurry, and it shows. The narrative has an irritating habit of 2003). telling you where it has gone, in a way that's
The other big problem with this book is Nobody else on the left seems to have done Is that a revolutionary road? Chavez (right) with an unconvinced Fidel Castro Shadow Of The Liberator', Verso, 2000) or Gregory Wilpert (New Left Review, 21, May
But it is also true of the Venezuelan left itself, hopelessly split between those who are hanging onto the colonel's coat tails, and others engaged in acrobatic alliances with the anti-Chavez establishment.
This may be because Hugo Chavez, with his suspicion of traditional political organisa. tion, poses a real difficulty for the left. Populist he certainly is, but a populist who seems genuinely intent on confronting imperialism and displacing the ruling elite is not what we're used to.
The Chavez approach to participatory democracy may be centralised and top down - a long way from our notions of socialist democracy, or even from the best versions of the participatory budget in Brazil
But could it be opening up the space for the development of a real revolutionary process, if only someone or something were available to move into that space and push it forward?
This book does has not answered these questions. But for time being neither have