The Long Shadow of Hugo Chávez: A Sympathetic Book Defends Venezuela's Strongman

Richard Gott has always been susceptible, he admits, to "the charms of Latin America's strongmen." This time he has fallen for comandante Hugo Chávez, the former army lieutenant colonel and two-time coup leader who was inaugurated as Venezuela's president in February 1999 with overwhelming public support. Chávez, as Gott sees him, is a radical revolutionary who will provide the "antibodies" to combat "globalization ... the disease of the new millennium."

This first major assessment of the new regime in Caracas is classic Gott: large chunks of on-the-spot reportage and selective history spiced with generous dollops of old-left rhetoric, folded into a tasty literary sandwich. His is a Manichean world where "the evil empire" is based in Washington, D.C. Gott's hero is Chávez, who follows in the tradition of the great Latin American radical nationalists: Juan Perón of Argentina, Juan Velasco of Peru, Omar Torríjos of Panama -- and, of course, the ever-resilient Fidel Castro.

Gott himself has been a fixture for over 30 years among the foreign interpreters of Latin America. A British journalist who worked at the University of Chile in the 1960s, he authored a major work on the region's guerrilla movements before following Che Guevara's disastrous Bolivian campaign. More recently, he completed a fine elegy for the hinterland of South America where the Jesuits once ruled. He was also for a time the literary editor at The Guardian in London until he had to resign following allegations that he had been too cozy with Soviet agents.

Gott is always an interesting, well-informed, and engaging writer. Washington would be wise to pay attention to this account, since Chávez's radical nationalism (so fondly described by Gott) is presumably raising eyebrows in Foggy Bottom and Langley. Hence the detailed exegesis of the comandante's antecedents, philosophy, and friendships takes on great importance, even if Gott himself is surprised that "the Americans have been unusually quiet about Chávez."

Chávez, according to Gott, is a pragmatic utopian, and his aim is to destroy the Washington-inspired, neo-liberal economic "fundamentalism" that has entrapped Latin America in a U.S.-dominated system of dependence. Within South America, he seeks to revive the old dream of Simón Bolívar, calling for a united Latin America based on a reunification of the five Bolivarian republics (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia). To this end, Chávez has immersed himself in Venezuelan history, rediscovering heroes with revolutionary credentials and restoring Bolívar -- long criticized by Marxists -- to leftist respectability.

Gott is especially intrigued by Chávez's resurrection of Bolívar's long-forgotten teacher, Simón Rodríguez. This philosopher (who was so struck by the character of Robinson Crusoe that he renamed himself Samuel Robinson) argued for a rural-based economic revolution and the integration of indigenous peoples with the descendants of black slaves. Chávez is himself a man of mixed black and Indian ancestry and a llanero, an inlander from the plains of central Venezuela. Gott sees this espousal of "Robinsonian" philosophy as critical to understanding Chávez's policies toward Venezuela's poor and indigenous citizens -- such as his schemes to resettle the population in the interior, away from the slums of the big cities.

Chávez has surrounded himself with battle-honed leftist stalwarts and survivors of past guerrilla insurrections, many of whom also knew Gott in the 1960s. Among Chávez's inner circle is Ali Rodríguez Araque, his minister of energy and mines, a former guerrilla fighter in Falcón state in the 1960s, and a former activist in the left-wing Radical Cause party. There are also Jose Vicente Rangel, his foreign minister and a perennial presidential candidate of the left, and Luís Miquilena, the octogenarian former leader of the Caracas bus drivers who helped form Chávez's "Fifth Republic Movement" of civilians and soldiers, which played a key role in his presidential election. Miquilena, whom Gott admires for his "tough Leninist streak" and his attempts to "revive the tradition of socialist nationalism," became the chief political adviser to Chávez and then president of the Constituent Assembly in 1999.

Chávez's bold aspirations have already translated into significant policies. Despite the official Venezuelan commitment to the peace process in Colombia, Gott emphasizes that Chávez is on the side of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (better known by its Spanish acronym FARC), the major leftist guerrilla force in Colombia's vicious internal war. He also credits the Chávez government, and Ali Rodríguez in particular, with a radically changed policy toward the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that aims at curbing production increases and cooperating with non-OPEC member Mexico to raise oil prices. In fact, Chávez was so pleased with Rodríguez's election as OPEC president that he has proposed a meeting in Caracas, with guests to include Saddam Hussein, Muammar al-Qaddafi, and Muhammad Khatami. If nothing else, this exquisite happening -- if it ever takes place -- should get Washington's attention. With the U.S. public already furious over gas prices, such a meeting would surely remind Americans of a studiously forgotten fact: Venezuela is the largest oil supplier of the United States, providing more petroleum than all Persian Gulf states combined.

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