Petroleum Populist
What happens to Hugo Chávez if oil prices go down?

Reviewed by Alexandra Starr
Sunday, September 2, 2007

HUGO!

The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution

By Bart Jones

Steerforth. 570 pp. $30

HUGO CHÁVEZ

By Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka

Translated from the Spanish by Kristina Cordero

Random House. 327 pp. $27.95

Venezuelans once almost universally held former president R?mulo Betancourt, who led their country's transition from military rule in the 1950s, in high esteem. When I visited Caracas last December to cover the presidential elections, however, supporters of Hugo Chávez spoke disparagingly of the politician who used to be called the father of Venezuelan democracy. "Betancourt was a fake man who gave us a fake democracy," one voter in the slums of Caracas told me. "It wasn't until Chávez that we had a president who looked out for us."

In recent years, Chávez has challenged the established order around the world, denouncing President Bush as "the devil" at the United Nations, lionizing Cuban leader Fidel Castro as a "father" on a national newscast and embracing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "brother" in Tehran. But it is at home in Venezuela where he has truly upended the political system. The poor adore him. The wealthy detest him, his socialist policies and his soak-the-rich rhetoric. After nearly a decade in office, he holds an iron grip on power in the country with the largest proven oil reserves outside the Middle East.

Chávez's rise has a made-for-Hollywood quality. His childhood home bore a roof of palm leaves and lacked running water. Classmates mocked him for not wearing proper shoes. On the streets he sold arañita s ( papaya sweets) prepared by the grandmother who raised him. Yet Chávez always dreamed big. At first, he wanted to be a professional baseball player. Then, as a young military officer, he confided to a friend that he would be president. Roughly 20 years later, after leading a failed coup and spending two years in jail, he achieved that goal, winning election in 1998.

Two biographies offer complementary, rather than competing, views of the Chávez phenomenon. Venezuelan journalist Cristina Marcano and her husband, novelist Alberto Barrera Tyszka, published Hugo Chávez in Spanish four years ago; Random House has just released a clunky English translation. A newer offering is Hugo! by Bart Jones, a Newsday reporter who spent eight years in Venezuela, mainly as a correspondent for the Associated Press.

Both books are well reported and offer valuable insight into Chávez's background and motivation. Jones provides a superb description of the economic inequities that helped create the conditions for a populist such as Chávez to come to power. Marcano and Tyszka, meanwhile, focus on the president's psychology, plumbing his strained relationship with his mother and his lust for the spotlight. According to Chávez's former psychologist, he has a need "to be listened to, paid attention to, admired, even idolized." His former mistress says he has become so narcissistic and self-involved that she no longer recognizes the man she was linked to for nine years.

Neither book, however, can be considered definitive. Hugo Chávez is dated: Readers will be surprised to read such assertions as "When it comes to the oil business, Chávezdoes not scream, 'Yankee go home!'," given that he booted several U.S. oil companies out of Venezuela this year.

Jones, meanwhile, may come across as a Chávezpartisan. In some ways, this is a healthy corrective: As Hugo! points out, mainstream press coverage is often hostile to the Venezuelan president. Still, Jones ignores or soft-pedals allegations about Chávez's free spending, womanizing and tolerance of corruption. His inner circle -- commonly referred to as the boliburguesía, a combination of "Bolivarian" and "bourgeoisie" -- has built mansions in the priciest neighborhoods of Caracas, raising questions about how government salaries could finance such extravagance.

Where Jones truly excels is in his observations of Venezuelan society and the outsized role oil has played in molding the national character. During boom periods -- the late 1970s, for example, and today -- some Venezuelans live large. But while black gold may have swelled the national coffers, it has also tied the country's fortunes to an economic rollercoaster and warped Venezuelans' values, rewarding aggressiveness and street smarts rather than a strong work ethic. "Some people called it the ' piñata culture,' " Jones writes, "where the 'candy' or the money from oil revenues spills to the floor after the piñata is broken open and everyone grabs what they can in a free-for-all."

Many poor Venezuelans felt they were never invited to the party. And with good reason: Even as billions of dollars gushed into the country in the 1970s, most lived in penury. The rich, meanwhile, did very well; the country's per capita ownership of private jets is one of the highest in the world.

This gross inequity created an opportunity for a man of the people to emerge. As Marcano and Tyszka put it, "The root of Chávez's power resides in the religious and emotional bond he has forged with the popular sectors of the country." He calls his social programs misiones ("missions"), and they provide a broad assortment of services for slum dwellers, from subsidized meals to education.

That said, Chávez would not have been reelected by a 26-point margin last December if oil prices weren't sky high. The windfall of cash -- last year alone, the state oil company's revenues topped $100 billion -- has not only shored up goodwill at home, but has expanded Venezuela's influence across the Americas. Its oil shipments to Cuba are a godsend for Castro. Chávez has also spread his petroleum largesse to allies in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

After securing another six-year term last December, Chávez called for the constitution to be amended so he could remain in office indefinitely. The document will almost certainly be tailored to his specifications, and the authors of both books offer predictions of what the next phase of Chávez's presidency could hold. Jones speculates that if Chávez does not open up his immediate circle and allow other, critical viewpoints to emerge, his "revolution" will founder. Marcano and Tyszka point out that Chávez's most ambitious programs, both in Venezuela and abroad, have been facilitated by the "sweet cash" from oil exports. For now, he has virtually free rein to nationalize businesses, consolidate power and offer international aid. But Venezuelans tend to be more critical of their leaders when cash is short. Chávez indisputably has forged a strong bond with his country's poorest citizens, but his standing may be more dependent on the price of oil than he would like to admit. Someday, his reputation may suffer the fate of Betancourt's. *

Alexandra Starr, a former Organization of American States fellow in Caracas, is a 2007 Milena Jesenská fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria.