Who is Hugo Chavez?
This man stands for the very opposite of what the U.S. Constitution represents. In 1992, he led a bloody military coup against a democratic president, deceiving the soldiers under his command by telling them they were going to a military parade. More than 100 innocent Venezuelans died during these events. Years later, he arrived to the presidency on the basis of promises he has not kept. From the start, helped along by a significant oil income, he has tried to become a regional socialist leader and to convert Venezuela into another Cuba, under the passive, almost indifferent eyes of the Organization of American States. Today, he controls all political institutions in our country, including the National Electoral Council, which makes it practically impossible for him to lose a presidential election. He violated both the letter and the spirit of the Venezuelan Constitution, introducing changes that allow him to run indefinitely for the presidency, He has systematically harassed and perse
You may have heard the name, but you may not know who he is. Hugo Chavez is the dictator of the South American Nation of Venezuela. He’s a Socialist, if not an out-and-out Communist. This is probably not so interesting to many. What may be interesting to you, though, is that the leftist American media adores him. Other industrialized nations just love him more. The BBC news article I’ve linked openly celebrates Chavez’s Saddam Hussein-esque television program.
I have to admit, before I saw this film, Id only followed the situation in Venezuela on a cursory level. I knew Hugo Chavez was better than the presidents who had preceded him in Venezuela, but I had also bought some of the pervasive right-wing propaganda against him. After seeing The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Ive become a believer in Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. President Chavez seems to be a quite ordinary, working class person of color but also an extraordinary leader. His first comments captured on film after he was returned to the Presidential Palace after the coup were something like, I knew that we, the people, would win. It wasnt about him. It was about what the will of the majority wanted. It was about what the constitution demanded. His first broadcast to the people of Venezuela after the coup was directed toward calm and reconciliation. This was amazing for me to see. If he was as brutal as U.S. media portrayed him, he would have incited his fol
President Hugo Chavez is many things to many people. For many of Venezuela’s poor he represents hope for a brighter future, for many of his country’s wealthy he has caused economic chaos in their homeland. For Cubans he is the source of cheap oil, for those with eye problems he is the source of the medicine for their new found sight. For history books he is the son of two school teachers who has risen to become, according to TIME magazine, one of the world’s most influential people. Hugo Chavez was born on July 28, 1954 in the capital of Venezuela’s state of Barinas. At the age of 17 he enrolled at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences graduating as a sub-lieutenant in 1975. After several months of military service he spent time at Simon Bolivar University but left without a graduate degree. He then entered active military service eventually rising to the rank of Lieutenant General. It was during these years that he (along with his fellow students and soldiers) Chavez founded his
