Home PageHugo Chvez
Hugo Chvez Fras (born July 28, 1954) is President of Venezuela. He is a controversial figure because he has been governing Venezuela following the principles of a progressive social movement, which he calls Bolivarianism, in honor of the Venezulan-born South American independence hero Simn Bolvar. His policies have antagonized the Venezuelan elite and the current United States government. He is supported by Venezuela's Bolivarian Circles, which claim to represent the working classes.
| Table of contents |
|
2 2002 Coup Attempt Against Chvez 3 2002 Strike/Lockout 4 2003: A new coup? 5 Footnotes |
The son of Hugo de los Reyes Chvez and Elena Fras de Chvez, Chvez has four children of his own: Rosa Virginia, Mara Gabriela, Hugo Rafael, and Rosins. He was married twice and is currently separated from his second wife.
He graduated from the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences on July 5, 1975, after being awarded master's degrees in miltary sciences and engineering.
He continued his education by following a master's degree in political sciences at the Simn Bolvar University in Caracas, which he did not finish according to his Universtity tutor and the head of the Politcal Science school.
An ex-paratrooper, Chvez came to prominence after heading a failed military coup in 1992.
After spending two years in prison, he was pardoned by former President Rafael Caldera, and emerged as a politician, organizing a new political party called the Movement for the Fifth Republic.
Chvez won Presidential elections on February 4, 1998, and again in 2000, by the largest majority in four decades, running on an anti-corruption and anti-poverty platform, and condemning the two major parties that had dominated Venezuelan politics since 1958.
(His elected term runs until 2006.)
Chvez has a deeply antagonistic position to the entrenched landed and commercial elite of Venezuela, and to the commercial media, much of which is associated with that powerful landed and commercial elite. However, his support has plunged to less than 30% (as of Dec 2003), even among the poorest, because of failure to deliver effective government in economic, social and personal security issues.
A number of about five major TV networks, and one out of approximately ten major newspapers are completely opposed to Chvez. Chvez claims that this is because they are controlled by the business interests which oppose him, whereas the media accuse him of having intimidated journalists with his pronouncements and of sending gangs to threaten journalists with physical violence.
Chvez passed a set of 49 laws, which, among many other measures, were supposed to increase the government's oil income and redistribute land.
Fedecmaras, the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, vehemently opposed these laws and decided to call for a general business strike on December 10, 2001.
Chvez was responsible for the replacement of the upper management of the Venezuelan national oil company, Petrleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), allegedly on grounds of mismanagement and corruption, but supporters of the PDVSA board call the action "politically motivated".
Chvez has antagonised the government of the United States through his oil export policies, by his public friendship with Cuba, and by his opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Chavez was the only president to visit Saddam Hussein since Gulf War).
Chvez was briefly deposed and arrested in a military coup on April 12, 2002, which installed a businessman, Pedro Carmona, who was head of the Fedecmaras as interim president.
Carmona resigned after about a day, and was briefly replaced by vice president Diosdado Cabello, before Chvez returned to the presidential palace.
However, on the day of the alleged coup, it was initially announced by General in Chief Lucas Rincn that Chvez had resigned; since Rincn remains close to Chvez and is now, in fact, the Secretary of Domestic Affairs, many Venezuelans argue that the resignation was real and that there was no coup.
The coup was publicly condemned by most Latin American nations.
The United States did not do the same until Chvez had been restored to power.
U.S. government statements
An earlier protest by the military was made by two men, Air Force Col. Pedro Soto and National Guard Capt. Pedro Flores Rivero, who held a small rally to accuse the government of being non-democratic. The new venezuelan Constitution (approved during Chavez government) allows military personnel
to do such political protests.
They were sent home in uniform and placed under investigation by a joint civilian and military board.
On April 9, 2002, Venezuela's largest union federation, the Confederacin de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), led by Carlos Ortega, called for a two-day general strike.
This may have been in response to Chvez having forced the unions to carry out new elections of the leadership amid fraud allegations.
Chvez did not recognise the reelection of the union leadership.
Chvez raised the national minimum wage by 20% in an attempt to call off the strike.
Fedecmaras joined the strike and called on all of its affiliated businesses to close for 48 hours.
A large amount of people marched to the headquarters of Venezuela's oil company, PDVSA, in defense of its fired management.
The organizers decided to re-route the march to Miraflores, the president's office building, so as to confront pro-government demonstrators.
After violence erupted between demonstrators and police (controlled by the opposition), 17 people were killed and about a hundred wounded, almost all of them Chvez supporters.
Reports during the coup stated that the demonstrators were shot by armed Chvez supporters.
Four of the alleged snipers were identified and it was suggested held close ties with the Chvez government.
A video was recorded of the repeated firing of a pro-Chvez protester.
Doctors who treated the wounded reported that almost all of them appeared to have been shot from above, not from the place where the known snipers were. It has been alledged that foreign professional marksmen were hired by those interested in creating disorders to overthrow Chvez.
However, a television crew from Irish television (Radio Telifs ireann) which happened to be recording a programme about Chvez at the time (and which after the short coup was based in the presidential palace with members of both rival governments and their supporters) recorded images of the events that contradicted explanations given by anti-Chvez campaigners, by the opposition-controlled elements of the media, by the US State Department, and by President George W. Bush's official spokesman.
In addition, after they initially took power, opposition figures bragged about how they had engineered the coup.
They stated that the organizers of the anti-Chvez march had deliberately rerouted the parade to bring it face to face with a pro-Chvez march.
This, one coup leader said, was done as a deliberate act of provocation, given that both parades had previously agreed routes with the police to avoid coming face to face.
One organizer of the anti-Chvez march told the film crew that the march was intended to be the start of the overthrow of Chvez and that violence could be expected, with agents provocateurs located at the intended meeting point to trigger gunfire and provoke an opposition-controlled police and army response, mass panic and deaths. (Though the phrasing was ambiguous, the anti-Chvez activist speaking after the event while the coup leaders were still in power appeared to suggest that the gunfire was to have been launched against its own supporters initially for which the military would then be blamed.)1;
While briefly in power, Carmona:
Chavez himself has repeatedly stated that he believes the Bush Administration and the CIA orchestrated the coup. In September of 2003 he refused to travel to the United States to address the United Nations because he believed the American government had ordered his assassination.
In October and November 2003, members of the parliament of Venezuela published various documents indicating the possibility of a second coup, planned by right-wing forces of Venezuela in close collaboration with the CIA. Charles S. Shapiro, the US ambassador in Caracas and former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US embassy in Chile at the time of the coup against Salvador Allende, admitted on 30 September 2003 that military training-camps for Venezuelan oppositional forces are currently being run in Florida. (A reference to those allegations can be found here.)
1 The film crew's report, broadcast on RT's True Lives series under the title Chvez: Inside the Coup, won the Best Information and Current Affairs Production and the Global Television Grand Prize at the Banff Television Festival in Alberta, Canada, on 11 June 2003, beating 82 international productions in 14 categories, chosen from an entry of 900 from 39 countries.
For the top prize it beat high profile series such as The West Wing and the BBC's Daniel Deronda.
The special has been broadcast worldwide, praised by politicians and the media, and led to a fundamental revision in public attitudes as to what really happened in before and during the coup. No United States television channel has chosen to broadcast it, but it was aired in select theaters in the fall of 2003.
However, Chvez opponents say the film is manipulative and deceptive (see [1]), and cast some doubts about it.
See also: History of Venezuela, Politics of Venezuela
Personal background
2002 Coup Attempt Against Chvez
The dissolution of the National Assembly and Supreme Court cost Carmona much of his support within Venezuela; some Venezuelans who were concerned that Chvez had authoritarian tendencies found these moves even more threatening.2002 Strike/Lockout
For two months from December 2, 2002, the Chvez government was faced with a business strike, led by the oil industry management.
As a consequence, Venezuela stopped exporting a daily average of 2,800,000 barrels of oil and derivatives and began to require the import of gasoline for internal use.
Chvez combatted the oil strike by progressively firing about 18,000 PDVSA employees.
A court ruling has deemed the dismissal of these workers illegal and has ordered the immediate return of the entire group to their former posts.
Nevertheless, Chvez, PDVSA's CEO Al Rodrguez, and Minister of Mines Rafael Rodrguez have repeatedly expressed that such ruling will not be enforced.
The ILO has also criticised the measure stating a deep concern about violations to workers' rights.2003: A new coup?
Footnotes