[NYTr] Rebel with a Cause: Rvws of New Chavez Biogs

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - Aug 27, 2007

[A review of two new biographies of President Chavez appears in the
Boston Globe.  Hugo!, by Bart Jones, former Associated Press reporter
in Caracas, is thoughtful, comprehensive, and research-oriented....
among the best of the bunch."  The review states that Jones did not
have access to Chavez, when in fact, the book includes information
gathered during two lengthy interviews Jones conducted with Chavez in
April of this year.  A second biography is the English language
translation of a book written by opposition-affiliated journalists from
the Caracas-based newspaper El Nacional, which "reads like a
90,000-word profile, not reaching deep enough into Chávez's motives."
The Financial Times also reviews the latter book.-VIO]


Boston Globe - August 26, 2007
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/08/26/rebel_with_a_cause/


Rebel with a cause

By Ilan Stavans

Book Review

Hugo Chávez
By Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka
Translated, from the Spanish, by Kristina Cordero
Random House, 327 pp., illustrated, $27.95

¡Hugo!
By Bart Jones
Steerforth, 570 pp., illustrated, $30

Hugo Chávez is George W. Bush's chief of mischief, a rowdy, vociferous
critic (with ample reason) without "pelos en la lengua," as the Spanish
saying goes: with no modicum of embarrassment to control his attacks.
He has aligned himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran in an
effort to undermine American foreign policy. Not since Fidel Castro
stormed the international stage in the late '50s has a
rascal-cum-visionary generated such polarizing opinions. When at the
United Nations last year, after Bush had delivered a dumbfounding
speech, Chávez said that standing in the same podium a day later
allowed him to smell the scent of el diablo, he left no doubt about his
status as the boldest, most daring, and potentially disestablishing
politician in the world.

Unsurprisingly, a veritable deluge of biographies of the self-professed
messiah of democratic socialism in the 21st century is taking place
before our eyes. I've counted 12 in various languages, published or in
preparation in the last couple of years. All seek to explain what
Chávez means by "democratic" (surely not the Jeffersonian approach) and
"socialism" (a dictatorial system for Venezuela closer to Uzbekistan's
model than to Sweden's).

None of these biographies, I'm afraid, are particularly memorable, less
because of a lack of juicy material (The Venezuelan leader's life has
all the soap opera ingredients: from shanty town to the military, with
seasoning coming from a failed coup d'etat, a failed presidential
contest against a former Miss Universe, and anti-Semitic fireworks)
than because of the dry, uninspiring language they are delivered in.
Biographers today have all but rejected the James Boswell approach.
It's better to disappear without a trace, they say, to leave no trace
of one's own preferences, than to produce a book that has a self, one
in which the biographer doesn't hide behind mountains of data. Ah
objectivity, the pains you've left behind.

A couple of these books are becoming available in English. One is by
Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka, a husband-and-wife team of
journalists associated with the Caracas daily El Nacional. In Spanish,
"Hugo Chávez" was released under the title "Hugo Chávez sin uniforme"
-- not quite "Chávez naked," but almost. Yet even if its fillers
include an interview with his mistress for nine years, professor Herma
Marksman (notice the echo of Karl Marx in the name), and excerpts from
Chávez's diaries, it is actually a rather conventional piece of work,
written in the free-flowing, unrigorous spirit of Latin American
journalism (closer to what in Spanish is called "crónica" than to what
English-language readers identify as nonfiction). The authors refuse to
let their prejudices permeate the narrative, which is too bad because
in the end it is difficult to trust their judgment. In a workmanlike
translation by Kristina Cordero, it reads like a 90,000-word profile,
not reaching deep enough into Chávez's motives. Its best asset is the
opportunity it offers Americans for an insider's view: a Venezuelan
myth, explained inside out.

In contrast, Bart Jones's "¡Hugo!" is excruciatingly detailed. Jones is
a reporter for Newsday who spent years in Venezuela as a foreign
correspondent for the Associated Press. He knows his trade. He also
doesn't have direct access to the dictator. It doesn't matter, for his
quest is historical. He asks various hows and whats: How did Chávez
orchestrate his Bolivarian revolution? What does he see in the
19th-century liberator, Simón Bolívar? How does he connect that century
to ours? What are the ideological premises of his domestic agenda? Is
his internationalist campaign to help the dispossessed driven by a
Jesus Christ syndrome? Jones's book is thoughtful, comprehensive, and
research-oriented. (Between notes and index, there are more than 80
pages of back matter.) It's among the best in the bunch.

There is something cartoonish in our fascination with the new political
iconoclast on the block. It isn't only that Chávez is a mutineer. To a
large extent, enjoying his electrifying performances on the global
stage has to do with having someone stand up to a bully: Bush. Indeed,
it is difficult to imagine a Venezuelan leader, this or any other,
reaching the same kind of momentum had the current American
administration not behaved, in another Spanish saying, "como Pedro por
su casa" (like a king in somebody else's palace), manipulating other
people's destinies as if they were a game of Stratego, forcing them to
choose between democracy and destruction.

Of course, every nation has the politicians it deserves. Now that Fidel
is sick, Hugo is standing at his side. To millions of Latin Americans,
the passing of the baton is a welcome change. Cuba is a poor island,
whereas Venezuela is an oil-rich, agriculturally-fertile country with
enormous possibilities. The two are equally driven to endless verbose
fits. Castro sought inspiration in the poet and freedom-fighter José
Martí. Chávez prefers Bolívar, with a twist of Noam Chomsky.

The rationale behind their actions, however, is one and the same: After
all, doesn't someone have to stand up to the bad neighbor policy of the
north while calling attention to inequality and injustice? Someone has
to rewrite the constitution, to make it his personal wish-book, in
order to make room for unlimited power, like Fidel has, even beyond
death. And someone has to prompt an army of biographers to explain why
the revolution is never finished in a region of 400 million people, a
third of whom earn less than $10 a week.

No wonder the Spanish language makes use of inverted exclamation marks.
¡Viva la rebelión!

[Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino
Culture at Amherst College. His next book, "Love and Language" (with
Verónica Albin), will be published by Yale University Press in
October. ]

                              ***

The Financial Times - August 26, 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3242f324-5405-11dc-9a6e-0000779fd2ac.html

The rock-star revolutionary of Caracas

By Richard Lapper
The Financial Times

BOOK REVIEW:

Hugo Chávez 
by Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera
Random House, $27.95

>From Belarus to Iran and from New York to London, Venezuela?s
iconoclastic president, Hugo Chávez, has become something of a
household name of late.

His strident opposition to US president George W. Bush and unremitting
attacks on what he calls ?neo-liberalism? has importance in a world
increasingly concerned about energy shortages. After all, Venezuela
sits astride some of the largest reserves of oil and gas in the world.
As Moisés Naím, the Venezuelan intellectual, points out in his
perceptive introduction to this new biography, not since Che Guevara or
Fidel Castro has a Latin American politician touched the international
nerve quite so much.

The publication in English of what has arguably been the best Spanish
language biography of the Venezuelan leader is to be welcomed, even
though the book is flawed in some ways. Its authors, Cristina Marcano,
a journalist, and Alberto Barrera, a novelist, have enjoyed no direct
access to the Venezuelan leader. Much of their account is based on
secondary sources, and its alleged errors prompted one angry local
critic to write a rejoinder.

Moreover, the bulk of the book was written in 2004, since when Mr
Chávez has stepped up the pace of radicalisation, and it has not been
properly updated. There is little on a string of new nationalisations
or the recent constitutional proposal that would allow the Venezuelan
leader to stay in office for decades. The authors should also have
given more attention to the development of the misiones, the network of
social programmes financed by oil money but often staffed by Cubans.
This network has been an important element in Chávez?s political
success.

Nevertheless, the book is well written and accessible ? unlike some of
the ideological accounts that Mr Chávez tends to inspire.

Marcano and Barrera are best when describing the first 45 years of Mr
Chávez?s life: the bizarre sequence of events that took him from the
tiny and remote village of Sabaneta to the presidency in 1998. The
interviews ? original or not ? are a crucial and attractive fea- ture
of this account. Childhood friends and teachers talk about the
Venezuelan leader?s gawkiness, love of baseball and growing interest in
the myths and ?derring-do? of his country?s history.

Military conspirators describe how Mr Chávez built up support among
fellow officers for the attempt to overthrow the democratically elected
but unpopular government of Carlos Andrés Pérez.

They also recount how he managed to transform defeat into
the ?advertising coup of the decade?. Appealing to plotters to lay down
their arms, Mr Chávez declared on national television that
the ?objectives we established...were not achieved?. But by casually
slipping in the two words ?for now?, he added a note of dramatic
suspense, as if to say: ?To be continued?.

The coup cemented his image as a charismatic leader determined to
finish with corruption, economic inequality and social exclusion. In
its aftermath, Venezuelans queued up to meet their imprisoned hero.
Herma Marksman, a history professor and Mr Chávez?s former mistress,
said that the dizzying popularity transformed him. ?Hugo thinks he?s
Rock Hudson signing autographs,? she said. ?A messianic fire had begun
to burn inside him.?

The account provides some other important insights into Mr Chávez?s
personality and motivation. Always prone to ?novelise? his life, his
conviction that he embodies a kind of natural spiritual mission seems
to have become stronger over the years. Nedo Paniz, an architect with
whom Mr Chávez stayed after his release from prison in the 1990s, says
his devotion to Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century father of the
nation, ?bordered on delirium?.

Mr Chávez?s ability to inspire sympathy in a way that works as well in
small groups as it does on the media is also strongly in evidence. It
is a facility that means he is seen by many poor Venezuelans as a
mixture of rock star, preacher and talk-show host. ?He speaks with
simplicity, explaining things with anecdotes and a masterful command of
popular codes of speech,? say Marcano and Barrera. ?He always sabotages
the official solemnity, disdaining all that is formal.?

For all the rhetoric of 21st-century socialism, Venezuela?s growing
relationship with Cuba and talk of revolutionary parties, Mr Chávez is
first and foremost a soldier. He is leftwing but is strongly loyal to
the military comrades who have played an important role in his
administrations. This is a man obsessed with power. As Francisco Arias,
a co-conspirator in the 1992 coup and now Venezuela?s ambassador to the
United Nations, puts it: ?I think he lives in the clutches of a
paranoia to preserve his power. [This] is his own personal hell, and
that is why he is constantly at battle.?