[NYTr] Bk Rvw: Hugo! The Definitive Chavez Biography

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Venezuelanalysis - Sep 17, 2007
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2608


Hugo! The Definitive Chavez Biography

Review by Chuck Kaufman

¡Hugo! The Hugo Chavez Story From Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution
by Bart Jones
Hardback, 570pp
Steerforth Press
Sept. 2007, $30

I am not a reader of biographies and I am not a fan of learning history
by studying the lives of "great men." Having said that, I believe that
¡Hugo! The Hugo Chavez Story From Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution by
Bart Jones is one of the most important books of 2007 and a must read
for anyone who wants a fair and balanced account of the great changes
sweeping Venezuela and the historical roots that shaped the man, Hugo
Chavez, and the Bolivarian process that is transforming the country.

Liberals and progressives in the United States have been influenced by
the relentless Bush administration and corporate media campaign to
depict Chavez as an autocrat who is a threat to democracy, press
freedom, and human rights norms. Newsday reporter and author of ¡Hugo!,
Bart Jones, has contributed a fast-paced, thoroughly researched and
balanced book that allows the reader to make her own judgments.

Jones lived eight years in Venezuela, arriving in 1992, just as Chavez
and mid-level military officers were launching a failed coup against
Carlos Andres Perez, which landed Chavez in prison for two years. Jones
lived in a poverty stricken Caracas barrio as a Maryknoll lay worker
for the first year and a half and then landed a job as Associated Press
correspondent through 2000. In the barrio he lived across the street
from a mud hut, just like the one where Chavez was born in his
grandmother's hut. As an AP reporter Jones lived in the exclusive
Altamira neighborhood, a bastion of the rich opposition to Chavez. He
therefore has witnessed firsthand the two extremes of Venezuelan
society.

Jones was originally interested in writing a book about the 2002 failed
coup against Chavez, but his publisher, Steerforth Press, convinced him
to write the definitive biography to date of the man who is a hero to
millions and a villain to a different set of millions, including his
nemesis George W. Bush.

Jones describes the story he documented as "straight out of Hollywood."
Indeed, I lost sleep two nights running because I just couldn't put the
book down. I also was so engrossed in the two chapters about the 2002
coup that I got on the Washington, DC metro heading in the wrong
direction and was in the suburbs before I became conscious of my
surroundings. Despite the novel-like action pace of the book, it is
meticulously researched with 55 pages of references and an extensive
index. It is not a book of fiction; it is reality mirroring a
bestselling action novel.

One of the best features of the book is the various side trips Jones
takes in the early chapters into Venezuelan history and key events in
the life of Simon Bolivar and other leaders who are largely unknown in
the United States but who are heroes in Venezuela and much of Latin
America. These mini history lessons greatly enhance the reader's
understanding of the roots of the "Bolivarian revolution" and how
history shaped Hugo Chavez, the majority poor who adore him, and the
minority elites who view him as an uncouth "monkey" whose dark skin and
boisterous manner are as much a cause of their revulsion as his
policies.

As an organizer in the US Venezuela Solidarity Network, which is
working to build opposition to US intervention in Venezuela and
solidarity support for the poor majority, which, for the first time in
Venezuelan history, feel like they have a stake and a role in
determining their own fate, I was especially interested in the role of
other Venezuelan leaders, both Chavistas and the opposition, and those
who have moved back and forth between support and opposition.

I met many of them in October 2006 when I led a delegation to Venezuela
to investigate how the US government was attempting to influence the
December presidential election through spending at least $26 million of
US taxpayer money in grants from the so-called National Endowment for
Democracy and the US Agency for International Development. The grants
are overseen by a US embassy-based office tellingly named the Office of
Transition Initiatives. ¡Hugo! includes information about these
"democracy" interventions as well.

If our only source of information is the Bush administration and
corporate media, people could be forgiven for believing that Venezuela
is a country inhabited by a single person - Hugo Chavez -- and that he
is the source of every problem. It has long been a successful strategy
for the US government and media to personify targeted countries leaders
as the sole problem standing between good relations between the two
countries.

Jones points out that Chavez' overheated rhetoric often plays into the
hands of those who would vilify him. Calling Bush the "devil" and
talking about the lingering smell of sulfur during a UN speech enraged
even some liberals in the US although the fact that he received the
most sustained applause of any world leader by the assembled UN
diplomats usually goes unremarked.

But these incidents and misinformation about the decision to not renew
the expired broadcast license of RCTV, false speculation that proposed
constitutional amendments would make Chavez "president for life," and
other charges that he is "hollowing out democratic institutions," have
taken a toll on support among US progressives and liberals. ¡Hugo!
details opposition charges, letting the opposition spokespeople damn
themselves with the absurdity of their claims against a backdrop of a
system that Venezuelans, in a poll of Latin Americans about the level
of democracy in their respective countries, believe is the most
democratic in Latin America.

I am an opponent of US government and corporate domination of Latin
America and the world. Bart Jones is an ethical reporter who may come
off as pro-Chavez because he is imposing objectivity in an area where
the reporting has been so biased as to distort reality to the breaking
point. Jones believes that both the opposition and the supporters of
the Bolivarian "process," as supporters have come to call it, have
legitimate points that deserve to be discussed. One of his goals was to
make that possible by writing a book which upholds the best standards
of unbiased reporting. In the process he writes a "page-turner" book
that will captivate and educate the reader. This book belongs on the
New York Times bestseller list and in the hands of every intellectually
curious US adult who questions the right of the United States to rule
the world.