The Democratator Threatens

Ooh, that smell, can you smell that smell? The scent of Bolivarian democracy surrounds you...
Chávez: A NO vote is a vote for Bush- 08:24 PM EST
Chávez Threatens To Nationalize Spain-Owned Banks- 07:23 PM EST
Chávez Threatens To Cut Oil Shipments To USA- 07:09 PM EST
Chávez Threatens To Kick Out CNN Correspondents- 06:44 PM EST

Days late and dollars short, the Dodo media finally find something rotten in Denmark and discover democratatorship

"In spite of the demonstrations in the streets of Caracas, Hugo Chávez is quite likely to squeak through with a win in this weekend's referendum — legitimately. Nonetheless, critics say he may be morphing into a "democratator" — a democratically elected dictator.DemocraTater
Elections and plebiscites are a sort of a moral Teflon for Chávez against charges from enemies like the U.S. that he's another Latin despot. (And he has developed some expertise at them: he has been elected three times and beat back a recall referendum in 2004.) But despite Chávez's claims that he's forging "a more genuine democracy" that finally enfranchises the nation's majority poor, Venezuela hardly looks poised to become a showcase for the separation of powers. The National Assembly and Supreme Court are Chávez's virtual rubber stamps; and, while free speech admittedly is still intact in Venezuela, he has increasingly defined opposition to his ideological agenda as counter-revolutionary treason. When Chávez pal and former Defense Minister General Raúl Baduel — who helped put Chávez back in power after a failed coup attempt in 2002 — complained this month that the amendment package being voted on Dec. 2, including a proposal to eliminate presidential term limits, constituted a constitutional "coup d'etat," he was immediately branded a traitor.

Given how profoundly Chávez has altered hemispheric politics in recent years, it's not surprising that he seems to be leading the so-called democratator trend in the region. In Bolivia and Ecuador, left-wing Presidents and Chávez allies Evo Morales and Rafael Correa are hammering out new Constitutions that would let them run for re-election indefinitely. In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega, hoping to relive the broad Marxist powers he enjoyed as President in the 1980s, is ruling virtually by decree. In Argentina, many suspect that the leftist husband-and-wife team of outgoing President Nestor Kirchner and President-elect Cristina Fernández de Kirchner intend to alternate in the Casa Rosada (the Pink House, or presidential palace) well into the next decade if not beyond. And in Colombia, supporters of conservative President and staunch U.S. ally Alvaro Uribe are clamoring to change their magna carta to give him a third term (which he has yet to say he'd reject) if not more. (This week's feud between Chavez and Uribe is a disheartening preview of democratators at each other's throats.)

A decade after most of Latin America returned to democratic elections, it was thought by now the region would also be governed more completely by democratic institutions. Instead, says Robert White, head of the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and a former U.S. ambassador in Latin America, "Personalismo is alive and well," referring to the region's historical penchant for protracted personal rule. A chief reason, White notes, is that traditional democracy and capitalism have largely failed to improve Latin America's gaping inequality and frightening insecurity — so voters have largely decided to "cling as long as possible" to leaders like Chavez and Uribe who they feel can. "The failure of democratic institutions like judiciaries has led us back to personalismo, this time lightly fettered by constitutional structures," says White. The U.S. has been complicit, he adds, by regularly and rather lazily sending signals to Latin America that free elections alone are enough to build democracies.

Chávez backers of course reject the democratator label. "Yes, the intent of socialism is that the collective interest predominate over individual interests," says Haiman El Troudi, director of the Miranda Center in Caracas, a policy research think tank set up by the government. "But if our agenda were Stalinist we would have imposed it by now. Instead we're subjecting these reforms to an election — totalitarian states don't do that." Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to the U.S., concurs: "We're trying to create institutionality in Latin America precisely because its present institutions don't function." As for unlimited presidential re-election, Alvarez notes that Chávez will still be subject to elections to remain in power — and he adds wryly that the U.S., "where the Bush and Clintons families have been alternating power since 1989," is in no position to lecture.

Observers like White agree the U.S. will have to patiently resign itself to Latin America's democratator phenomenon for now. "In the end it's the Latin Americans themselves who have to come to the understanding that even if they can't trust their judicial and legislative institutions," says White, "the lack of them is leading to an executive absolutism that won't be good for them, either." With reporting by Jens Erik Gould/Caracas

Chavez: A Democratator in Venezuela?
TIM PADGETT/CARACAS With reporting by Jens Erik Gould/Caracas

Freddy Medina Will Pimp The Constitution

THAT WAS THEN: Hugo fails to destroy the Constitution, 1992



THIS IS NOW: Enter Freddy Medina:Yet again from The Economist: Hugo Chávez's attempt to turn his country into a socialist utopia under personal direction is running into trouble

"SOME of the proposed articles are “not good”, he admits, though he is vague about the details. But Freddy Medina has no doubt about which way he will vote in December 2nd's referendum on constitutional reform. “I will support my president,” he says. What makes this loyalty to Hugo Chávez remarkable is that Mr Medina, a building worker, is about to be evicted from the three-room home he has spent the past two decades building on a steep hillside in La Pedrera, in the poor suburbs of south-western Caracas, the capital. Years of leaks from poorly maintained water and sewerage systems, combined with recent rains, have triggered landslides that have wrecked several of his neighbours' homes and left his vulnerable. The government has promised to rehouse him, but has not yet done so. Heuristics says ¡SI! Thanks to the devotion of people like Mr Medina, Mr Chávez has easily won ten national ballots—including two presidential elections and several referendums—since he first arrived in office in 1999. Only last December he won a new six-year term with 63% of the vote. He has showered record oil revenues on social programmes for the poor while gradually turning a liberal democracy into a more authoritarian and less plural regime. But now, in trying to push through the radical rewriting of a constitution that he himself fathered in 1999, he may have gone a step too far. Mr Chávez's reform proposes radical changes to 69 of the constitution's 350 articles. They put into effect his campaign promise to implement “21st-Century Socialism”. On the one hand, the economy is officially declared to be based on “socialist, anti-imperialist [and] humanist principles”, with protection of private property weakened. On the other, yet more power would be centralised in the presidency. Mr Chávez would have full control over the Central Bank and its reserves. Elected local government would be undermined: the president would have untrammelled power to appoint the governor of Caracas, to create new federal territories, and to set up and finance a national “Popular Power” based on unelected communal councils. The new draft also weakens some of the “participatory” clauses of the 1999 constitution, raising from 10% to 30% the proportion of voters required to petition for a referendum. And it would abolish presidential term limits, allowing Mr Chávez to run again indefinitely. Officials claim that the reform will deepen a popular revolution and give Venezuelans more rights. They point to clauses offering a free education, a cut in the working day from eight to six hours, and the extension of social security to informal workers. The government has not revealed the cost of such measures, none of which requires constitutional change. Opponents see the reform as a big step away from democracy and towards a totalitarian state along Cuban lines. The novelty is that so, too, do some of Mr Chávez's erstwhile supporters. The reform is opening up what may be a lasting fissure in the chavista camp, driving those who see themselves as democratic socialists towards the opposition. “Many of the articles there flout the essence of democracy,” says Ismael García, leader of Podemos, one of four parties that have formed the governing coalition since 1998 but which has now joined the “No” campaign in the referendum. Another weighty opponent is General Raul Baduel, who was defence minister until July and whose role in restoring Mr Chávez to the presidential palace after an abortive coup in 2002 made him a hero to chavistas. The proposed reform amounts to “constitutional fraud” and a “coup d'état”, he says. “Democracies should be very careful that there is a division of powers, with counterbalances. This [the reform] would put democratic institutionality at risk.” For its part, the opposition has been revitalised by the emergence of a powerful student movement, untainted by involvement in the 2002 coup or other failures of the past. Several pollsters who predicted Mr Chávez's election victory last year reckon that the referendum is now too close to call. They find a majority of respondents oppose the reform, but it is not clear how many of them will actually vote. In one of several signs that Mr Chávez is rattled, the government-dominated electoral authority decided to ban the publication of polls in the last week before the vote. The president is a formidable campaigner and has honed a powerful political machine that can draw on the state's resources: metro stations and government offices are plastered with posters backing the reform. A study by the electoral authority found that government-linked television channels gave those against the reform only 1% of the total time given to those in favour; the remaining commercial channels favoured the No campaign, but by a much smaller margin. Mr Chávez points out that many of those now passionately defending the 1999 constitution originally opposed it. He remains popular (with 60% of Venezuelans, the polls suggest). He is striving to turn the referendum into a plebiscite on himself. In a play on words, the placards proclaim “SIgue con Chávez” (roughly, “Yes, let's go on with Chávez”). Many shrewd observers in Caracas reckon that all this means that the president may win, though more narrowly than in the past. But there are signs that the Chávez magic is starting to fade. Inflation is rising, while three years of price controls mean that basic foods such as milk, eggs and flour are often unobtainable. Violent crime is rampant, especially in poorer areas. The referendum may be decided by how many Venezuelans bother to vote. Those in the opposition who called for abstention in past elections (claiming that the electoral authority was not impartial) have this time called on their supporters to vote, whereas in the chavista camp, there are signs of apathy. How widespread this proves to be may determine whether or not Venezuela remains a democracy Are they beginning to lose the faith? Nov 29th 2007 CARACAS From The Economist print edition

Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings

"Amid rows of softly humming sewing machines, with women calmly chatting among themselves as they go about their work, Margarita Morales picks up one of the bright red T-shirts from the production line. “We’re making these for people to wear at pro-government rallies,” she says cheerfully, revealing a room stacked with T-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as “With Chávez, the people rule” and with images of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, as well as piles of military uniforms.

This small Venezuela Advances factory in Catia, a poor district in the west of Caracas, is one of Venezuela’s showcase co-operatives, at the frontline of President Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution”. Measures to promote such outposts of a ‘socialist economy’ are one of the central planks of the changes Mr Chávez hopes to introduce to the constitution, expected to be approved in a referendum on December 2. But not everyone is so optimistic about the prospects for the co-operatives.

“So far there isn’t a single example of a successful co-operative that I’m aware of,” says José Luis Betancourt, the president of Fedecámaras, Venezuela’s leading business association. Despite the government having spent well over $1bn on grants and loans over the past few years, and billions more on social programmes designed to train workers in how to set up and run co-operatives, the results have so far been disappointing.

Although according to official statistics there were over 180,000 co-operatives at the end of 2006 – more than any other country – Gonzalo Gualdrón, the president of the government commission on co-operatives, says that in fact there are fewer than 80,000. Some census figures suggest there are fewer still.

While many co-operatives never got off the ground, due to misuse of government funds, others simply pocketed the money and ran, a situation that even Mr Gualdrón acknowledges.
...
But the new constitution plans to broaden the scope of economic activity beyond private enterprise by protecting co-operative and community-based enterprises.
Among the measures to be introduced in the new constitution are ill-defined new varieties of property, so that in addition to private property there will also be public, social, collective and mixed forms of property.Businesses worry that private property rights will be weakened and that expropriation will rise. “There is no room for private companies in this reform project,” says Mr Betancourt. But Mr Chávez says the changes will promote a new economic model that prioritises social welfare over self-interest and profits, and worker solidarity over exploitation.

At the Venezuela Advances co-operative, workers had left early to attend a government-funded adult literacy programme. The co-operative is part of the Fabricio Ojeda ‘Nucleus for Endogenous Development’, an attempt to put Mr Chavez’s ‘21st-century socialism’ into action that also includes health clinics, subsidised food stores and development programmes.

Even so, many doubt whether co-operatives can compete with capitalist enterprises without more restrictions on the private sector, as some government advisers say is necessary.

Although the co-operatives receive generous grants and loans and are exempt from all taxes, those that are successful are often dependent on government support.In the case of Venezuela Advances, last year two-thirds of production was bought up by PDVSA,the state-owned oil company. “While the emphasis is not on competitiveness, they must be competent and efficient, and that way they will be productive,”
says Mr Gualdrón.

A deeper threat is posed by the preponderance of oil in Venezuela’s economy, which has thwarted attempts to diversify and industrialise the economy. “Under Chávez the economy has become more dependent on oil, and non-oil exports have been falling. There is nothing in the constitutional reform that promises to alter this trend,” says Francisco Rodríguez, chief economist for Venezuela’s national assembly until 2004, who is now critical of the government. “There is no indication that the government even thinks that de-industrialisation is a problem.”

“The feeling I get is that a large number of the co-operatives have failed,” says Steve Ellner, a political scientist at the Oriente University in Venezuela who has studied the co-operatives. “The ones that are functioning are not resounding successes ... But they have transformed the lives of those belonging to them.” Chávez Co-ops, Benedict Mander, Caracas Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

Steve Ellner?

PRESS ADVISORY / BOOKING MEMO MAY 22, 2007
VENEZUELA'S RCTV CAUSES CONTROVERSY ON PRESS FREEDOMS: EXPERTS AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT
Next Sunday, May 27th, marks the end of RCTV's right to broadcast on the public airwaves in Venezuela.
EXPERTS AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT ON VENEZUELA AND THE MEDIA:
DAN HELLINGER, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT WEBSTER UNIVERSITY.
CHARLES HARDY, AUTHOR AND FORMER CATHOLIC PRIEST
STEVE ELLNER, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSIDAD DEL ORIENTE IN VENEZUELA.
MARK WEISBROT, CO-DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH (CEPR).
/TO REACH ANY OF THESE EXPERTS, PLEASE CONTACT:/
Megan Morrissey
Media Analyst
Venezuela Information Office
202-347-8081 x602
media@veninfo.org from Caracas Chronicles

That Steve Ellner?

Moist sentiment that could have fallen out of Jimmy Carter's mouth. Steve Ellner,a gringo revolutionary tourist in Venezuela, who was avaliable to lie for Chavez in the matter of the shutdown of RCTV, Venezuela's oldest private TV network, feels that being unsuccessful and failing is transformative for the lives of the Margarita Moraleses of Venezuela.
And why not? You take $3.00 a gallon for gasoline from the Mary Mattheweses, working mothers in America, skim the cream to enable the lavish lifestyle of the Chavista nomemclatura, subsidize groupies like Ellner, and throw some crumbs at Margarita to show up for do-nothing busywork, leeching off the national treasure. Manufacturing uniforms for goon squads to wear while asaulting college students, fellow citizens guilty of thought crime, thinking for themselves.
So that the delusional enablers of the strongman can feel good about themselves.

You're a moron, Esteban Ellner. When they goon squads come to your University and threaten you, the day you're deemed counterrevolutionary, I hope they're wearing T-shirts made by Margarita Morales. Hope you find her failure ennobling then.

Pimp My Constitution

As the Bolivariantologists push to have their own bespoke Constitution further customized to enable Chavez to be a President For Life, the ugly gets uglier:

Chavista Goon Squad Onslaught Against Non-Like-Minded College Students:



Hoary Electoral Red Meat: Get The Colombians

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday he was cutting off all contacts with the Colombian government, but fell short of announcing an end to diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Chavez's announcement came after a series of sharp exchanges with President Alvaro Uribe set off when the Colombian leader last week abruptly ended the Venezuelan's mediation between Colombia's government and leftist rebels. "While President Uribe is president of Colombia I will have no type of relationship with him or with the government in Colombia," Chavez said.
Speaking in the southwestern state of Tachira, Chavez said he will not have any relationship with a "president who is capable of such barefaced lies, disrespects another president that he has called a friend, one that he called on for help."
The Venezuelan president had a similar spat in late 2005 with then Mexican President Vicente Fox. While relations between Mexico and Venezuela were reduced to lower-level diplomats, ties were not formally severed.
Uribe's 4-year term is scheduled to run into 2010, although some of his supporters are urging him to change the constitution and run for a third term.
Uribe appeared to try to calm the dispute with Chavez earlier Wednesday, saying that presidents should put aside their "angers" and "vanities" to get on with their work.
Chavez recalled his ambassador to Colombia on Tuesday. Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo vowed then not to call back Colombia's ambassador in Caracas, insisting his government's dispute is not with Venezuela, but with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Uribe, Washington's closest ally in South America, removed Chavez and a Colombian senator from talks with the FARC rebels a week ago, saying the Venezuelan leader had violated the conditions of his involvement by speaking directly to the head of Colombia's army.
Chavez on Sunday said he was putting relations with Colombia "in the freezer," calling Uribe a "liar" and accusing him of "not wanting peace."
Uribe replied hours later by charging Chavez with pushing an "expansionist project" across Latin America and saying the Venezuelan seemed to want Colombia to fall "victim to a terrorist FARC government."
He also said Chavez was resorting to the "old trick" of stoking hatred of Colombia within Venezuela to reap the electoral benefit. Chavez is campaigning for a national referendum Sunday on proposals that would, among other proposals, extend presidential terms and end term limits.
Uribe had invited Chavez in August to help broker a deal with the FARC guerrillas, who are sympathetic to the Venezuelan leader's socialist ideals.
The rebels are holding 46 high-profile hostages, including three American defense contractors and French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt. It is offering to release the prisoners in exchange for the freeing of all imprisoned rebels.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071128/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_colombia

The Former First Lady Apologizes, Advises Voting Against Pimping Constitution

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=5230914&ch=4226714&src=news

Psst, Want The 411 On Venezuela?

http://www.venezuelatoday.net/
the best portal for Venezuela-related information, is online and off its hiatus.
Check it out

Also...

here

The Rest Is Commentary

here



The ass' campaign to have the Constitution hand-made for his 1999 revised, allowing him to rule for life, concludes this Sunday.

Update: Thanks to reader marzolian, who correctly points out that:

"Trying to punish any oil producer by boycotting their gasoline doesn't work. Gasoline is fungible, meaning, one refiner produces basically the same as the next. In some parts of the country, the same truck that delivers to a Shell station, also delivers to the nearest Exxon station and the convenience stores. Boycott Citgo, and if Citgo still has any gas it will sell it to other retailers. http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/citgo.asp Besides, even if it worked, then who do we buy from next? (in the USA). Mexico has its own production problems; one way or another more oil would come from Middle Eastern sources that are just as unsavory as HC.The only thing that the billboard really means is that HC has entered the public consciousness of the USA, together with his soul brothers Fidel and Mahmoud".

or, as Scott Adams* put it,





"Don't Buy Gas From This Ass", though, means more than that one has an iffy grasp on what Fungibility means - it's a succinct encapsulation of how disastrously the Chavez charm offensive failed, and that now matter how many times he parades with Sean Penn, or Naomi Campbell, or Lex Luthor--em, Kevin Spacey, those that know who he is know exactly what he is.

* (not that Adams isn't a smug, sour jerk who isn't a little too taken with his own cleverness--as seen here, he has all the makings of the certain kind of prideful idiots who find their way to PSFhood)

Thanksgiving 2007

Happy
Thanksgiving!

From The Economist:Challenging Chávez-for-life

A supporter of constitutional reform

THE history of Venezuelan politics over the past eight years is littered with failed attempts by the opposition to halt the progress of the country's increasingly authoritarian leftist president, Hugo Chávez. These included an abortive coup in 2002 and a prolonged shut-down of the vital oil industry a few months later. “With failure after failure,” reflected Teodoro Petkoff of Tal Cual, an anti-Chávez newspaper, in an editorial this week, “the mistake of basing a strategy on the search for ‘fast-track’ solutions became clear.” But with a referendum on a controversial constitutional reform due on December 2nd, the government seems to have been wrong-footed by an opposition student movement whose leaders neither seek to oust the president nor to stray from constitutional norms.

The students started to march and protest in late May when Mr Chávez refused to renew the broadcasting licence of the main opposition television channel, RCTV, on the grounds that it had supported the 2002 coup. Although they failed to reverse the decision, they helped bring the issue of free speech to international attention. Now they are attempting to derail the president's bid to change the constitution to allow his indefinite re-election and to entrench his revolution by turning Venezuela into a socialist state.

The students have staged several big marches in the centre of the capital, Caracas, which Mr Chávez's supporters consider to be their own territory. The student leaders say they want to press the parliament, the supreme court and the electoral authority to delay the referendum on the grounds that only a tiny minority of voters are familiar with the sweeping constitutional changes proposed.

The students' arguments chime with complaints from a segment of Mr Chávez's own supporters who have broken with him over the constitutional reform. These include Podemos, a small democratic socialist group, and Raúl Baduel, who stepped down as defence minister earlier this year and who as commander of the armoured division during the 2002 coup was instrumental in returning Mr Chávez to power. General Baduel and Podemos have both called for a “no” vote in the referendum. They argue that the constitutional changes hand more power to the president at the expense of the citizen, and that they are illegal since they should have been discussed by a Constituent Assembly, rather than the parliament. If the reform goes ahead, this would amount in practice to “a coup”, General Baduel said.

Mr Chávez has dismissed the students as spoiled “rich kids”, angry at the prospect of losing their privileges. He alleges that they are part of a “fresh fascist onslaught, supported by the media”. The government has deployed against them counter-demonstrators, who hurl insults—and sometimes rocks and bottles—from behind lines of riot police. After a recent march, the campus of the Central University was transformed into a battlefield by chavistas armed with handguns and riding motorbikes, dozens of whom passed through police lines. When this was denounced by the university's rector, the interior minister, Pedro Carreño, dressed in the red shirt of a chavista militant, went on television to blame the university authorities and opposition students for the violent incidents. The students had tried to “lynch” their adversaries, he said.

Mr Chávez has often won political victories by luring the opposition into confrontation. A radical minority of the opposition favours abstaining in the referendum and has issued vague threats of direct action. It appears to have little support among the students. Opinion polls suggest a majority of Venezuelans may be against the reform. But a low turn-out may still hand victory to Mr Chávez on December 2nd.

In 1928, a student movement shook, but failed to dislodge, the lengthy dictatorship of General Juan Vicente Gómez. In 1958 students played a big role in a popular uprising against another Venezuelan dictator. Student leaders are well aware of these precedents. But they say they are not trying to overthrow the elected government, and argue that they are not a substitute for a credible political opposition. “We can't do it alone,” said Yon Goicoechea, one of the movement's leaders.

Nov 15th 2007 | CARACAS
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10136480

Chavez Or Chivas? What's On Venezuelan Minds

The installation of a President-For-Life? The loss of constitutional, representative democracy?

Google Trends -link here- tell us it's...
scoring a Hummer,
> click for close-up

and Chivas Regal,
> drink me!

and Britney. Venezuela in a nutshell.
> Supersize me

Oh, and we can't forget My Yammy
> T'a Barato

And Da Mouse
> M-I-C

All in all, it looks like the Socialist New Man that the Bolivariantologists keep yapping about is indistinguishable from the Contended Saudi Venezuelan of thirty years ago. Who'se going to tell Medea?

coda: looking for the relative queries for Miami, Britney, Hummers, and Marxismo?
aqui

Miami, Socialismo and Marxismo?
>

And the converse, Marxismo, Socialismo, vs. Miami?
>

Hmm, it looks like we finally have something the Cubans are outGoogling Venezuela for- and what's that yellow line? Azul, Rojo, y Amarillo Amarilliiiito!

Read 'em and weep, Internacionalistas.

Finally, let's sort for Marxismo, Socialismo, Miami, Disney, and Porno:

> clickster

Cubans are more interested in Miami than Disney, while the reverse holds true for Venezuelans. And, boy, are the Bolivariantologists living under Hugo and Evo horny or what?!?

Marxismo, Socialismo, Porno

> Trotsky, or Hot-To-Trotsky?

Che Paniz

In a few weeks the Bolivariantologists will cement their total control over Venezuela's economy, public life, and media. There will be a referendum, and most Venezuelans will agree that they prefer things when oil trades at $100/bbl MUCH better than when it's at $10 or $20.

They'll assent to turn Venezuela back into an oil plantation, run by the Bolivariantologists, whose creed is the cult of Hugo Chavez and the upward mobility and unearned wealth currying
his favor can bring.

So, as the last embers of constitutional democracy die out in Venezuela, let's have a look at the Lad Ron Hubbard who built the cult, and at what some of its earliest adherents now tell us, from Christine Toomey's reportage :
( Distilled, his German former mistress tell us "We were all idealists then. Our goals were to tackle corruption and build a prosperous Venezuela based on justice for all. There was none of this idolatry of Fidel or Che...But we were all deceived. We're now heading for a totalitarian regime. [Chavez] is sacrificing the resources of future generations with money that is not his. Little Red Riding Hood has turned into the wolf. He is astute and manipulative"... his Yugoslav post-prison host tells us that Hugo's criollo mentor now deems him "impulsive, temperamental, intellectually limited, surrounded by obsequious yes men, completely disorganised in every aspect of his life, ignorant of the economy, a lover of luxury, and more than anything else erratic - one of the most unpredictable men I have ever known" and says "Just before the election in 1998, I remember I turned to Miquilena and said to him, 'I am very afraid we are creating a monster.'"... the elderly man's reply: "I think the same, but it is all we have", and, the plain truth "People here love him because he is getting paid for what everyone aspires to - not doing much, telling jokes and talking a lot" . Oh, and there's Mafia style burro mutilation, too)

Late at night, Doña Elena Frias de Chavez invites me to follow her into her bedroom in the hacienda-style governor's mansion on the outskirts of Barinas, a remote regional capital in Venezuela's central high savanna. Skirting round her unmade bed, past photographs hung with rosaries of her controversial son, the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, she signals to me to stop. I turn to see a makeshift altar set into an alcove crammed with candles, statues of the Virgin Mary, saints and dusty artificial flowers around a large hologram of Jesus Christ, the eyes of which appear open or closed depending on where you stand.

"This is where I pray when I fear for the life of my son," says Doña Elena as she brings her hands together with a slight bow, then lightly touches the glass surrounding a lit votive flame. "I make sure there is always at least one candle alight here. I even get up in the night to check that it has not gone out."

In the week that his opponents' hatred is so intense that Chavez is depicted in the opposition press as a modern-day Hitler under headlines such as "Heil, Hugo!", Doña Elena has cause to pray a great deal. Five years ago, when the fury of his opponents reached fever pitch, and bloody clashes on the streets of Caracas left dozens dead, Chavez was seized by soldiers and held under military arrest. That coup attempt, which many claim was backed by the CIA, was short-lived.

Less than 48 hours later, the former paratrooper, who had led a failed coup himself a decade earlier but finally came to power after being elected, emerged on a balcony of the Miraflores presidential palace clutching a crucifix and declaring that the will of the people had returned him to power. "It was the work of God that saved my son on April 11th and 12th," says Doña Elena of those two days in 2002. "But Hugo has so many enemies I must pray long hours."

This intense devotion when I visit her in late January is to counter renewed opposition rage, this time at her son's announcement that he was passing a new law to enable him to rule Venezuela by decree for the next 18 months, paving the way for what he calls "maximum revolution" and "21st-century socialism". These sweeping powers were granted him by a congress wholly loyal to him after the opposition boycotted elections over allegations of fraud and intimidation. The law gives Chavez free rein to introduce further nationalisations to those already announced; to gain greater state control of the petroleum industry in a country that is the fifth largest oil producer in the world; to further control the media after closing down the largest opposition-run TV channel; to reduce the authority of state governors, mayors and other officials; and to loosen restrictions on the re-election of the head of state - ie, himself. Opponents branded the announcement "totalitarianism lite".

One former Chavez ally, Teodoro Petkoff, now editor of the newspaper Tal Cual, which ludicrously compared conditions in Venezuela to the early days of the Third Reich, decried the new law for "liquidating obstacles to absolute power". "This regime is now technically an autocracy. That does not mean it is a dictatorship, but the prerequisites for dictatorship exist," said Petkoff as he put the finishing touches to a front page depicting Chavez with a Hitler moustache.

In Latin American politics, such mudslinging is nothing new. Chavez himself is a master of the rhetorical flourish. When I come face to face with him, as he holds forth for over four hours in the presidential palace in what is loosely dubbed a press conference, Chavez delivers one of his trademark verbal sideswipes at his favourite target, George Bush. He describes him as "more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade".

As the assembled press wilts in the heat, a bow-tied butler discreetly delivers Chavez silver platters bearing cup after cup of espresso coffee, of which the president is reputed to drink more than two dozen a day to stay on form.

Chavez rarely grants interviews, preferring instead to deliver lectures - punctuated by the flourishing of fluorescent pens, tirades against Bush (to confirm his position as a global icon of anti-Americanism), jovial storytelling and the occasional song. Since he had just visited Cuba's ailing president, that day's outpourings also contained many references to his close friend Fidel Castro.

Hysterical references to Hitler aside, it is Castro with whom Chavez is most often compared. With his talk of turning his country into a socialist utopia fit for the 21st century - albeit one inspired by Venezuela's 19th-century liberator, Simon Bolivar, with whose spirit he is claimed to commune - many refer to Chavez as Castro's heir apparent. This prospect of another political bogeyman in their back yard has prompted US leaders to denounce Chavez as a dangerous demagogue potentially much more threatening than Castro. While the Cuban leader could once count on the support of the former Soviet Union to punch above his weight on the world stage, Chavez controls a far bigger and wealthier country than Cuba: one with the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East.

..Yet when I talk to Doña Elena about her son being portrayed as a future Castro, the strict former schoolteacher's eyes flash with anger. "Just because they are good friends does not mean my son should be seen as his successor," she says, pulling at her jacket's hem in agitation. "My Hugo Rafael does not want to see the same old story of communism repeated here. Only someone with the head of a donkey could think he does." It's an unfortunate turn of phrase in the light of a story I hear later about Chavez's youth.

"My son is an immensely religious man. Why else would he have sought the benediction of the Pope?" Doña Elena continues, as she points out several photographs showing Chavez smiling broadly beside Pope John Paul II. While looking at the photographs, I realise from his polite cough that I am obscuring her husband's view of the TV. As I move, the amiable Don Hugo de los Reyes Chavez props his head on his hand to continue watching a baseball game.

"My son gets his tough character from me. His father has a more placid temperament," Doña Elena says in a low voice as we leave the room. For the past six years, her husband, also a former schoolteacher, has been governor of the vast cattle-ranching and oil-rich state of Barinas in the country's high plains, Los Llanos. Stretching from the foothills of the Andes to the Orinoco river, Los Llanos are seen as the country's spiritual heartland, and those born here - llaneros - are fiercely independent and tough.

When Doña Elena finally says farewell on the colonnaded veranda of the governor's mansion, close to midnight, I notice an imposing oil painting of Chavez with the outline of a llanero cowboy in the background. "Like me, my son is very generous to those he likes but very tough on those he doesn't," she says, pressing a tin of biscuits into my hand as a parting gift.

Until shortly before Chavez became president in 1998 - he was re-elected last December - his family lived in extremely humble circumstances. But since his rise to prominence, not only his father but four of his five brothers have assumed positions of power in Barinas. Critics claim the family are running the state as their personal fiefdom. One brother is mayor of the small town of Sabaneta, where Chavez was born, another is secretary of the state of Barinas, yet another manages key sporting events, and the fourth s in finance. His older brother Adan, a former presidential chief of staff and ambassador to Cuba, is the country's minister of education. A cousin is director of the state oil company, PDVSA.

As I travel across the flat landscape to Sabaneta the next morning to meet Chavez's brother Anibal, the mayor, it strikes me that growing up in a place with such far horizons might lead to a tendency to harbour large ambitions. "Certainly Hugo was the one with big plans. He was clever, a born leader. It was always clear he would go far," says Anibal.

Before agreeing to talk, the mayor insists on an extraordinary ritual. Summoning three assistants into his office, he pulls out a Bible and they all stand waving their hands in the air in evangelical fashion while one of the three ?reads out a passage from the Old Testament: Proverbs, chapter 14, verse 3, which includes the words "Proud fools talk too much".
{ the following, we came assume, was said to Ms Toomey with a straight face}
"My mother wanted my brother to become a priest," says the mayor, finally inviting me to sit. "He was an altar boy. My brother believes in God. That is why he will not become like Fidel Castro, who does not. Tell your readers they need have no fear. My brother is committed to free elections. He does not want to see Venezuela become another Cuba. He just wants to see a country more committed to people than profit, a place where spiritual values are more important."

The first admission from the family that all is not quite as straightforward and uplifting as this comes from the president's great-aunt Brigida, who also still lives in Sabaneta, and who directs us to the spot on the outskirts where Chavez was born in a straw-roofed, dirt-floor shack. "Hugo did a lot of things in secret because his parents were against them," she says. "He signed up for the military aged 17 without their knowing. I was one of the first he talked to about his communist beliefs," says the 64-year-old, who belonged to a banned socialist party in the 1970s.

In the days that follow, I talk to Chavez's old friends and those who know him even more intimately: his former long-term mistress and his one-time psychiatrist. A more disturbing picture emerges, in which all not being what it seems with Chavez becomes a recurring theme.

Leonardo Ruiz's wide girth heaves with laughter as he recalls how, as boys, he and Chavez used to play baseball with a ball made of rags or bottle caps. "We couldn't afford a proper ball. But that was Hugo's real passion - baseball. He wanted to become a professional player. He only joined the paratroopers because they had a famous pitcher coaching their baseball team."

This is borne out by all who know Chavez. Less known is the early schooling in communist ideology that he received at the house of this childhood friend, whose father founded the Communist party in Barinas. "It was really my father and older brother Vladimir who introduced Hugo and Adan to these political ideas," says Ruiz. "They came here to talk and read our books. But they had to hide their communist sympathies because it was dangerous."

An aside Ruiz makes as we are parting leaves me feeling uneasy. Having read an account of a macabre incident from his youth in a bestselling book about Chavez by two Venezuelan authors, Alberto Barrera and Cristina Marcano, I ask Ruiz if he recalls it. It concerns Chavez and his friends being spurned by an attractive girl when they were teenagers. Out of revenge for the slight, Chavez is said to have cut the head off a dead donkey and placed it on the girl's doorstep. "Oh yes, that joke," says Ruiz, looking uncomfortable. "I admit it was in bad taste."

Watch your tongue, wee donkey

Struggling to reconcile Ruiz's account of Chavez as a secret communist with a taste in jokes verging on sadism with his mother's description of him as a devout Christian, I later speak to a woman who once shared his bed.

Herma Marksman, a history professor at a Caracas university, admits she has had no contact with Chavez since shortly after he became president. But the two were lovers for nearly 10 years while Chavez was plotting to overthrow the corrupt government of the then president, Carlos Andres Perez, who was deeply unpopular among the country's marginalised poor.The failed military coup against Perez in 1992 followed anti-government riots three years earlier which had left many hundreds dead.

Chavez had been plotting for years to install a revolutionary junta under the command of a group he and his co-conspirators called the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement. Seizing this moment of violent social unrest, the group tried to take control of strategic locations around Venezuela, including Miraflores Palace, but Chavez was quickly surrounded and so surrendered. Before being taken into custody, he was allowed to make a short television address to persuade his fellow rebels to lay down their arms. A striking figure in his red paratrooper's beret, he announced: "Comrades, the objectives we set for ourselves have not been possible to achieve now. But new possibilities will arise again."

He was sentenced to long-term imprisonment, but the 32-second broadcast still made him a hero to the poor. As far as most Venezuelans were concerned, it was only a matter of time before he would attempt to seize power again.

Nine months later, Chavez's allies staged another, even bloodier coup attempt. Miraflores Palace was bombed from the air. More than 170 people died in street battles. Within months, Perez was impeached on corruption charges. The following year, 1994, Chavez and his fellow rebels were freed from jail. Joining forces with several leftist civilian parties, he and his military allies launched a new party, the Fifth Republic Movement. Four years later, Chavez stood in presidential elections and won.

Marksman, a respected historian with links to many of Chavez's leftist contacts, was his lover from 1984 to 1994. "We were all idealists then. Our goals were to tackle corruption and build a prosperous Venezuela based on justice for all. There was none of this idolatry of Fidel or Che [Guevara]," says Marksman, a beautiful brunette in her youth and the woman for whom Chavez reputedly wanted to leave his first wife, the mother of his eldest three children. "But we were all deceived. We're now heading for a totalitarian regime. He [Chavez] is sacrificing the resources of future generations with money that is not his. Little Red Riding Hood has turned into the wolf. He is astute and manipulative and not religious at all. But he realises that brandishing a crucifix will bring him closer to a certain social class. It is a blasphemy."

Such an outpouring could be dismissed as the vengeance of a scorned woman. When Chavez emerged from jail as a hero, he was surrounded by adoring women and separated from both his wife and his mistress. A second marriage, which produced a fourth child, also ended in separation. Yet Marksman is generous in her praise of him as an attentive lover. She believes the seeds of what she sees as the very destructive path on which Chavez is headed were sown in a childhood far less idyllic than that painted by his family.

"He was very marked by his upbringing. He had a terrible childhood. His mother was very severe. His family background was very humble. I believe this sowed a lot of resentment in his character," she says, recalling Chavez telling her that he once met his mother in the street when he was growing up and, having not spoken to her for years, turned and walked in the opposite direction. For much of his youth he did not live with his parents. So straitened were the family's circumstances that both he and his elder brother Adan were brought up by their paternal grandmother. "While other small children were out playing, the two brothers were sent out on the streets to sell sweets their grandmother made to make ends meet," says Marksman. Chavez talks publicly about his peasant background, but Marksman says it left him with "fundamental frustrations", a trait now playing itself out, she believes, in the unpredictability and increasingly authoritarian way in which he wields his power.

It is an interpretation borne out by another person who was close to Chavez, the man who invited him to share his home and make use of an office for several years when he was released from prison. Nedo Paniz, an urbane professor of architecture with a studio in a wealthier neighbourhood of Caracas, sympathised with Chavez's fight against corruption. But, like Marksman, he says he has had no contact with Chavez since he assumed power: "As soon as someone is no longer of use to Chavez, he is disposed of. He moves from oasis to oasis, leaving personal and political corpses along the way."

Pinned on the architect's wall is a note from another former ally of Chavez who was crucial in easing the former paratrooper's transition from failed coup-plotter to aspiring politician. Luis Miquilena, a one-time communist union leader who became Chavez's first interior minister before they fell out, summarises the president's character as "impulsive, temperamental, intellectually limited, surrounded by obsequious yes men, completely disorganised in every aspect of his life, ignorant of the economy, a lover of luxury, and more than anything else erratic - one of the most unpredictable men I have ever known."

Given that the two men are now enemies, you would hardly expect a glowing reference. But again it is the more personal observations that ring true. "His background left him with feelings of social resentment, a sense of 'I don't have what others have,'" says Paniz, who is more worried, however, by Chavez's obsession with Simon Bolivar, the country's national hero: "He used to engage in spiritual sessions with the soul of Bolivar. He believed our liberator had somehow entered his being. So now he stamps everything he does with the mark of Bolivar.

"But to constantly refer back to a glorious moment in our history 200 years ago is madness. It is this combination of madness and his free access to this country's vast wealth that is, I believe, very dangerous."

Paniz says that during the years he and Miquilena helped groom Chavez for power, both men began to doubt his stability and suitability for public office. "Just before the election in 1998, I remember I turned to Miquilena and said to him, 'I am very afraid we are creating a monster.'" Paniz recalls the elderly man's reply: "I think the same, but it is all we have."

Even those considered more objective hint at disturbing tendencies. Dr Edmundo Chirinos likes to be known as the president's friend rather than as his personal psychiatrist, despite having been called on to counsel Chavez after the breakdown of his first marriage. "The president is a very unconventional man, very impulsive, with few restraints, which could be dangerous except that he is very intelligent," says Chirinos, speaking in his gloomy penthouse apartment hung with portraits of Che Guevara. "His main motivation, of course, is power. Many people want power. But when you have the strong personality he has, there is no limit to the amount of power you want. He is also a narcissist, but then name me a world leader that isn't."

Chirinos does not believe that Chavez is a religious man, "though I think he identifies with Christ as a leader". There are indeed messianic overtones in some of Chavez's speeches, in which he talks of "the kingdom of God" as "a socialist kingdom" .

The doctor concludes with the warning, again, that the main flaw in the president's personality is his impulsive nature. "To stand before the United Nations in New York and say there was a strong smell of sulphur in the air because Bush had been there was an error of judgment, for instance. So was greeting Putin [an expert in martial arts] with a mock karate chop."

His impulsiveness seems all the more alarming in the light of what I then hear from a man even Chavez refers to as an "objective investigator". Alberto Garrido, a political scientist who has written over 16 books on Chavez, says: "From his words it is clear he does not believe in God… He is driven by the belief that it is his historic duty to complete the mission of Bolivar."

Key to this is the vision of a politically united Latin America. Bolivar died disillusioned in 1830, convinced that South America was ungovernable. Chavez believes otherwise. To this end, he is promoting a United Bolivarian Congress of People stretching from South America to the Caribbean. So far, only smaller states such as Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador, where the populist presidents Daniel Ortega, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa have recently assumed power, are loosely signed up. Left-wing leaders of bigger nations, such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile, appear to be keeping their distance. Privately, Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, is reported to have complained that Chavez is "flirting dangerously with authoritarianism".

"Whether or not this utopia is realised depends on historical events," says Garrido. "But what Chavez is doing with great ability is filling the power vacuum in the region left by a United States totally focused on the Middle East." In his most recent book, Garrido investigates the way Chavez has himself been cultivating links in the Middle East. "He believes in using oil wealth as a strategic weapon. Part of this strategy is the campaign to convince the world's oil trade to change from petrodollars to petro-euros."

One concrete result of Chavez cosying up to Iran (he has visited Tehran, and President Ahmadinejad has made several visits to Venezuela) is an accord between the two countries to set up a $2 billion investment fund to help developing nations "liberate themselves from US imperialism". Chavez, who vigorously defends Iran's right to develop a nuclear programme, has declared the partnership a symbol of "two revolutions coming together to form a mighty current to defeat the United States". Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, has also ?been courting ties with Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia in the hope of leading an anti-US bloc in America's back yard.

Until now, the US has been muted in its response. But high-ranking US officials and congressmen are now pressing the State Department to take a tougher line with Chavez, who they say is "a threat to the US, alongside Al-Qaeda, Iran and North Korea".

In recent years Chavez has sought to embarrass the Bush administration on home turf by giving free oil to Indian tribal reservations and to poor neighbourhoods of New York. More recently, he has signed a deal with London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, to provide cut-price oil so that Londoners on income support can have half-price public transport, in return for technical advice on traffic management and recycling in Caracas. Such gestures are dismissed by many as publicity stunts. But there are those who warn that they have more serious intent.

"To really ensure himself the heroic place in history he craves, Chavez needs a grandiose story such as the revolutions of Nicaragua or Cuba," says the writer Alberto Barrera. "Without that, he has too little history and too much oil money to be another Fidel." And there's the rub. Despite all the sabre-rattling against Bush, whom he describes as the "No 1 mass murderer and assassin on the planet" (Tony Blair is an "imperialist pawn sharing Bush's bed"), Venezuela still pumps nearly 1.5m barrels of oil to the US every day, making it the country's third largest supplier. It is this vast income that Chavez uses to fund his dream of revolution.

With the price of oil more than trebling since he came to power, he has been able to introduce an impressive range of social initiatives to help Venezuela's poor. They include a network of health clinics manned by 17,000 guest Cuban doctors; literacy and adult-education programmes; nutrition centres; cost-price supermarkets; and co-operatives providing employment. As beneficial as these schemes are, financial analysts argue that they are almost totally dependent on state handouts and will have to be cut when the price of oil falls. They do little, therefore, to address the fundamental restructuring of the oil-dependent economy needed to ensure long-term change.

With Venezuela awash in oil money, analysts warn that the economy is dangerously overheating. Inflation is running at close to 17%, a consumer boom has pushed foreign imports to a record high, and public debt is nearly twice what it was when Chavez first took power. Economists talk of the president siphoning money out of foreign reserves to curry favour abroad - buying $3 billion in government bonds from Argentina to help the country restructure its debt; buying weapons and aircraft from Russia; and making oil deals with China. Yet changes to the way statistics are kept in the country make it impossible to assess the real state of the economy, they argue. In the words of one analyst, "It is fair to say this is now a country without audit." Even with the country's huge wealth, some predict that fiscal imprudence will soon lead to a scarcity of basic goods; on the way to the airport I hear the news announcing a shortage of sugar.

As long as the oil bonanza in this country of 25m lasts, Chavez can do no wrong in the eyes of Venezuela's poor majority. Yet walking through the streets of one of the poorest barrios in Caracas - the 23 de Enero neighbourhood, where Chavez himself votes - in the days after the president announces he will rule by decree, I sense vague rumblings of discontent.

"We love Chavez. He has made the poor count in this country… He pays for things like this," said Reddy Zorsano, a railway worker who is watching his daughter twirl her baton in a children's street parade. "But we won't accept a totalitarian regime. He is only in power because we put him there. We worry about the future of our children, their education, rising crime." Oil wealth has fuelled record levels of crime, giving Caracas reputedly the highest murder rate per capita in the world.

But sitting just a few feet away from Chavez in the presidential palace as he delivers a shortened version of his weekly televised address to the nation, called Hello Mr President - a one-man show in which he has been known to speak nonstop for up to eight hours - I get the sense that he won't be leaving the world stage for some time yet.

What he might lack in economic sense and, increasingly, political savvy, Chavez attempts to make up for with charisma and charm. "And in Venezuela this goes a long way," says Alberto Barrera. "People here love him because he is getting paid for what everyone aspires to - not doing much, telling jokes and talking a lot."

Barking in Bush's back yard, The Sunday Times March 11, 2007

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.”

The rock-star revolutionary of Caracas, Richard Lapper, Latin America editor, Financial Times/FT