It was then that Chavez began visiting towns and villages throughout Venezuela, developing his leadership. He has said that special (government) agents followed him at a distance and that (mysteriously) electric power supplies were cut off to towns where he was scheduled to be on a local radio or TV show ... it grew so regular that he would gather crowds in each the town's Bolivar Square just in case there was another electric power "failure!"
By 1998, he was a consolidated candidate ... he had created the Fifth Republic Party (MVR) and ran for President by joining forces with Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) ... a leftist party from the Fourth Republic that claimed to be socialist. In December 1998 he won with the landslide support of of IMF-impoverished people and took power on February 2, 1999.
At the time oil was around US$7 a barrel!
Chavez called for a national referendum, first to decide if there should be a Constitutional Assembly. That was followed by another referendum to elect candidates for the Constitutional Assembly and the Fifth Republic came into being with a new Constitution that was approved in a nationwide vote in December 1999.
The former "ruling class" was, at first, only complaining about the ethnic background of the new President, with frequent references on TV that he is partly of native extraction ... they felt threatened when Chavez discovered that all family members of all former Presidents (called Senators for life) used global credit cards charged to the central government...
Since 1998, Chavez has found a succession of "interesting things" that previous administrations had left behind...
Many US companies had obviously enjoyed the privilege of a Latin America shaped in that fashion ... some US and other companies from the globe were able to operate in Venezuela without paying social security or having to hire anyone ... the Venezuelan government was extremely poor and up to its eyes in debt ... pillaged by the AD/COPEI alliance of the Fourth Republic. The IMF, on the other hand, had already calculated Venezuela's future foreign debts while a group of industrialists was sucking money out of the government. Quite simply, it was not fair! Chavez decided to put the people first and made no bones bout it in his various speeches ... as President he did not have any great budget at his disposal despite the fact that Venezuela is renowned as a major exporter of oil to the world.
That's when he began taking extensive presidential trips to other oil exporting countries to suggest production cuts within the framework of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel to help increase prices on the world's oil markets ... he even visited Saddam Hussein's Iraq (an OPEC member) on his tour of oil-exporting countries in 2000.
By 2002, Chavez decided to gain control of the state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). It was a massive organization, a state within a state, controlled by a group of 'families' and companies that had little to do with Venezuela's social situation. AS was his right under the law, Chavez appointed a new president to PDVSA but immediately ran into a brick wall where PDVSA's internal structure had imposed a series of policies to prevent Presidents from having any executive power over the state-owned conglomerate ... PDVSA executives had for quite some time enjoyed astronomic salaries and outrageous benefits, including a fleet of company planes they frequently used for leisure trips.
Unabashed, Chavez named Gaston Parra Luzardo as president of PDVSA and warned the fuel oligarchy on the seventh floor of PDVSA headquarters in Caracas that their excesses had come to an end ... their response was a coup d'etat in April 2002 aided materially and logistically by the United States of America. A de facto government was imposed that attempted to erase the new constitution in a single televised ceremony after Chavez was detained and held incommunicado at several military facilities. The Venezuelan people en mass and the military remaining on Chavez' side came out on the streets across the nation to demand that Chavez be restored to the presidency and brought back to the Miraflores Palace. It took 47 hours for him to be returned to power and there's a famous Irish-produced documentary called "The Revolution will not be televised" about the 2002 coup that should have come attached to the book that Chavez gave Mr Obama.
After getting control of Venezuela's most important income resource (PDVSA), Chavez was able to determine how much money the Venezuela had at its disposition ... he boosted social programs that already existed and created new and very creative ones, such as the Barrio Adentro (Inside the neighborhood) primary health program, with emergency rooms built right in the middle of very poor neighborhoods that otherwise had no quick access to hospitals, given the lack of streets and other infrastructure in many of the extremely impoverished neighborhoods throughout the entire country. It became important to give all Venezuelans to proper ID cards and the right to their identities. Many poor Venezuelans learned that they belongs to a nation, and discovered the true meaning of nationality. A social program called Mission Robinson was aimed at eradicating illiteracy and, according to UNICEF, it succeeded. Robinson II was then set up for those who did read but never finished elementary school. Another mission (Ribas) was created for those who had finished elementary school but never finished high school ... another was created for those who had finished high school but had never gained a Degree (Sucre). Many other missions were created to save Venezuelan society from going backwards in history. A chaotic but genuine liberation movement is taking place in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. Mr. Obama can see what's happening when he comes to visit us!
Chavez has simply swept a system of oppression out of power that had had total control over Venezuela. Some people perceive this as Venezuelan now being in control of no one ... or out of control! But the country has, actually, slowly moved to a social-oriented paradigm which, in itself, brings many problems.
Now, with the United States led by a man such as Barack Obama and woman like Hillary Clinton, many Venezuelans feel that there is hope that bilateral relations will improve sharply for the benefit of both nations. Chavez has given humble demonstrations of concern for the poor people in the United States via Venezuela's wholly-owned subsidiary CITGO during past winters in the north.
Let's be certain of one thing: There is no dictatorship in Venezuela.
Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton, there is no dictatorship in Venezuela ... there is a democracy filled with tense expectation ... in certain ways it resembles the democracy you have in the United States. The country seems to be split into two very consistent sectors just like the US Republics and and US Democrats. Conservative news networks are permanently attacking the President by using old stories from communist episodes in world history. People choose more and more not to discuss politics with others.
The opposition is undeniably a minority but, like in the United States, the true minority are very wealthy, and control a large share of the media ... they basically seek to implant fear in people's minds against joining the stream of the what is an historical melting pot ... they encourage ideals that do not acknowledge the civil rights of historically oppressed populations. In spite of the fact that they themselves are a minority, there's the pervading phenomenon of alienation ... basically the transference of certain mind sets (value systems and political standpoints) from a dominant group to the large group that is pre-conditioned to being oppressed. The other half is pro-liberty and very much aware of the oppression.
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