The Tenure of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela

The Tenure of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela

Chavez, a powerful political force within Venezuela and throughout Latin America, has often been seen by U.S. conservatives as a threat to U.S. influence and free trade in the Western Hemisphere. Since he was elected in 1999, Chavez has advanced socialist reforms of the Venezuelan economy, nationalizing some industries in order to distribute much of the state's wealth to the country's impoverished population. Chavez called for constitutional reform the very day he was elected, and eventually succeeded in eroding the authority of the judicial and legislative branches, and abolishing presidential term limits. Since consolidating power, Chavez has issued decrees criticized by business interests as hostile to private industry and harmful to economic development (Buxton, 2003).

In addition to his anti-U.S. rhetoric, Chavez has stoked antagonism between the U.S. and Venezuela by meeting with other leaders hostile to the U.S., including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and using Venezuela's sizeable petroleum-producing capacity as diplomatic leverage in the international community. Tensions between the two countries ran particularly high during the tenure of President George W. Bush (R, 2001-09), whom Chavez referred to as "the devil" and accused of plotting to assassinate him. After he was reelected president in December 2006, Chavez announced plans to nationalize large electricity and telecommunications companies that were largely owned by U.S. firms. In 2008, Chavez seized control of two U.S. oil companies operating in Venezuela. Although the Obama administration has taken a decidedly less confrontational approach to the Chavez regime than the Bush administration did, tensions between the two countries remain high (Roberts, 2003).

Hugo Chavez is without a doubt a dynamic figure. His political style is authoritarian; his speaking style is charismatic, passionate, proud, poetic and often defiant. He rarely gives an address to the Venezuelan people without a large portrait of Simon Bolivar hanging on the wall behind him. This is of course an obvious use of transference, a basic propaganda technique. Bolivar's model republic encouraged a nearly powerless, Monarch-like President with executive power exercised by an executive cabinet and appointed Vice President (Buxton, 2003).

Mr. Chavez's so-called Bolivarian government has had the highest turnover rate of cabinet ministers in Venezuelan history, leaving Chavez to exercise direct control over every area of executive administration; this being all the more significant due to the fact that nearly all power has been concentrated into his hands, this more closely ...