We Created Chávez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution

By Geo Maher

Book Overview

Since being elected president in 1998, Hugo Ch vez has become the face of contemporary Venezuela and, more broadly, anticapitalist revolution. George Ciccariello-Maher contends that this focus on Ch vez has obscured the inner dynamics and historical development of the country's Bolivarian Revolution. In We Created Ch vez, by examining social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the Ch vez era, Ciccariello-Maher provides a broader, more nuanced account of Ch vez's rise to power and the years of activism that preceded it.

Based on interviews with grassroots organizers, former guerrillas, members of neighborhood militias, and government officials, Ciccariello-Maher presents a new history of Venezuelan political activism, one told from below. Led by leftist guerrillas, women, Afro-Venezuelans, indigenous people, and students, the social movements he discusses have been struggling against corruption and repression since 1958. Ciccariello-Maher pays particular attention to the dynamic interplay between the Ch vez government, revolutionary social movements, and the Venezuelan people, recasting the Bolivarian Revolution as a long-term and multifaceted process of political transformation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822354527
• ISBN13: 9780822354529
• Release Date: April 2013
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"