1. Venezuela’s Tinfoil “Revolution”
- Author:
- Mark Falcoff
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- After forty years of politics as usual, Venezuela has suddenly become an object of curiosity to the world’s press. The reason is President Hugo Chávez, a forty-six-year-old former lieutenant colonel who first came to the attention of Venezuelans in 1992 when he and a group of other junior officers attempted to overthrow the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Amnestied by Pérez’s successor, Chávez began a political career of his own, and in 1998, running as the candidate of the so-called Fifth Republic Revolutionary Movement (MVR), he was elected by a decisive majority. Two and a half years later, he is still an enigma—to Venezuelans, to the United States, and to everyone else. Given the centrality of his country to the oil producers’ cartel and, even more, given the current dependence of the United States on Venezuelan oil, he merits a closer look.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Government, Natural Resources, and Hugo Chavez
- Political Geography:
- South America, Latin America, and Venezuela