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| FILE - In this July 21, 2006 file photo, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, left, gestures as Cuba's President Fidel Castro looks on during an event in Cordoba, Argentina. Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced on Tuesday, March 5, 2013 that Chavez has died at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer. |
CARACAS,
Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez was a fighter. The former
paratroop commander and fiery populist waged continual battle for his
socialist ideals and outsmarted his rivals time and again, defeating a
coup attempt, winning re-election three times and using his country's
vast oil wealth to his political advantage.
A
self-described "subversive," Chavez fashioned himself after the 19th
Century independence leader Simon Bolivar and renamed his country the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
He called
himself a "humble soldier" in a battle for socialism and against U.S.
hegemony. He thrived on confrontation with Washington and his political
opponents at home, and used those conflicts to rally his followers.
Almost
the only adversary it seemed he couldn't beat was cancer. He died
Tuesday in Caracas at 4:25 local time after his prolonged illness. He
was 58.
During more than 14 years in office,
his leftist politics and grandiose style polarized Venezuelans. The
barrel-chested leader electrified crowds with his booming voice, and won
admiration among the poor with government social programs and a folksy,
nationalistic style.
His opponents seethed at
the larger-than-life character who demonized them on television and
ordered the e
xpropriation of farms and businesses. Many in the middle
class cringed at his bombast and complained about rising crime, soaring
inflation and government economic controls.
Chavez
used his country's vast oil wealth to launch social programs that
included state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics
and education programs. Poverty declined during Chavez's presidency
amid a historic boom in oil earnings, but critics said he failed to use
the windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the country's
economy.
Inflation soared and the homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world.
Before
his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily,
frequently speaking for hours and breaking into song or philosophical
discourse. He often wore the bright red of his United Socialist Party of
Venezuela, or the fatigues and red beret of his army days. He had
donned the same uniform in 1992 while leading an ill-fated coup attempt
that first landed him in jail and then launched his political career.
The
rest of the world watched as the country with the world's biggest
proven oil reserves took a turn to the left under its unconventional
leader, who considered himself above all else a revolutionary.
"I'm
still a subversive," the president told The Associated Press in a 2007
interview, recalling his days as a rebel soldier. "I think the entire
world has to be subverted."
Chavez was a
master communicator and savvy political strategist, and managed to turn
his struggle against cancer into a rallying cry, until the illness
finally defeated him.
From the start, he
billed himself as the heir of Bolivar, who led much of South America to
independence. He often spoke beneath a portrait of Bolivar and presented
replicas of the liberator's sword to allies. He built a soaring
mausoleum in Caracas to house the remains of "El Libertador."
Chavez
also was inspired by his mentor Fidel Castro and took on the Cuban
leader's role as Washington's chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere
after the ailing Castro turned over the presidency to his brother Raul
in 2006. Like Castro, Chavez vilified U.S.-style capitalism while
forming alliances throughout Latin America and with distant powers such
as Russia, China and Iran.
Supporters eagerly
raised Chavez to the pantheon of revolutionary legends ranging from
Castro to Argentine-born rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Chavez nurtured
that cult of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long
stretches fighting cancer, his out-sized image appeared on buildings and
billboard throughout Venezuela. The airwaves boomed with his baritone
mantra: "I am a nation." Supporters carried posters and wore masks of
his eyes, chanting, "I am Chavez."
In the battles Chavez waged at home and abroad, he captivated his base by championing his country's poor.
"This
is the path: the hard, long path, filled with doubts, filled with
errors, filled with bitterness, but this is the path," Chavez told his
backers in 2011. "The path is this: socialism."
On
television, he would lambast his opponents as "oligarchs," scold his
aides, tell jokes, reminisce about his childhood, lecture Venezuelans on
socialism and make sudden announcements, such as expelling the U.S.
ambassador or ordering tanks to Venezuela's border with Colombia.
Chavez
carried his in-your-face style to the world stage as well. In a 2006
speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he called President George W. Bush
the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after the U.S. president's
address.
At a summit in 2007, he repeatedly
called Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist, prompting
Spain's King Juan Carlos to snap, "Why don't you shut up?"
Critics
saw Chavez as a typical Latin American caudillo, a strongman who ruled
through force of personality and showed disdain for democratic rules.
Chavez concentrated power in his hands with allies who dominated the
congress and justices who controlled the Supreme Court.
"El
Comandante," as he was known, insisted Venezuela remained a vibrant
democracy and denied charges that he sought to restrict free speech. But
some opponents faced criminal charges and were driven into exile. His
government forced the opposition-aligned television channel, RCTV, off
the air by refusing to renew its license.
While
Chavez trumpeted plans for communes and an egalitarian society, his
rhetoric regularly conflicted with reality. Despite government seizures
of companies and farmland, the balance between Venezuela's public and
private sectors changed little during his presidency.
Nonetheless, Chavez maintained a core of supporters who stayed loyal to their "comandante" until the end.
"Chavez
masterfully exploits the disenchantment of people who feel excluded ...
and he feeds on controversy whenever he can," Cristina Marcano and
Alberto Barrera Tyszka wrote in their book "Hugo Chavez: The Definitive
Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President."
Hugo
Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of
Sabaneta in Venezuela's western plains. He was the son of a
schoolteacher father and was the second of six brothers. His mother was
also a schoolteacher who met her husband at age 16.
Hugo
and his older brother Adan grew up with their grandmother, Rosa Ines,
in a home with a dirt floor, mud walls and a roof made of palm fronds.
Chavez
was a fine baseball player and hoped he might one day pitch in the U.S.
major leagues. When he joined the military at age 17, he aimed to keep
honing his baseball skills in the capital.
But
between his army duties and drills, the young soldier immersed himself
in the history of Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes who had overthrown
Spanish rule, and his political ideas began to take shape.
Chavez
burst into public view in 1992 as a paratroop commander leading a
military rebellion that brought tanks to the presidential palace. When
the coup collapsed, Chavez was allowed to make a televised statement in
which he declared that his movement had failed "for now." The speech,
and those two defiant words, launched his career, searing his image into
the memory of Venezuelans.
Two years later,
he and other coup prisoners were released from prison, and President
Rafael Caldera dropped the charges against them.
After
organizing a new party, Chavez ran for president in 1998, pledging to
clean up Venezuela's entrenched corruption and shatter its traditional
two-party system. At age 44, he became the country's youngest president
in four decades of democracy with 56 percent of the vote.
After
he took office on Feb. 2, 1999, Chavez called for a new constitution,
and an assembly filled with his allies drafted the document. Among
various changes, it lengthened presidential terms from five years to six
and changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
By
2000, his increasingly confrontational style and close ties to Cuba
disenchanted many of the middle-class supporters who voted for him, and
the next several years saw bold attempts by opponents to dislodge him
from power.
In 2002, he survived a short-lived
coup, which began after large anti-Chavez street protests ended in
shootings and bloodshed. Dissident military officers detained the
president and announced he had resigned. But within two days, he
returned to power with the help of military loyalists amid massive
protests by his supporters.
Chavez emerged a stronger president.
He
defeated an opposition-led strike that paralyzed the country's oil
industry and fired thousands of state oil company employees.
The
coup also turned Chavez more decidedly against the U.S. government,
which had swiftly recognized the provisional leader who briefly replaced
him. He created political and trade alliances that excluded the U.S.,
and he cozied up to Iran and Syria in large part, it seemed, due to
their shared antagonism toward the U.S. government. Despite the souring
relationship, Chavez kept selling the bulk of Venezuela's oil to the
United States.
By 2005, Chavez was espousing a
new, vaguely defined "21st-century socialism." Yet the agenda didn't
involve a sudden overhaul to the country's economic order, and some
businesspeople continued to prosper. Those with lucrative ties to the
government came to be known as the "Bolivarian bourgeoisie."
After
easily winning re-election in 2006, Chavez began calling for a
"multi-polar world" free of U.S. domination, part of an expanded
international agenda. He boosted oil shipments to China, set up joint
factories with Iran to produce tractors and cars, and sealed arms deals
with Russia for assault rifles, helicopters and fighter jets. He focused
on building alliances throughout Latin America and injected new energy
into the region's left. Allies were elected in Bolivia, Ecuador,
Argentina and other countries.
Chavez also
cemented relationships with island countries in the Caribbean by selling
them oil on preferential terms while severing ties with Israel,
supporting the Palestinian cause and backing Iran's right to a nuclear
energy program.
All the while, Chavez
emphasized that it was necessary to prepare for any potential conflict
with the "empire," his term for the United States.
He told the AP in 2007 that he loved the movie "Gladiator."
"It's
confronting the empire, and confronting evil. ... And you end up
relating to that gladiator," Chavez said as he drove across Venezuela's
southern plains.
He said he felt a deep connection to those plains where he grew up, and that when died he hoped to be buried in the savanna.
"A
man from the plains, from these great open spaces ... tends to be a
nomad, tends not to see barriers.
What you see is the horizon," Chavez
said.
Running a revolution ultimately left
little time for a personal life. His second marriage, to journalist
Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency,
and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines,
Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before he
ran for office. His daughters Maria and Rosa often appeared at his side
at official events and during his trips. He had one son, Hugo Rafael
Chavez.
After he was diagnosed with cancer in
June 2011, he acknowledged that he had recklessly neglected his health.
He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of
coffee a day. He regularly summoned his Cabinet ministers to the
presidential palace late at night.
Even as he
appeared with head shaved while undergoing chemotherapy, he never
revealed the exact location of tumors that were removed from his pelvic
region, or the exact type of cancer.
Chavez
exerted himself for one final election campaign in 2012 after saying
tests showed he was cancer-free, and defeated younger challenger
Henrique Capriles. With another six-year term in hand, he promised to
keep pressing for revolutionary changes.
But
two months later, he went to Cuba for a fourth cancer-related surgery,
blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane.
After
a 10-week absence, the government announced that Chavez had returned to
Venezuela and was being
treated at a military hospital in Caracas. He
was never seen again in public.
In his final
years, Chavez frequently said Venezuela was well on its way toward
socialism, and at least in his mind, there was no turning back.
His
political movement, however, was mostly a one-man phenomenon. Only
three days before his final surgery, Chavez named Vice President Nicolas
Maduro as his chosen successor.
Now, it will
be up to Venezuelans to determine whether the Chavismo movement can
survive, and how it will evolve, without the leader who inspired it.
