Venezuela's Hugo Chavez dies: 5 ways to look at his legacy
The controversial leader was a champion of the poor, a ruthless strongman, and a consummate showman
On Tuesday, the Venezuelan government announced that President Hugo Chavez, the country's longtime leader, had died at the age of 58 following a battle with cancer. Chavez was an intensely polarizing figure in both his native land and around the world, simultaneously praised as an anti-imperialist revolutionary and condemned as a power-hungry authoritarian who was leading Latin America down a dangerous path toward socialism. One need look no further than the headlines to get a taste of Chavez's convoluted legacy: The Los Angeles Times proclaimed, "President Hugo Chavez, hero to Venezuela's poor, is dead," while Bloomberg reported, "Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's anti-U.S. socialist leader, dies." Here, five ways to look at his legacy:
1. He was a champion of the poor
Upon coming to power in 1998 elections, Chavez embarked on a socialist overhaul — or Bolivarian Revolution as he called it, after independence hero Simon Bolivar — of Venezuela's economy, which lifted millions out of poverty through redistribution of the country's oil wealth. According to Chris Kraul and Mery Mogollon at The Los Angeles Times:
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2. He was a divisive, charismatic figure
Chavez's supporters adoringly referred to him as El Comandante, a man of the people who had an instinctive flair for channeling their fears and aspirations. As Charlie Devereux and Daniel Cancel write at Bloomberg:
But to his detractors, he was a power-mad caudillo ("strongman") and an insufferable blowhard to boot. Ian James and Frank Bajak at The Associated Press write:
But there was no doubt over how Chavez felt about himself: He was the father of the nation. "I am no longer just me, I am a people," he said during his presidential campaign last year. "I feel incarnated in all of you.... You, too, are Chavez. Chavez has truly become a people."
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3. He was a megalomaniacal authoritarian
Chavez, a populist through and through, enjoyed the overwhelming support of the country's poor, and was re-elected numerous times with a majority of the vote. But he was also accused of centralizing power in his office, or more accurately around his cult of personality. As Simon Romero at The New York Times writes:
4. He was an anti-American crusader
Chavez was the de facto leader of a leftist bloc of Latin American countries that sought to curb the U.S.'s influence in the region. "Chavez said that he wouldn't rest until Bolivar's dream of a Latin America united and independent from foreign powers was realized," write Bloomberg's Cancel and Devereux, tapping into a deep-seated resentment born from a long history of Western imperialism and the U.S.'s support of anti-Communist regimes in the 1980s.
But Chavez's anti-Americanism didn't really flower until 2002, when the Bush administration appeared to support a botched coup against him. Jon Lee Anderson at The New Yorker explains:
Chavez's animosity toward Bush was most memorably expressed during a 2006 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, when he thundered, "Yesterday, ladies and gentleman, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman whom I refer to as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world."
5. He left behind a wounded economy
Although Chavez won the hearts of the poor by nationalizing oil assets and spreading Venezuela's oil wealth, the economy has suffered from inefficiency, corruption, and a lack of investment in sectors other than energy. Venezuela's economy is currently characterized by double-digit inflation and food shortages, while crime has spiked. Indeed, the great economic success story of the last decade in Latin America has been Brazil, which has combined free-market incentives with much-admired socialist policies that are aimed at lifting people out of poverty. As The New Yorker's Anderson writes:
In that respect, the legacy of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution in the region may have already been eclipsed.
Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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