Hugo Chavez’s Failed Socialist Experiment Is Deadlier Than Ever
Twenty years ago, the ex-rebel rose to power in Venezuela and laid the foundation for today’s humanitarian crisis.
Chávez at a campaign rally in August 1998, months before his landslide victory.
Photographer: Timothy Fadek
Hugo Chávez had barely been in office two months when Nelson Chitty La Roche, a burly, gruff, gun-toting lawmaker from the Venezuelan political establishment, told me he was fed up. Chitty didn’t care for the way the young socialist leader was pushing around Congress and threatening to rule by decree, and he let out, somewhat flippantly, that he was starting to map out plans to have him impeached.
It was an absurd notion. In those heady, early days of the regime, Chávez was wildly popular. Polls showed he had the support of about 80 percent of the population, an estimate that, if anything, struck me as low. He was their showman, their savior, their avenger—the man who would speak for them and fight for them and provide for them.