It would be absurd to think that the past 20th century was poor in the birth of people who played a grandiose role in the history of the whole world. But when they are mentioned, the imagination of the average layman more often draws military and political figures, scientists and artists from Europe or the USA.
Meanwhile, serious passions were seething in Latin America at the same time, the results of which predetermined the development of the entire region for many years to come. One of the people who became famous precisely in the field of their political ambitions and accomplishments was the President of Venezuela, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías.
The initial stages of the biography
He was born on July 28, 1954. The place of his birth, the village of Sabaneta, located in the state of Barinas, did not stand out in any way. The future president was born in the family of an ordinary school teacher. In addition to the newborn Hugo, his parents had several other children. However, the family was not the most ordinary, with gloriousrevolutionary roots.
Thus, one of the maternal Chavez was an active participant in the Civil War of 1859‑1863. And his great-grandfather in 1914 managed to raise an uprising aimed at overthrowing the power of another dictator. It is not surprising that the stories about the deeds of the ancestors, passed from mouth to mouth in the Chavez family, had a significant impact on all his further actions and aspirations. As soon as the future president of Venezuela graduated from the general education school, he immediately entered the Military Academy. At the age of 21, he graduated from it, having left the walls of the alma mater with the rank of senior lieutenant.
Create your own organization
Served in parts of the Airborne Forces. It was from there that his red beret went, without which the commandant subsequently did not appear in public. Already in 1982 (but many believe that at the academy) he created his own organization KOMAKATE. The decoding of the name is simple - this word means "senior lieutenant", being composed of the first letters of medium military ranks. Of course, the future president of Venezuela immediately became its permanent leader. It is also not surprising that this organization almost immediately turned into an exclusively revolutionary one.
Failure on the path to power
In 1992, he tried to overthrow the incumbent President Carlos Andrés Pérez. In fairness, he was really not a very good ruler: the level of corruption frankly went off scale, and government spending was constantly reduced. Chavez pursued quite sound ideas: he wanted to assemble a newA government of people who have not stained themselves with extortions and bribes to rewrite the Constitution, which had a huge number of shortcomings. But the Peres government managed to prevent the coup attempt in time.
Legal President
To Andres Perez's credit, he didn't physically destroy his opponent. And this is a rarity when it comes to Latin American dictators. Chavez himself surrendered to the authorities, having previously ordered his supporters not to stage an armed coup. For this, the official authorities sentenced him to only four years in prison, and already in 1994 he was released under an amnesty. After that, Chavez rejected the idea of an armed coup. In the cell, he thought a lot on political topics, and therefore firmly decided to seek power exclusively by legal means.
In 1998, right before the upcoming presidential election, Hugo began his campaign. Unlike many of his rivals, his slogans were simple, and the candidate himself was a man who was already remembered by the potential electorate for his actions, and not for his lack of them. In addition, Chavez swore an oath to finally put an end to corruption in the country. No wonder he achieved his goal. The new president of Venezuela won a little over 54% of the vote, but it was a real triumph.
Democratic rulers of the country
By the way, how many heads did the country have in total? Unfortunately, it is impossible to give a complete list of Venezuelan presidents here, since there were 48 of them in total. So let's just listthose heads of state who have held this post since 1952 (around that time Chavez himself was born). So here they are:
- Marcos Jimenez, who served in this position from 1952 to 1958.
- Wolfgang Hugueto. Ascended to the "throne" in 1958, as a result of a military coup. Didn't have time to be president for even one year.
- Edgar Sanabria. Interim ruler, lawyer.
- Romulo Betancourt. Was president from 1959 to 1964.
- Raul Leoni. In office from 1964 to 1969.
- Rafael Caldera, who ruled from 1969 to 1974
- The same Carlos Andres Perez, who once put Hugo behind bars. He served in his post from 1974 to 1979.
- Luis Herrera Campins. Ruled from 1979 to 1984
- Jaime Lusinchi. The period of being the President is from 1984 to 1989.
- And… Carlos Perez again. Was again president from 1989 to 1993.
- From June 1993 to 1994, Octavio Lepage and Ramon José Velázquez alternately pulled the burden of presidency. Were temporarily acting.
- Finally, Rafael Caldera. Held the post from 1994 to the end of 1998.
So, the presidents of Venezuela, the list of which we have given in the article (even if it is incomplete) ruled for an average of five years. Before them, people rarely held the office of president for more than two or three years, and especially in revolutionary periods, this post was replaced by three or four people a year. So Hugo Chavez and his “sworn friend” Andres Perez are phenomena in the political environmentVenezuela is unique. The former has been in office for almost 12 years, while Perez has been in office for a total of nine years.
Innovations in the economic and political spheres
What did Hugo Chavez do after taking office? First of all, he established tight state control over the oil company Petroleos de Venezuela: all its profits were directed to social programs. So, the money went to the construction of new schools and hospitals, the educational program of the masses, the development of agricultural programs in the country. Hugo knew what to do: since at least 70% of the country's population at that time lived below the poverty line, the support of the electorate was automatically guaranteed. Relying on the support of the people, Venezuelan President Chavez prepared projects for the nationalization of other enterprises.
Already a year after his election, he drafted a new Constitution, and in 2000 he again won the last election, this time gaining 60% of the vote at once. But it is not worth considering Chavez as another "parochial king" who "left" on competent work with the electorate: Hugo really did a lot for the country.
The black blood of the economy
Because the United States was and still is heavily dependent on South American oil, and given the favorable situation in the energy markets in the early 2000s, it is not surprising that the President made a decision to change the state's policy. In just a few years, impoverished, mired in corruption, Venezuela has become a major and authoritative player in the region. Due to a stable financial position, as well as due to sharp criticism of the United States,the former president of Venezuela managed to consolidate around him all the more or less large countries of Latin America.
Re-election history
The opposition of the country was very dissatisfied and frightened by the actions of Hugo, and therefore repeatedly tried to get rid of the politician by all available means. On April 12, 2002, he was overthrown as a result of a coup d'état, but the junta lasted only two days: already on April 14, Chavez was again returned to the presidency by military units loyal to him. Another re-election takes place in 2006.
Thus, the President of Venezuela (whose biography is discussed in the article) has become one of the most "long-playing" politicians in the world. Not to mention Latin America, where a presidential term rarely lasts more than a year!
In 2007, Chavez creates the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, under whose wing he gathers almost all of his like-minded people and simply talented politicians. Five years later, in 2012, he was once again re-elected to the presidency of the country.
Beginning of the end
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has long suffered from cancer. In any case, he took courses of treatment at least four or five times both in his own country and in Cuba. It is difficult to say how many surgeries and chemotherapy procedures he had to endure. The surgery, which was performed in 2012 in a Cuban clinic, was suddenly complicated by a severe lung infection.
This is the reason whythe next inauguration of Chavez in January 2013 was recognized as having taken place, although the “newly minted” president himself was not there. It would seem that everything worked out: already in February, the president, using Twitter, announced his return. But since then, he has not left the military hospital in Caracas.
Then everyone was on their guard. As it turned out, not in vain: on March 6, 2013, Nicolas Maduro said that the former President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez died of a serious cancer. Although many citizens of the country initially suspected the possibility of such a sad event, it still came as a severe shock to them.
Behind the scenes talents
This man was remembered by the whole world for his inexhaustible optimism and enthusiasm, seething thirst for activity and all-round hobbies. What could this President of Venezuela? The most interesting thing is that many Latin Americans, being ardent Catholics, cannot always accurately quote a passage from the Bible. Hugo could. Moreover, he recited huge portions of Scripture from memory, easily returning to an interrupted conversation after an hour or more. The president adored the work of Bolívar, was fond of watercolors, loved music, and in this area his interests were extremely diverse.
So, at the end of 2007, a collection of songs that he personally performed, and which before that the listeners could evaluate as part of a radio program, saw the light of day. A year later, he recorded a number of compositions of his own composition, which were included in the collection en titled "Musica Para laBatalla" ("Music for the fight"). He deeply respected sports. From childhood he was a good baseball player, even at the end of his life he always found time to throw a couple of balls.
Private life
How many times was Chavez Hugo married? The biography (in which the president of Venezuela appears almost as an ascetic) really shows him as an exemplary family man. But in his personal life, he was still not too lucky. So, in 1992, when Hugo was behind bars, his first wife broke up with him. The second life partner was Marisabel Rodriguez, a fairly well-known journalist.
She is one of the creators of the new Constitution of the country. For unknown reasons, which the president himself never discussed, they divorced in 2002. At the same time, the ex-wife publicly criticized all the reforms of her ex-husband. Chavez has five children: four from his first and one daughter from his second marriage.
End of an era
Who is Venezuela holding up now? President Maduro, a loyal associate of the late Chávez, has been in office since March 2013 to this day. Taking into account the fact that in the period from 2011 to 2013 in the country almost all the duties of the president were already on him, Nicolas Maduro can already be considered a political centenarian.
He follows the same path as Hugo. True, under Maduro, many industries (especially oil) were significantly relaxed. Many skeptics believe that under Nicolás, Venezuela has every chance to turn back into a country that has absolutely no power in the region.no influence. Well, we can only guess. Time will tell how right the bearers of such views were.
If the new president does not go too far and continues the social programs that his predecessor started, he will certainly achieve impressive success. In any case, the people of Venezuela warmly received the news of his presidency. Of course, the majority in the vote was only 1%, but he is quite an experienced politician, knowing all the needs and problems of his state.
