Venezuelan President Research Articles

O gerenciamento emocional do populismo de Hugo Chávez em Elpais.com / La gestión emocional del populismo de Hugo Chávez en Elpais.com / The emotional management of populism of Hugo Chávez in Elpais.com

Elpais.com is a digital newspaper whose ideology opposes the Latin American populism performed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez because of considering it contrary to democracy and to exploit the emotional resource in the media. Our goal is to understand through content analysis in its quantitative and qualitative approaches which is the emotional management that the newspaper carries out from the populist charismatic leader’s profile, on the assumption that the newspaper uses emotion to draw a negative image using the resources offered by the network. The results show that a large hypertext and multimedia content are employed which present a twice emotional speech: the populist stereotype reinforcement (leadership, dictatorship, perpetuation of power) and display of the sick and absent politician together to the obscurantism surrounding his health state and to the political uncertainty of his people.

Peripheral Anti-Imperialism: The New Revisionism and the History of Argentine Foreign Relations in the Era of the Kirchners

After 2000, a funny thing happened to the political language of the new leftin South America. While leaders in many countries and of many political stripesregularly evoke the past, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez made a science ofhistoricizing current problems by reviving the distant and forgotten as relevantand poignant. The point of the exercise was to resurrect obscured narrative ashistorical revision with sharp, current political meaning. In 2007, for example,at the height of a simmering dispute with the Colombian government, Chávezaccused Colombian president Álvaro Uribe of fronting for a “Santanderistaoligarchy.”2 Less striking than the evocation of a contentious narrative on howindependence era icon Simón Bolivar died (murdered by his erstwhile ally,Brigadier General Francisco Santander) was Chávez’s confidence that an ancientstory of political betrayal could resonate with his supporters. How manypolitical leaders can trot out a two centuries-old story and make it meaningfulto followers in contexts of current political debate?

Capture Life: The ‘Document-Monument’ in Recent Commemorations of Hugo Chávez

The recent passing of Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela from 1999 till 2013, produced a juncture in the nation's imaginary that immediately sparked numerous and diverse commemorative practices. This article explores this sudden demand for a coherent and enduring memory of the late president by analysing different official postures and commemorative strategies. These are initially placed in the context of key historiographical tropes of the Bolivarian Revolution, and then analysed in light of such tropes. Specifically, the discussion identifies a thirst for ‘documents’, used in the broad sense proposed by Jacques Le Goff, which converged on the presidential body, the social body and public space as potential stimuli for memory. In this context, the initial possibilities of embalming Chávez's body, free tattoos of his signature and its use to decorate government buildings, appeal to the archive as a source of authority and as the commencement of history, as Jacques Derrida has it, while extrapolating the president's signature as a mobile and reproducible image of power to seek the eternal presence of the ‘líder eterno’ (eternal leader) as an anchor for political unity.

Imagem Pública Política: o Último Populismo de Chávez

O populismo é uma importante marca na política latino americana e a emergência de líderes considerados neopopulistas, como o ex-presidente da Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, está entrelaçada às mudanças na percepção sobre política pelos cidadãos. O presente artigo busca compreender, portanto, como se deu a construção da imagem pública política de Hugo Chávez para que o conceito de neopopulismo fosse atribuído ao governo chavista. O período analisado compreende a eleição presidencial de 2012 na Venezuela. Nossas hipóteses iniciais, confirmadas pela análise, indicavam, principalmente, a existência de uma ênfase estratégica no populismo de Chávez na eleição de 2012 e, ainda, sinalizavam não apenas a existência do voto personalista, mas também a opção do voto retrospectivo em Chávez.

Egalitarian Policies and Social Determinants of Health in Bolivarian Venezuela

In 1999, newly-elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez initiated a far-reaching social movement as part of a political project known as the Bolivarian Revolution. Inspired by the democratic ideologies of Simón Bolívar, this movement was committed to reducing intractable inequalities that defined Venezuela's Fourth Republic (1958-1998). Given the ambitious scope of these reforms, Venezuela serves as an instructive example to understand the political context of social inequalities and population health. In this article, we provide a brief overview of the impact of egalitarian policies in Venezuela, stressing: (a) the socialist reforms and social class changes initiated by the Bolivarian Movement; (b) the impact of these reforms and changes on poverty and social determinants of health; (c) the sustainability of economic growth to continue pro-poor policies; and (d) the implications of egalitarian policies for other Latin American countries. The significance and implications of Chávez's achievements are now further underscored given his recent passing, leading one to ask whether political support for Bolivarianism will continue without its revolutionary leader.

José María Vargas (1786–1854): Reformer of anatomical studies in Venezuela

José María Vargas (1786-1854): Venezuelan medical doctor, surgeon, optician, anatomist, chemist, botanist, professor, geologist, mineralogist, and mathematician. Second President of Venezuela (1835-1836), First republican dean, he reformed medicine studies in 1827 establishing human anatomical dissection in the Universidad Central de Venezuela where he taught human anatomy between 1827 and 1853 along with surgery and chemistry. In 1838, he wrote Curso de Lecciones y demostraciones Anatómicas, the first book on the subject printed in Venezuela for the teaching of human anatomy.

EL DISCURSO POLÍTICO EN LA VENEZUELA DE HUGO CHÁVEZ: DE LA REFORMA CONSTITUCIONAL A LA ENMIENDA (2007-2009)

In this paper, is raised from the approaches of political theory and discourse analysis, the construction of political discourse on constitutional reform proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in January 2007, and that meant a generation of political debate on the implications and impact which Venezuelan society could have. Identified the political protagonists and antagonists involved, their plots and expository speeches that explains his position to accept or reject the proposed reform. It concludes by stating that the result was the product of a culture shock on the perceptions of political change in Venezuela.

Social and Political Diversity and the Democratic Road to Change in Venezuela

The political movement led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is subject to internal contradictions that play themselves out on various fronts. Members of three major social groups—the organized working class, the middle sectors, and the traditionally unincorporated sectors—identify with different lines of thinking and defend different interests. Chavismo’s internal political currents correspond to distinct leftist traditions. One adheres to the Marxist view of the organized working class as the main vanguard, another focuses on economic objectives, and a third stresses revolutionary values. Three important areas of struggle in the recent past have impacted these internal currents: expropriations, factional strife in the Chavista labor movement, and the community councils. The expropriations, far from obeying preconceived ideological notions corresponding to one of the three currents, were a response to the challenges posed by the private sector linked to the opposition. The gradual and peaceful path to ...

Chávez Stays, Again

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez fended off a spirited challenge by Governor Henrique Capriles this fall. But continuing questions about Chavez's health and the country's dismal governance suggest that change may be coming soon. Looking ahead, the opposition will need to address concerns by the very poor that social spending will dry up if Chávez is no longer in office. Meanwhile, political differences and power struggles, and a sense of demoralization, risk undermining Capriles’ diverse coalition. The regional scenario would look very different without Chávez. External players should restrain from meddling during this period of uncertainty. Instead, support should focus on trying to ensure that Venezuelans continue to rely on the ballot box in determining the course of a country facing so many daunting problems.

Representaciones de la sociedad venezolana en los discursos del Presidente de Venezuela José Tadeo Monagas

The present article identifies the representations that Jose Tadeo Monagas, president of Venezuela in the nineteenth century, offers about the Venezuelan society in his annual discourses before Parliament. In this analysis, the narrations are understood as enculturation products, which provide axiological and cognitive models with the objective of mediating between what is happening and the interpretation that people make about reality. The categories used are obtained from a content analysis, which has been employed to register the referents and their representation in the eight speeches studied. The results show that José Tadeo Monagas’ representations of Venezuela’s reality are usually divorced from the facts and events of the period studied, in order to avoid explaining the changes that occur and the problems of Venezuelan society in that historical moment

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America: The Challenges of Social Integration

AbstractThe Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas - re-baptised the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - came into being in April of 2005 when Venezuela and Cuba signed the Treaty of Commerce of the People. Under this treaty, Caracas began furnishing discounted hydrocarbons to Havana in exchange for medical services. This political and economic organisation is designed to promote regional cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean.^sup 1^ What social conclusions can be drawn about this institution after five years of existence? What is the real impact of this alliance on the people it touches? This article seeks to establish a global overview of the ALBA's initiatives with particular emphasis placed on two humanitarian social policies: 'Operacion Milagro (Operation Miracle)', whose objective is to provide surgical operations to people suffering from cataracts and other eye diseases, and the Cuban educational programme 'Yo, si puedo (Yes, I can)' aimed at teaching illiterates to read, not only on the South American continent, but also in other parts of the world as well, including Western Europe.^sup 2^Keywords: ALBA, Cuba, Venezuela, cooperation, development, integrationThe Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our AmericaThe idea of an integrative alliance based on cooperation and reciprocity - and not on free trade - dates back to 2001 and the Third Summit of Heads of State of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), at which Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez raised the possibility of an alternative to the Washington Consensus and the FTAA, an alternative inspired by the life and works of Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti. The free trade area promoted by the United States decreed neoliberalism, deregulation and privatisation, policies that limited the rights of states to intervene in their own affairs and plunged Latin America into a serious political, economic and social crisis. On the contrary, what was needed was to place human beings at the centre of these societal projects and to adopt as their primary objective the struggle against poverty and social exclusion. In order to accomplish this, it was seen as imperative to have competent and effective public services. The objective was the creation of a confederation of Latin American and Caribbean states that would realise El Libertador Simon Bolivar's dream of a united Latin America, one capable of emancipating itself from the trusteeship of the United States and thus becoming the master of its own destiny within an increasingly complex international system. Another America was seen as possible, an America capable of aiding the weaker nations to overcome their lag behind the continental powers.The founding declaration of 14 December 2004, between the Presidents of Cuba, Fidel Castro, and Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, formed the foundation of the new organisation:We reaffirm that the cardinal principle by which the ALBA must be guided is the most extensive possible solidarity between the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean; that it must rest on the thought of Bolivar, Marti, Sucre, O'Higgins, San Martin, Hidalgo, Petion, Morazan, Sandino and many other founding fathers; that there must be no selfish nationalism nor restrictive domestic policies that obstruct the aim of building a Great Homeland in Latin America, the Homeland dreamt of by the heroes of our emancipation struggles.3The final Declaration of the first meeting between Cuba and Venezuela for the implementation of the ALBA treaty reiterated its total rejection of neoliberal ideology:...we fully agree that the ALBA will not become a reality with mercantilist ideas or the selfish interests of business profitability or national benefit to the detriment of other peoples. Only a broad Latin Americanist vision, which acknowledges the impossibility of our countries' developing and being truly independent in an isolated manner, will be capable of achieving what Bolivar called '. …

The World Is Ready to Listen: Symphony Orchestras and the Global Performance of America

Tough times are facing symphony orchestras these days. In a world of stagnating stocks, dwindling governmental budgets, and reluctant sponsors, trustees and managers struggle to maintain the musical caliber of their communities. Internationally renowned ensembles fight for dear survival. Curiously, at the same time, worldwide the political leverage of symphonies has risen continually during the past decade. Since 1999, Daniel Barenboim has been trying to soothe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the East West Divan Orchestra. In 2003, the Iraqi National Orchestra performed in Washington, DC, hoping to win the hearts of American audiences. In 2007, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez sent the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra on tour across Europe to spruce up the international image of his country. These are huge political responsibilities on the shoulders of people who have dedicated their lives not to peace and conflict resolution but, say, to a perfect rendition of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. Nor has the strategy of winning hearts and minds with trumpets and percussion been an untainted pedigree of success. In early 2010, the Iranian government dispatched the Teheran Symphony Orchestra to Europe to solicit goodwill with Majid Entezami's Peace and Friendship Symphony. Did this win Teheran the hearts and minds of men? From Strasbourg to Rome, turnout remained conspicuously low. In Geneva, the Iranian consulate distributed free tickets while some three hundred people scattered in grand Victoria Hall, designed for more than a thousand. “At the end,” observed a reporter “protesters took to the stage, announcing (in Persian) that the bouquets of flowers they carried and then gravely laid on the conductor's podium were to honor the recently executed dissidents in Iran.”1

Quick Anomaly Detection by the Newcomb–Benford Law, with Applications to Electoral Processes Data from the USA, Puerto Rico and Venezuela

A simple and quick general test to screen for numerical anomalies is presented. It can be applied, for example, to electoral processes, both electronic and manual. It uses vote counts in officially published voting units, which are typically widely available and institutionally backed. The test examines the frequencies of digits on voting counts and rests on the First (NBL1) and Second Digit Newcomb--Benford Law (NBL2), and in a novel generalization of the law under restrictions of the maximum number of voters per unit (RNBL2). We apply the test to the 2004 USA presidential elections, the Puerto Rico (1996, 2000 and 2004) governor elections, the 2004 Venezuelan presidential recall referendum (RRP) and the previous 2000 Venezuelan Presidential election. The NBL2 is compellingly rejected only in the Venezuelan referendum and only for electronic voting units. Our original suggestion on the RRP (Pericchi and Torres, 2004) was criticized by The Carter Center report (2005). Acknowledging this, Mebane (2006) and The Economist (US) (2007) presented voting models and case studies in favor of NBL2. Further evidence is presented here. Moreover, under the RNBL2, Mebane's voting models are valid under wider conditions. The adequacy of the law is assessed through Bayes Factors (and corrections of $p$-values) instead of significance testing, since for large sample sizes and fixed $\alpha$ levels the null hypothesis is over rejected. Our tests are extremely simple and can become a standard screening that a fair electoral process should pass.

Election Forensics and the 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum as a Case Study

A referendum to recall President Hugo Ch\'{a}vez was held in Venezuela in August of 2004. In the referendum, voters were to vote YES if they wished to recall the President and NO if they wanted him to continue in office. The official results were 59% NO and 41% YES. Even though the election was monitored by various international groups including the Organization of American States and the Carter Center (both of which declared that the referendum had been conducted in a free and transparent manner), the outcome of the election was questioned by other groups both inside and outside of Venezuela. The collection of manuscripts that comprise this issue of Statistical Science discusses the general topic of election forensics but also focuses on different statistical approaches to explore, post-election, whether irregularities in the voting, vote transmission or vote counting processes could be detected in the 2004 presidential recall referendum. In this introduction to the Venezuela issue, we discuss the more recent literature on post-election auditing, describe the institutional context for the 2004 Venezuelan referendum, and briefly introduce each of the five contributions.

2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum (2004 PRR): A Statistical Analysis from the Point of View of Electronic Voting Data Transmissions

Statistical comparisons of electoral variables are made between groups of electronic voting machines and voting centers classified by types of transmissions according to the volume of traffic in incoming and outgoing data of machines from and toward the National Electoral Council (CNE) totalizing servers. One unexpectedly finds two types of behavior in wire telephony data transmissions and only one type where cellular telephony is employed, contravening any reasonable electoral normative. Differentiation in data transmissions arise when comparing number of incoming and outgoing data bytes per machine against total number of votes per machine reported officially by the CNE. The respective distributions of electoral variables for each type of transmission show that the groups classified by it do not correspond to random sets of the electoral universe. In particular, the distributions for the NO percentage of votes per machine differ statistically across groups. The presidential elections of 1998, 2000 and the 2004 Presidential Recall Referendum (2004 PRR) are compared according to the type of transmissions in 2004 PRR. Statistically, the difference between the empirical distributions of the 2004 PRR NO results and the 2000 Chavez votes results by voting centers is not significant.

The 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum: Discrepancies Between Two Exit Polls and Official Results

We present a simulation-based study in which the results of two major exit polls conducted during the recall referendum that took place in Venezuela on August 15, 2004, are compared to the official results of the Venezuelan National Electoral Council "Consejo Nacional Electoral" (CNE). The two exit polls considered here were conducted independently by S\'{u}mate, a nongovernmental organization, and Primero Justicia, a political party. We find significant discrepancies between the exit poll data and the official CNE results in about 60% of the voting centers that were sampled in these polls. We show that discrepancies between exit polls and official results are not due to a biased selection of the voting centers or to problems related to the size of the samples taken at each center. We found discrepancies in all the states where the polls were conducted. We do not have enough information on the exit poll data to determine whether the observed discrepancies are the consequence of systematic biases in the selection of the people interviewed by the pollsters around the country. Neither do we have information to study the possibility of a high number of false or nonrespondents. We have limited data suggesting that the discrepancies are not due to a drastic change in the voting patterns that occurred after the exit polls were conducted. We notice that the two exit polls were done independently and had few centers in common, yet their overall results were very similar.

The Present and Future of Federalism

Dr. Brewer-Carias has delivered a serious critique of the trend toward centralization of political and governmental power under Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that underscores both the theoretical significance of federalism as a check against potential government tyranny and highlights the long-standing autocratic tendencies of President Chavez. In so doing, Dr. Brewer-Carias reminds us that democratic constitutional theory is not an academic exercise, but often arises from the actual confrontation of freedom with would-be, and actual, government oppression.

Dragon in the tropics: Hugo Chavez and the political economy of revolution in Venezuela

Since he was first elected in 1999, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias has reshaped a frail but nonetheless pluralistic democracy into a semi-authoritarian regime --an outcome achieved with spectacularly high oil income and widespread electoral support. This eye-opening book illuminates one of the most sweeping and unexpected political transformations in contemporary Latin America. Based on more than fifteen years' experience in researching and writing about Venezuela, Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold have crafted a comprehensive account of how the Chavez regime has revamped the nation, with a particular focus on its political transformation. Throughout, they take issue with conventional explanations. First, they argue persuasively that liberal democracy as an institution was not to blame for the rise of chavismo. Second, they assert that the nation's economic ailments were not caused by neoliberalism. Instead they blame other factors, including a dependence on oil, which caused macroeconomic volatility; political party fragmentation, which triggered infighting; government mismanagement of the banking crisis, which led to more centralization of power; and the Asian crisis of 1997, which devastated Venezuela's economy at the same time that Chavez ran for president. It is perhaps on the role of oil that the authors take greatest issue with prevailing opinion. They do not dispute that dependence on oil can generate political and economic distortions --the resource curse or paradox of plenty arguments --but they counter that oil alone fails to explain Chavez's rise. Instead they single out a weak framework of checks and balances that allowed the executive branch to extract oil rents and distribute them to the populace. The real culprit behind Chavez's success, they write, was the asymmetry of political power.

Between threats and war: U.S. discrete military operations in the post-Cold War world

When confronted with a persistent foreign policy problem that threatens U.S. interests, and that cannot be adequately addressed through economic or political pressure, American policymakers and opinion formers have increasingly resorted to recommending the use of limited military force: that is, enough force to attempt to resolve the problem while minimizing U.S. military deaths, local civilian casualties, and collateral damage.These recommendations have ranged from the bizarre-such as a Predator missile strike to kill Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, or the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez-to the unwise-the preemptive bombing of North Korean ballistic missile sites-to the demonstrably practical-air raids into Bosnia and Somalia, and drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. However, even though they have been a regular feature of America's uses of military force through four successive administrations, the efficacy of these Discrete Military Operations (DMOs) remains largely unanalyzed, leaving unanswered the important question of whether or not they have succeeded in achieving their intended military and political objectives. In response, Micah Zenko examines the thirty-six DMOs undertaken by the US over the past 20 years, in order to discern why they were used, if they achieved their objectives, and what determined their success or failure. In the process, he both evaluates U.S. policy choices and recommends ways in which limited military force can be better used in the future. The insights and recommendations made by Zenko will be increasingly relevant to making decisions and predictions about the development of American grand strategy and future military policy.

Canada and the Honduran Coup

The purpose of this article is to expose the part played by Canadian imperialism in Honduras before and after the military overthrow of democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, on 28 June 2009. It draws attention to the neglected role of the Canadian state's efforts to protect the interests of Canadian capital in Honduras and Latin America more generally through the constant undermining of Zelaya's attempts to return to his legitimate office, and in the ultimate consolidation of the coup under Porfirio ‘Pepe’ Lobo in early 2010. The article simultaneously develops a critique of what has become the standard account of the Honduran coup of 2009. We show how Zelaya was neither a puppet of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, nor an autocrat seeking to entrench his power indefinitely through illegal constitutional reform when he was violently tossed out of government.