Hugo! (39 page)

Chávez argued that he was carrying out
peacefully what in most
countries would require a civil war, a bloody coup, or other violent
action, like the guerrilla war that led to Castro's triumph in Cuba in
1959. He dubbed it a "peaceful revolution." He argued moreover that
if the reforms were not enacted, the country might indeed erupt into a
civil war. The majority poor were seething with anger.

The constitutional assembly did not skip a beat after declaring a judicial
emergency and watching Sosa resign. The next day, Wednesday,
August 25, they declared a
"legislative emergency." This time they had
their sights on Congress. The assembly all but dissolved it. Congress
could no longer pass laws. The only duties it was left with were things
such as budget oversight and granting the president permission to travel
outside the country. Chavista congressional members, a minority in the
chamber, didn't oppose the move — they thought it needed cleaning
up, too.

Opposition congressional members immediately announced they
were cutting short their vacation and would reconvene that Friday. They
would head to the congressional building, which they had ceded to the
constitutional assembly for their meetings. If the assembly wanted to
fight, they would fight back. They pledged to refrain from approving
budget outlays or presidential trips abroad. Chávez was scheduled to visit
Brazil and Panama over the next ten days. The stage was set for another
showdown. "Democracy is dying," COPEI lawmaker César Pérez Vivas
declared. "The coup d'état against Venezuela is being consummated."

The opposition legislators and their supporters showed up at
Congress that Friday morning burning red berets and shouting
"Democracy!" and "No to Dictatorship!" Chávez supporters rushed
to the scene to stop the lawmakers from entering Congress. The gates
around the building were locked shut. National Guardsmen and police
stood vigil. Militants on both sides were armed with sticks.

Chaos erupted. Some lawmakers broke through the crowd of
Chavistas and National Guardsmen
.
Identification cards clenched in
their teeth, they tried clawing their way over the spiked fence and onto
the congressional grounds. Supporters helped push them over. Fistfights
broke out amid the stick-waving crowd of a few hundred people. The
National Guard and police fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons
to try to control the brawl. Images of the legislators climbing the
fence went around the world.

That afternoon the Catholic Church negotiated a truce between
the two sides. But the truce broke down that night when the opposition
returned to Congress to try to get in again. Chávez called it all a "provocation"
and a "macabre show" intended to "cause a tempest in a teapot."

The following Tuesday, August 31, the assembly voted to effectively
shut down Congress. It usurped the few remaining powers Congress
still had, arguing that it was interfering with the assembly's work. It
left Congress technically alive, saying it would perform the legislature's
remaining functions only if it refused to do so itself. One opposition
delegate to the assembly compared the pared-down Congress to an
"invalid."

The standoff provoked officials in Washington, DC, to express
growing worries about the process of writing a new magna carta. "Our
concern is that its democratic essence in substance as well as form be
preserved, both for the people of Venezuela and for the people of the
hemisphere," State Department spokesman Foley said. Nine days earlier,
The New York Times
had run an editorial titled "Emergence of a
Venezuelan Potentate." It warned that while "Venezuelans overwhelmingly
supported radical reform, they should be very wary of the methods
Mr. Chávez is using. [He] has so far shown little respect for the compromises
necessary in a democracy."

But not everyone overseas believed Chávez was a rising threat to
democracy.
The Economist
, hardly a bastion of leftist thought, wrote that
"the fears of his opponents that he would quickly be metamorphosed
into an authoritarian dictator have so far proved misplaced . . . By and
large, change has happened without infringing democratic rights and
freedoms." Chávez, the magazine added, had managed "the peaceful
abolition of a corrupt and privileged elite," possibly sparing Venezuela
"a worse fate."

Chávez believed he was under siege because he was attacking the
interests of the oligarchy. He argued that leaders of the traditional parties
were trying to "spread a dirty war" of
misinformation that much of
the US and international media was gobbling up and spewing out for
millions of readers and listeners around the world. Referring to Hitler's
minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, he said the campaign was
"based on a Goebbels strategy . . . They have repeated lies so many
times that they believe it is the truth."

Four assembly members, including one opposition delegate,
announced in mid-September that they were traveling to New York and
Washington, DC, to meet with political and business leaders to present
a more accurate picture of what was happening in Venezuela. "There
is no dictatorship here," declared Claudio Fermín, one of six opposition
delegates to the assembly and Democratic Action's presidential candidate
in 1993. He blamed "political infantilism" by both anti- and pro-
Chávez factions for producing "verbal shootouts."

Despite the shootouts, on Thursday, September 9, the assembly
and the Congress reached an agreement to resolve their impasse. With
the Catholic Church mediating, the assembly agreed to reverse its order
virtually shutting down Congress. It would be allowed to resume its
normal activities, including reconvening as a full body. Congress, in
turn, would not interfere with the assembly's work or Chávez's activities
as president, such as his trips overseas.

Chávez had indicated as early as August 5 that, reversing his calls
for immediate abolishment, he didn't expect the assembly to dissolve the
Congress and Supreme Court until a new constitution was approved.
But he added that it could abolish any branch that tried to block reform.

To some, the move demonstrated Chávez's brilliance as a political
tactician. He would threaten adversaries, then back off and announce
his willingness to compromise. The opposition would generally go
along, and Chávez would get what he wanted. He was playing with
them like puppets.

Two days before reaching the agreement for a limited "co-existence"
with Congress, the assembly launched its first move of the assault on
the judiciary. It fired eight judges suspected of corruption. Appearing
at a nationally broadcast news conference, Manuel Quijada, the lawyer
and head of the assembly's Judicial Emergency Commission who had
befriended Chávez in Yare, also read out the names of fifty more allegedly
corrupt judges. Their fate would be decided in the next few days.
They probably would also be fired.

The timing could not have been better. Four days earlier, on
Friday, September 3, two judges threw out the
charges against two
dozen bankers accused in the notorious financial scandal during Rafael
Caldera's government. The public was outraged. Two hundred bankers
had fled the country after the 1994 collapse. Most were living overseas
as fugitives, some in the United States. When one of the judges went on
television a few days later to vigorously defend the decision letting the
bankers go free, Quijada and his commission suspended him and the
other judge, too.

The assembly had another mission: to clean up the nation's
prisons.
In the first week of October it declared a "prisons emergency." While
the court system was notorious, the jails were even worse. Amnesty
International called them the most dangerous in Latin America.

Built to hold 15,500 inmates, by the mid-1990s they overflowed with
25,000. Prisoners slept elbow-to-elbow on concrete floors in cells, or in
hallways, beneath stairwells, two or three to a bed or even in makeshift
outdoor tents. Bathrooms didn't work or were too dangerous to walk
to, so inmates relieved themselves into plastic bags or newspapers and
tossed them out barred windows into courtyards. The stench of human
waste and rotting garbage choked the air.

Drinking water from corroded bathroom pipes was rife with bacteria
and parasites. aids, tuberculosis, and typhoid were common. The
food was repugnant. Breakfast was typically a cup of weak coffee and a
small piece of bread, lunch an unappetizing bowl of spaghetti or rice
and beans. There was no dinner — the Justice Ministry's food budget
of about 81¢ a day per prisoner didn't allow it.

Knife fights, shootings, even massacres — some replete with
beheadings — were common. Inmates carried the sharpened slivers
of metal called
chuzos
everywhere they went, for protection. Badly outnumbered,
guards rarely ventured into the cell blocks, where inmates
roamed freely.

Medical care was minimal. Prisoners stitched their own wounds.
New inmates had to defend themselves or find someone to protect
them. Those who didn't could be gang-raped or killed. To survive,
some became "slaves" to gang leaders, cooking, cleaning, and providing
sexual favors in return for protection. Some gang leaders branded their
"property" on their buttocks or backs with electric hot plates.

By October 1999 the constitutional assembly made its first move to
clean up the prisons. It decided to process thousands of prisoners who
had never been to court, often languishing for years. In July, Chávez
had issued a new
penal code by decree. It was aimed at modernizing
the judicial system short-term until the new constitution was ready. It
provided for the presumption of innocence and allowed inmates to be
released until their court date. Some inmates could be freed for good
because of time already served. Others might participate in a day-release
program.

On October 3, Chávez announced that teams of judges, prosecutors,
human rights activists, and priests were heading into four of the
most dangerous jails to accelerate justice for inmates awaiting trial.
The team hoped to clear six thousand prisoners by the end of the year.
Chávez also wanted to segregate inmates by alleged crime. Accused
pickpockets and minors as young as sixteen shared cells with alleged
rapists and murderers.

The assembly and the government were to have mixed success in
attacking the
prison problem. Like Chávez's government in general,
they were not going to achieve miracles overnight. The problems were
too intractable to solve quickly. But no one could doubt his will to overturn
the system.

With the conflict with Congress largely resolved, and the assembly
getting down to the work of hashing out a new constitution, Chávez
decided to hit the road. He had handed in his own proposed constitution
to the assembly. Thousands of citizens also submitted their suggestions.
Indigenous groups pushed for official recognition of their native
languages. Even street peddlers pressed their interests. They gathered
in front of the capitol and agitated for their inclusion in social security
and other worker programs.

The assembly was broken up into commissions to address the various
sections of the proposed magna carta. They held
regional meetings
around the country to listen to citizens. Chávez may have been
a rabble-rousing demagogue like his critics said, but Venezuela was
buzzing with political participation among the masses. As the debate
sizzled, Chávez climbed into the presidential jet and headed for Asia.
The battle to repair his battered international image was far from over.

Hugo Chávez was giving Carlos Andrés Pérez a run for his money as
the most traveled Venezuelan president. As president-elect, by some
accounts, he broke the record. He traveled to twelve countries in six
weeks, including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, France, Germany,
and the United States, where he met with Clinton and gave him a copy
of the book
Bolívar Forever
. In France, Chávez said his tour of Europe
was "aimed at showing I am not the devil, this mix of Mussolini and
Hitler that they've said. I am not a tyrant."

He had a similar motive with his trip to Asia, and also wanted
to drum up interest in foreign
investment to help Venezuela's ailing
economy. To critics, the expensive globe-trotting was hypocritical for a
man who that February had denounced the luxuries he was inheriting
at the presidential residence La Casona, including a pool, a gym, and
an outdoor movie theater. He declared then that he "couldn't sleep at
night" in the colonial-era twenty-five-bedroom mansion thinking about
the Venezuelan street children who didn't have enough food to eat and
slept with newspapers covering them instead of blankets.

But Chávez also believed his political project had global reach.
This was not just about transforming Venezuela. It was about creating a
"multipolar" world free of domination by the United States — one that
brought social justice to the underdeveloped nations of the world so
that children wouldn't sleep in the streets with newspapers for blankets.
Chávez needed allies in his struggle. The only way to get them was to
meet face-to-face.

He landed
in China on October 10 to full state honors. Cannon
shots reverberated through Tiananmen Square, and a military band
played Venezuela's national anthem. In Beijing's Great Hall of the
People, Chinese president Jiang Zemin lifted a champagne glass and
proclaimed
"Salud!"
— Spanish for "to health!" The two leaders signed
six agreements bolstering bilateral ties. In an important economic coup
for Venezuela, the Beijing government agreed to buy two to four million
tons a year of a special tar-based Venezuelan fuel called Orimulsion, a
coal substitute.

Chávez was a curiosity for the Chinese public. People lined the
streets to see the colorful, controversial Latin American leader as his
motorcade passed. Chávez stopped often along the streets to talk to
ordinary people. He did not hide his enthusiasm for them or for China's
success in combining capitalism and socialism. "We are witnessing the
triumph of the Chinese revolution," he declared, calling China "a true
world power."

He expressed admiration for Mao Tse-tung, buying a white porcelain
statue of the revolutionary leader and visiting his tomb where
he wrote a eulogy to the "great strategist, great soldier, great statesman
and great revolutionary." He told reporters that "I've always been very
Maoist, in the sense that the people to the army is like water to fish."
Critics seized on it as an endorsement of the excesses of the Chinese
Revolution and a warning of things to come in Venezuela. But Chávez
more likely was referring to a model that fit his own vision of a union
between
el pueblo
and the military.

He saw the China of the late twentieth century with its mixed
economy as a model that could serve as a counterweight to the dominance
of the United States. "Soviet power has collapsed," he said, "but
that does not mean that neo-liberal capitalism has to be the model followed
by the peoples of the West. If only for that reason, we invite China
to keep its flag flying, because this world cannot be run by a universal
police force that seeks to control everything." He told Chinese minister
Zhu Rongji that just as China had "stood up" fifty years earlier "under
the leadership of its great helmsman," Venezuela, too, was beginning
to "stand up."

Chávez's whirlwind two-week tour took him on to Japan, South
Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. He made
an impression everywhere he went. He was not your typical visiting
head of state. In a region of restrained gestures, he was flamboyant,
spontaneous, even outrageous. He was a master of the unpredictable.
When he visited the Great Wall of China, he broke into a Rocky-like
sprint, leaving bodyguards and Venezuelan businessmen accompanying
him on the trip breathless trying to keep up. At the official guest
house in Beijing where the government housed him, he jogged around
lakes and gardens. Then he began pitching baseballs.

In Japan he broke protocol and caught the emperor's bodyguards
by surprise when he gave Akihito a bear hug as he bid him good-bye.
The bodyguards were less than pleased, but judging from the smile on
the emperor's face, he seemed to enjoy the almost unheard-of gesture.
Chávez became famous for similar stunts on other trips. On his first visit
to Russia, he broke into a karate stance as Vladimir Putin approached.
The two had never met. Putin seemed confused for a few seconds until
he realized it was a joke. Chávez then changed his position and made
like he was hitting a baseball. "I've heard you are a black belt in karate,"
he said with a big smile. "I'm a baseball man myself." Once he sang the
Venezuelan song "Rosario" to Mexican foreign minister
Rosario Green,
whom he'd only recently met. The minister was surprised by the performance,
to say the least. Later, at a summit meeting of Caribbean
leaders, he snuck up behind her, put his hands over her eyes, and said,
"Guess who?"

Chávez's proclivity to break protocol was partly a product of his personality
and partly a product of the Venezuelan character. Venezuelans
are famous for their warmth, gregariousness, informality, and quick
embrace of people they just meet. Some say they are among the friendliest
and happiest people in the world. They love fun, jokes, and other
people. At midnight on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, millions of
people pour into the streets to greet, hug, and kiss neighbors as well as
complete strangers. Beyond that, Chávez's personal psychiatrist once
noted, the president grew up in Sabaneta, "a village, humble, simple,
where there is no protocol."

Chávez often used his
spontaneity, charm, and sense of humor to
his political advantage, catching world leaders off guard and leaving
many of them impressed if not enchanted, although some also thought
he was a bit wacky. He had a prodigious
memory for names and faces,
and would take the time to talk with everyone from presidents to cooks
and cleaning people. He always made it a point to shake the hand and
thank every head of state's bodyguard he met on his trips. "He plays this
game of affection to disarm people," noted Venezuelan chef Helena
Ibarra, who accompanied the group on the tour. "He may achieve it
or not, but you can never forget it . . . It's a mechanism to seduce the
people. And it gets results."

Chávez's trip to Asia ended with a mishap. A wheel on his aging
Boeing 727 fell off during takeoff in the Philippines. He made it to
Bombay, India, where the eight-wheel airplane landed safely. The
Boeing suffered more problems in later trips in 2000. Eventually
Chávez decided he needed a new airplane. He bought an Airbus 319 for
$65 million. His critics called it an outrage that contradicted his calls
for
austerity. But Chávez saw it as a necessity. In his first three years in
office, he spent 170 days outside the country, or about five months total.
He visited seventy-one countries on four continents. Chávez was taking
his revolution to the world.

In November 1999 he headed to Cuba. Leaders from twenty-one Latin
American nations along with Spain and Portugal were convening for
a summit meeting. Chávez wasn't a big fan of such encounters. "We
go from summit to summit," he said, "and the people go from abyss to
abyss." But he wasn't going to miss this one. He stayed on after the meetings
ended and turned it into a love-fest with his mentor Fidel Castro.

The highlight was a baseball game organized by the two countries.
Seventy-three-year-old Castro managed the Cuban squad. Forty-five-year-old
Chávez pitched and played first base for the Venezuelans.
Retired all-stars made up the rosters, although Castro hinted he had a
"surprise" in store. He was decked out in the national team outfit, a red
baseball cap and a blue windbreaker he wore over his customary military
fatigues. Chávez wore his country's national colors of red, yellow,
and blue.

Fifty-five thousand screaming fans in
Havana's Latin American
Stadium greeted Chávez with thunderous cheers as he trotted around
the track for a warm-up. Castro provoked an even louder, shrieking outburst.
Millions of television viewers from around Latin America tuned
in to the historic sporting event. Latin America's oldest and most famous
revolutionary was cementing his friendship and political alliance with
"the new kid on the block," whom some saw as his heir apparent.

Venezuela's first lady, Marisabel Chávez, blond hair tucked under a
baseball cap, threw out the first ball. The game was underway. Her husband
was a little wild on the mound, and almost beaned several Cuban
batters. But he improved as the game went on. He even retired Cuban
slugger
Antonio Muñoz three times, once on strikes. Chávez switched
over to first base after five innings with the score tied at four-four. At
the plate he managed a sacrifice run batted in and a single — which
he capped off by hugging Cuban first baseman
Agustín Marquetti. The
game was stopped for a minute.

In the bottom of the sixth Castro pulled out his surprise. He sent in
a string of substitute batters who were introduced only as "reserves from
the Cuban team." Several bearded, white-haired, beer-bellied players
limped to the plate. The crowd roared. They were actually active members
of Cuba's national team wearing wigs and with their shirts stuffed.
As they faked being over the hill, Castro laughed from the dugout.

The ringers made several hits and Cuba pulled ahead five-four,
with Chávez watching happily as his team lost. It didn't matter.

The game was about much more than baseball. It was about
cementing an alliance between Latin America's two most charismatic
leftist leaders, one an established star, the other a newcomer. A few hours
before the game, Chávez returned to the University of Havana where
he'd given a speech in 1994 after his release from prison. "Here we are,
four years, ten months and twenty-seven days since I last visited Havana,"
Chávez said in an impassioned ninety-minute talk. "Fidel and Hugo.
Cuba and Venezuela. More alive than ever." Then, in a remark heard
around the world, he added that he had "not the slightest doubt" that
Venezuela's politics were marching "in the same direction, toward the
same sea of happiness that the Cuban people are marching toward."

Chávez's critics seized on the comment as proof he wanted to turn
Venezuela into another Cuba. Taken in isolation, it certainly seemed to
say that. But most of the media did not report the rest of what Chávez
said. While both leaders were looking to build societies of "happiness,
true social justice, of true peace and true dignity," he said they also had
different policies. Chávez, at least up until then, was not another Castro.

The men did have some things in common. Both led armed revolts
in their countries that eventually turned them into national heroes —
Castro in 1953 with his failed attempt to take the Moncada barracks in
Santiago de Cuba, Chávez with his failed coup in 1992. Both served time
in prison after the rebellions. Castro rose to power in January 1959 after
a two-year guerrilla war, while Chávez rose to power through the ballot
box forty years after that. Both looked to national patriots from the nineteenth
century for inspiration — José Martí for Castro, Simón Bolívar
for Chávez. They shared Bolívar's dream of a united Latin America and
were critical of what they viewed as a long history of US imperialism
and exploitation in Latin America. They were gifted speakers known
to give speeches lasting hours. They donned military garb — Castro
his combat fatigues, Chávez his red beret — slept barely a few hours
at night, and preached a virulent brand of radical nationalism that critiqued
the free-market conventional wisdom sweeping Latin America.
They provoked wild adoration among their fans and deep hatred among
their foes. They both loved baseball. They were pitchers and aspiring
professionals when they were young. They still loved the sport as grown
men. It was ironic. Baseball was an American import. Cuba, Venezuela,
the
Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua were the only countries in
Latin America where it was more popular than soccer.

The two men were leftists without doubt, but sharp differences also
separated them. Chávez was not going to order the state to take over the
entire economy like Castro did after his triumph in 1959, although by
early 2007 Chávez did order the nationalization of some companies in
key sectors, such as
telecommunications and
electricity. Private property
was generally respected and owners compensated if the government
took over their businesses. The media was free, too. Critics said
anything they wanted to about the president, accusing him of everything
from
beating his wife to installing a dictatorship. That in itself
was a contradiction — in a real dictatorship such a statement would
land a person in jail, or worse. Elections were free and frequent. For
the first time in Venezuela's history, citizens were voting on major initiatives
such as the constitutional assembly. There were no
political
prisoners. There was no systematic state-sponsored torture. There were
no kangaroo courts where corrupt or brutal officials from the previous
regime were summarily judged, condemned, and lined up in a stadium
to be shot. On the contrary, some of Chávez's supporters thought he was
soft on an old regime that had pillaged the country.