I've recently become very interested in Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution...

Well, people like Chomsky love to criticize U.S. Presidents for supporting tyrants in the Third World. Fidel Castro gave Cuban support to some of the worst dictators in the history of Africa, like Francisco Macias Nguema and Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Half venezuelan here. What I basically understood is the guy was a complete oligarch, using oil money to protect his political interests and keeping the poor happy. Bad policy destroyed the economy and middle class, and when the oil price collapsed this showed. As a result, the country is now on par with shitty African nations regarding corruption and safety

>anti chomskiites lying again
what a surprise!

21st century socialism is a brand that is applied to the specific strain of "socialism" applied in certain south and central american countries, I think it would be silly to say he represented all socialism everywhere in the 21st century.

I'm actually curious "He merely attempted to build a Scandinavian style oil welfare capitalism state" what went wrong?

If you don't have enormous amounts of reserve currency, the first oil crash will kill your economy, "having all your eggs in one basket" is simply not good policy, add that to enormous amounts of bureaucracy, shoddy "social programs" which where excuse for corruption and funding of "21st century socialist" parties and countries in LatAm.

From what i've read on pol they were a commie guerrila drug cartel sort of thing similar to the colombian one which made a peace deal with the government of the time in exchange to be able to participate in the elections
no idea how it got to where its now nor in what state venezuela was in before he got into power. a lot of people say he destroyed all manufacturing and centered the whole economy around oil

Will probably not know since everyone lies

Nope. Chavez was an army guy that lead a failed coup against a terrible but democratic governement, that gave him popularity and he founded a political party. The cubans did the rest.

Based Cubans establishing puppet states to fund their shitshow.

the takeover of the venezuelan state was Fidel Castro master work

I'd also be interested to know more about Chavez. All I really know about him is the standard American rhetoric

He was a dumb soldier who didn´t knew much beyond army stuff

Also don't forget.

The USA is the reason everything went wrong in Venezuela, not Chavez's or Maduro's fault.

Venezuelan here. He came as a man of change for a country that was very inestable by those times, the problema is, that he made things even worse.
I'm not saying he had bad intentions, just that he was stubborn as hell and never liked to take responsabilities of his errors, always passing the fault to "enemies" like USA, the opposition and what he called "the burgoise".
He had good gov between 1999-2001 and from them it went to shit. After the coup and the oil strike he started with massives expropiations and a bunch of social care stuff taking advantage that the oil price was at more than 100 $ per barrel.
Everything went to shit when oil started to fall (mid 2010 i think) and incompetence was widespread thanks to excessive corruption of unprepared people that got high ranks in the gov.
Now you have the present
Bad english sorry bla bla ask anything

Same guy from He was a militar. In Venezuela, usually when a militar gain power he becomes a caudillo and usually tries to take on the gov for whatever reason been good or bad.
The failed coup that he did in 1992 againts Carlos Andrés Pérez was excused thanks to the bad politics that he made during his gov. The Caracazo, a second coup and the destitution of CAP only gave him more legitimacy as the new leader of the country. Trust me if I wasn't half sleep Ill tell you the whole story but my mang this doesn't enter the 25 years thing rule and Im tired

>came to thread to say this
you, I like you
merry christmas

Sounds like Perón.

My dad knew him when he was in South America with the Green Berets. Taught the guy how to skydive.

exactly
his two role models, besides Fidel, were Peron and Velazco Alvarado from Peru

...

But didn't Venezuela buy a lot of gold? It's not enough to build reserve when the first thing you do after the oil crash is to sell everything to keep paying for your retarded economic policies...

The rise of the Worker's Party and the election of Lula in Brazil is probably his second best work them. If Chávez gave Castro oil, Lula gave him stupid construction companies to build infrastructure in Cuba for him, all in exchange for corrupt contracts in Brazil.

And just like Perón, beyond the socialist rhetoric of "social justice", what you have is typical fascism. A government supported by thugs who beat up opposition and drives support up by making nationalist discourse and denouncing foreigners and conspiracies.

It's kind of bizarre how the Latin American "intellectual" left fall for this shit every single fucking time.

>muh gold
meme

ft.com/content/c674defa-2281-11e6-aa98-db1e01fabc0c

>367 tonnes

onlygold.com/Info/Value-Of-Gold.asp

1 Metric tonne = $36,515,104.00
367 tonnes = $13401043168

google.com/search?&q=venezuela gdp

gdp = 438.3 billion

gold as % of gdp = 13.4/438.3 = 3%

Venezuelan Here. what i have to add to
is that Venezuela was mostly accostumed to caudillism in the 20th century.
First, Gomez, which encouraged first the explotation of the coffee trade by the Germans, but backpedaled from them in the first world war and started to give open field to the oil wells explotation by the Americans, Dutch, and British. He was nepotist as fuck and almost all his family ran the government, he lasted in power from 1908 till 1935.
While he was in power the so-called "generacion del 28" was born (romulo betancourt, rafael caldera, and many others)
I name specifically these two because they were pillars of the two more important parties of the Democratic era: Accion Democratica and COPEI. ill talk about these two a bit later.
after gomez, there were several government assemblies and democratic elections. In fact, one of the presidents of that era was Romulo Gallegos, which u could ask about in Veeky Forums.
Gallegos was deposed by Delgado Chalbaud, a military guy in 1948 and from his government rose to power Marcos Perez Jimenez, another General that was the second bigger dictatorship on 20th century Venezuela, from 1952 to 1958.
I have to say that in Perez Jimenez regime, Venezuela had an exponential growth; the Bolivar became one of the most solid coins on the world, modernist architecture rose through the country and basically was the spearhead of latin america. Meanwhile he prosecuted all the democratic parties and many of these guy were prisoners or exiled till he left Venezuela.
after that, AD and COPEI did an alternability pact called "pacto de punto fijo" where they compromised to have elections and alternability in office apart from significant representation during the administrations, while trying to stop the communist spread on the region. Remember Castro entered power on 1959. Before that, all the military dictatorships on latin/central america were right-winged. ill continue this

I've heard him and his party are hopelessly corrupt. Like top tier level of corruption.

The intellectual left is not majorly peronist though. Are intellectuals chavist in venezuela? I can't imagine intellectuals supporting maduro.

When Romulo Betancourt was president, he suffered a car-bomb magnicide attempt; all the evidence takes it to Trujillo, the Dominican dictator of the era.
In the 60's, Cuba did a few attempts to invade Venezuelan territory with guerrilla raids which were repelled. Btw, AD and COPEI, were basically SocialDemocrats and SocialChristian Parties, so you can see where the socialism love came from. they just repelled communism and extremist views and took a light-hearted, populist approach to it.
in the 70's Venezuela took a massive boost from the Oil Crisis of 1973, (Venezuela was one of the founding members of the OPEP) and took the catasthrophic decision of nationalize the Oil Industry. the country got into a spiral of inflation thru the 80's when the oil prices got down, and all the conditions were there for unrest.
Basically what were necessary was that Venezuelan leaders applied measures recommended by the FMI and no one got so far with them because they feared the people's popularity go down. Meanwhile the Communists and extremist socialist parties entered into the military quarters, and this is were Chavez entered history.
He founded a small movement in the ranks, called MBR-200 (Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200) and they started to plan a coup against Carlos Andres Perez, (the one that in his first term nationalized Oil)
On 1989, there was a civil revolt called El Caracazo, where people desperate about the new economic measures got on the street, protesting and looting (there's some speculation that this revolt was incited by the MBR-200 from the shadows) and CAP was forced to suspend constitutional guarantees on was called "Plan Avila" as a result, there were shootings by the police and the national guard against civilians, which caused more unrest.
Finally on 1992, Chavez directed the coup against CAP. Here are some facts about the coup attempt:

Chavez was a paratrooper, and at some time on his career was part of the presidential guard, so he knew the layout of the miraflores palace. But he decided to direct the raid against miraflores via radio from the Aviation Museum (which now is the so-called Cuartel de la Montana, where Chavez is Buried) this museum was located on the 23 de Enero slum, which is the biggest in venezuela, the main source of revolt on the Caracazo, and it gets his name from the date when Perez Jimenez was deposed on 1958.
Chavez father, was a dirigent of COPEI on the state of Barinas when Chavez was young. in fact, Chavez baptism's godfather was Rafael Caldera, which was Venezuela's president for two terms, and one of the fiercest oppositors of Carlos Andres Perez, which was an "ADeco" this is gonna get in play later.
Chavez surrendered himself, but was allowed to appear on national TV, this was the MAIN ERROR of the government at the time. They gave the insurrection a name and a figure. In fact, Chavez surrender's discourse was a masterpiece with his famous "Por Ahora".
After this, Chavez was imprisoned and there was another coup attempt directed to liberate him; here's where Diosdado Cabello came to be (he was the one who directed the second coup) this was suffocated too.
Finally, CAP's term was ended because of a political trial about fund's malversation and corruption. he was outed from office, there was an interim president, and after that, there were elections.
On these elections, Rafael Caldera won with the support of a self-made party (he had left COPEI) called Convergencia, but the popular name was "El chiripero" this party was made with all the people who was tired of the principal political parties and glued together on them. (curiously, most of the Chavistas supporters and cabinet were ex-AD and COPEI, so basically this party was the proto-chavism)
Caldera was too old at the time, and got sick, don't know if was just senility or ahlzeimer, but

He (Caldera) managed to do a last thing before ending his term: he gave Chavez an Indult and habilited him politically.
So what u got was basically Chavez getting into power in 1999 and receiving the presidential band from his own baptism godfather. All the rest his history.

if u want to know more things, just ask and i'll do my best.

nigga please

chavez based his economy on oil and taxes, when oil prices went shit low he couldnt raise taxes and that was the end.

the intellectual left sure love money, thats how they fall for it everytime