Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez survived four elections, a coup and a recall attempt as he became one of Latin America's most charismatic, influential and controversial leaders. But on Tuesday, the socialist firebrand lost his long-running battle with cancer. He was 58.
The former tank commander died in Venezuela's Military Hospital, just a few months after winning a fourth presidential term that would have kept him in office until 2019. His death puts Vice President Nicolas Maduro at the helm of Latin America's fifth-largest economy until new elections can be scheduled within 30 days.
It also leaves a power vacuum in this nation of 27 million – where Chávez had been the face and force of his administration since 1999.
Chávez had been fighting an undisclosed form of cancer since at least June 2011, and had undergone four rounds of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. His last round of treatment began Dec. 10, when he was hustled onto an airplane bound for Cuba. It was the last time he would be seen in public or heard from. The surgery was plagued with problems and led to a respiratory infection, which required a tracheotomy that made it difficult for the once-verbose leader to speak.
Using the nation's vast oil wealth to push through socialist reforms and build a collation of like-minded leaders in Latin America, Chávez became a darling of the global left and beloved by many of the nation's poorest. As he built homes, hospitals and schools, his “21st-century socialism” dramatically reduced the income gap.
But as his power grew, so did the abuses. His administration expropriated thousands of acres of land and hundreds of companies, drawing fire from the business class and the traditional ruling elite. Corruption and impunity plagued his administration. Venezuela became one of the most dangerous countries in the hemisphere, beset by power outages and food shortages.
Despite the problems, Chávez's popularity rarely waned, and he won the Oct. 7 presidential race with 55 percent of the vote and an 11-point margin over his nearest rival.
Born to teachers in the agricultural heartland of Barinas state, Chávez was the second of six brothers. According to his biographers Alberto Barrera Tyszka and Cristina Marcano, he joined the military academy in 1971. It was there that Chávez was exposed to the writings of Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar and Venezuelan revolutionary Ezequiel Zamora that gave rise to his particular blend of nationalistic socialism that would guide his life and presidency.
A star pupil in the academy, he quickly moved up the ranks to commander in 1991, the same year he was put in charge of a paratrooper battalion in the coastal city of Maracay.
Unbeknownst to his superiors, Chávez had also formed a secret society with like-minded cadets called the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement. Founded after the 1989 Caracazo riots – that left more than 400 dead by some accounts – the movement was bent on overhauling Venezuelan society.
The organization burst onto the national stage in 1992 when Chávez and other midranking officials tried to oust President Carlos Andres Perez – an unpopular leader who was hounded by corruption charges and was eventually impeached in 1993. The coup attempt failed, and Chávez agreed to surrender as long as he could do it on national TV.
Chávez spent the next two years in jail, building political support and co-authoring a manifesto called “How To Get Out of the Labyrinth.” In 1994, he and his colleagues were pardoned by President Rafael Caldera.
One of his first stops after jail was Cuba, where he met leader Fidel Castro. The aging communist would become a mentor and personal friend to Chávez, who referred to him as a model for Latin America. It was Castro who informed Chávez that Cuban doctors had discovered his cancer.
“During Chávez's reign, Venezuelans saw a marked decrease in their liberties in all categories,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the former chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee told The Miami Herald. “There was less freedom of expression, more press censorship, less separation of powers, more violations of human rights, more expropriation of properties and more collaboration with tyrannies such as with Cuba, Iran and Syria. By every indicator of freedom, there was less of it under Chávez's autocratic thumb.”
“If one was to challenge the fates and guess how he might be ultimately judged, the doughty Venezuelan leader is likely to be seen as a man whose shortcomings were more a matter of style than substance, and who bore a genuine vision at a relatively high level of commitment to the nation's poor,” said Larry Birns, the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. “It could be argued that his grand design for the hemisphere far surpassed any number of contending philosophies at play at the time.”
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