Author: Geo Maher Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 0822354527 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
This history of Venezuelan politics from below tells how militants, students, women, Afro-indigeneous peoples, and the working-class brought about Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution and, ultimately, brought Hugo Chávez to power.
Author: Rory Carroll Publisher: Penguin Books ISBN: 0143124889 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
Describes the leadership of Venezuela's elected president, Hugo Chávez, and his efforts to transform his country and paints a picture of his life based on interviews with ministers, aides, courtiers, and everyday citizens.
Author: Sujatha Fernandes Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 0822391708 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
In this vivid ethnography of social movements in the barrios, or poor shantytowns, of Caracas, Sujatha Fernandes reveals a significant dimension of political life in Venezuela since President Hugo Chávez was elected. Fernandes traces the histories of the barrios, from the guerrilla insurgency, movements against displacement, and cultural resistance of the 1960s and 1970s, through the debt crisis of the early 1980s and the neoliberal reforms that followed, to the Chávez period. She weaves barrio residents’ life stories into her account of movements for social and economic justice. Who Can Stop the Drums? demonstrates that the transformations under way in Venezuela are shaped by negotiations between the Chávez government and social movements with their own forms of historical memory, local organization, and consciousness. Fernandes portrays everyday life and politics in the shantytowns of Caracas through accounts of community-based radio, barrio assemblies, and popular fiestas, and the many interviews she conducted with activists and government officials. Most of the barrio activists she presents are Chávez supporters. They see the leftist president as someone who understands their precarious lives and has made important changes to the state system to redistribute resources. Yet they must balance receiving state resources, which are necessary to fund their community-based projects, with their desire to retain a sense of agency. Fernandes locates the struggles of the urban poor within Venezuela’s transition from neoliberalism to what she calls “post-neoliberalism.” She contends that in contemporary Venezuela we find a hybrid state; while Chávez is actively challenging neoliberalism, the state remains subject to the constraints and logics of global capital.
Author: George Ciccariello-Maher Publisher: Verso Books ISBN: 1784782246 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 144
Book Description
Latin America’s experiments in direct democracy Since 2011, a wave of popular uprisings has swept the globe, taking shape in the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, 15M in Spain, and the anti-austerity protests in Greece. The demands have been varied, but have expressed a consistent commitment to the ideals of radical democracy. Similar experiments began appearing across Latin America twenty-five years ago, just as the left fell into decline in Europe. In Venezuela, poor barrio residents arose in a mass rebellion against neoliberalism, ushering in a government that institutionalized the communes already forming organically. In Building the Commune, George Ciccariello-Maher travels through these radical experiments, speaking to a broad range of community members, workers, students and government officials. Assessing the projects’ successes and failures, Building the Commune provides lessons and inspiration for the radical movements of today.
Author: Cristina Marcano Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1588366502 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
He is one of the most controversial and important world leaders currently in power. In this international bestseller, at last available in English, Hugo Chávez is captured in a critically acclaimed biography, a riveting account of the Venezuelan president who continues to influence, fascinate, and antagonize America. Born in a small town on the Venezuelan plains, Chávez found his interests radically altered when he entered the military academy in Caracas. There, as Hugo Chávez reveals in dramatic detail, he was drawn to leftist politics and a new sense of himself as predestined to change the fortunes of his country and Latin America as a whole. Portrayed as never before is the double life Chávez soon began to lead: by day he was a family man and a military officer, but by night he secretly recruited insurgents for a violent overthrow of the government. His efforts would climax in an attempted coup against President Carlos Andrés Pérez, an action that ended in a spectacular failure but gave Chávez his first irresistible taste of celebrity and laid the groundwork for his ascension to the presidency eight years later. Here is the truth about Chávez’s revolutionary “Bolivarian” government, which stresses economic reforms meant to discourage corruption and empower the poor–while the leader spends seven thousand dollars a day on himself and cozies up to Arab oil elites. Venezuelan journalists Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka explore the often crude and comical public figure who condemns George W. Bush in the most fiery language but at the same time hires lobbyists to improve his country’s image in the West. The authors examine not only Chávez’s political career but also his personal life–including his first marriage, which was marked by a long affair and the birth of a troubled son, and his second marriage, which produced a daughter toward whom Chávez’s favoritism has caused private tension and public talk. This seminal biography is filled with exclusive excerpts from Chávez’s own diary and draws on new research and interviews with such insightful subjects as Herma Marksman, the professor who was his mistress for nine years. Hugo Chávez is an essential work about a man whose power, peculiarities, and passion for the global spotlight only continue to grow.
Author: Richard Gott Publisher: Verso Books ISBN: 1844677117 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
The authoritative first-hand account of contemporary Venezuela, Hugo Chávez places the country’s controversial and charismatic president in historical perspective, and examines his plans and programs. Welcomed in 1999 by the inhabitants of the teeming shanty towns of Caracas as their potential savior, and greeted by Washington with considerable alarm, this former golpista-turned-democrat took up the aims and ambitions of Venezuela’s liberator, Simón Bolívar. Now in office for over a decade, President Chávez has undertaken the most wide-ranging transformation of oil-rich Venezuela for half a century, and dramatically affected the political debate throughout Latin America. In this updated edition, Richard Gott reflects on the achievements of the Bolivarian revolution, and the challenges that lie ahead.
Author: Mike Gonzalez Publisher: Pluto Press (UK) ISBN: 9781783710294 Category : Electronic books Languages : en Pages : 154
Book Description
The first biography published after Chavez's death, tracing his life from a poor rural family to the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas.
Author: Kathleen Krull Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 9780152014377 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 60
Book Description
The true story of a shy boy who grew up to be one of America's greatest civilrights leaders is told in this picture book biography. Full color.
Author: Stuart A. Kallen Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books ISBN: 0761363521 Category : Young Adult Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 164
Book Description
"The only way we could win was to keep fighting for a long time...the only way we could win was by staying with it."—Cesar Chavez As the sun rose on September 8, 1965, in Delano, California, thousands of acres of ripe grapes hung heavy on the vine. But instead of harvesting the crop, Filipino farmworkers on nine large ranches laid down their tools and walked out of the vineyards in protest of their low wages and dangerous working conditions. The strike quickly caught the attention of Cesar Chavez, who had been organizing Mexican American farmworkers through the United Farmworkers Union. Together, thousands of California agricultural laborers fought for their rights through strikes, boycotts, and a 250-mile (400-kilometer) protest march, the longest march in U.S. history. For more than five years, their struggle had the support of the American public and led to labor laws and agricultural practices that ensure the rights of all farmworkers to decent pay, safe working conditions, and other benefits. In this compelling story of the rise of Cesar Chavez from local organizer to national civil rights hero, we'll learn how he and other leaders of the grape strike endured violence and fought corruption to win rights for workers. And we'll see how the story continues in the twenty-first century as the United Farmworkers Union works to protect the civil rights of every agricultural laborer in the nation.
Author: David Smilde Publisher: Duke University Press ISBN: 0822350416 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 406
Book Description
Looking beyond Hugo Chávez and the national government, contributors examine forms of democracy involving ordinary Venezuelans: in communal councils, cultural activities, blogs, community media, and other forums.
Author: Geo Maher
Author: Rory Carroll
Author: Sujatha Fernandes
Author: George Ciccariello-Maher
Author: Cristina Marcano
Author: Richard Gott
Author: Mike Gonzalez
Author: Kathleen Krull
Author: Stuart A. Kallen
Author: David Smilde