Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution in year six.

• Author: Hellinger, Daniel
• Position: Shaking Off El Norte

In 1982, a Venezuelan Lt. Colonel, Hugo Chavez, and a group of comrades swore an oath to one another to replace the government of the day with one more faithful to the ideas of Venezuela's great independence leader, Simon Bolivar. They were angry at the corruption and waste of the country's huge oil resources. Although Venezuela was an electoral democracy, they felt that the leaders of the two major political parties had made elections meaningless.

The 1980s were a time of economic hardship for most Venezuelans. After a decade long oil boom, prices had collapsed. In 1989, the population revolted when President Carlos Andres Perez tried to impose a set of austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund. In 1992, Chavez's military conspiracy tried but failed to overthrow Perez. Although polls showed Venezuelans wanted no part of dictatorship, mass demonstrations broke out in solidarity with Chavez who claimed his goal was to rescue Venezuela's democracy from the corrupt politicians.

By December 1998, Chavez, having served a short time in prison after the coup, had built an electoral movement that not only put him in the presidency but gave him the power to rewrite the Constitution. The new charter renamed the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Chavez also used his power to lead a reinvigorated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and put the state oil company back under control of the government.

These political changes and diplomatic success laid the base for Chavez to announce, under authority granted by the elected National Assembly, a sweeping series of decrees that began a process of urban and rural land reform, raised taxes and royalties paid by foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela, created popular banks to stimulate cooperatives, and several other popular programs. These measures galvanized his opponents, mostly owners of the media, oil executives, business owners, the old political class, and some labor leaders associated with the former era. In response, Chavez launched a series of missions, some led by the army, aimed at improving housing, education and health in the barrios. Some 15,000 Cuban medical personnel helped with the health project.

The opposition, supported by the United States, tried to oust the president through strikes, civil disobedience, and even a coup. The coup, in April 2002, failed when poor Venezuelans and loyal military units rallied to the president's side...