Chavez Born: Venezuela's Revolutionary Populist Leader

He led a failed coup in 1992 and went on television to announce it had failed. That concession speech, in which he took responsibility and promised "por ahora" (for now) the struggle was over, made him a folk hero overnight. Hugo Chavez was born in Sabaneta, Venezuela, in 1954, the son of schoolteachers in a rural town with no paved roads. He joined the army at seventeen, studied political science within the military, and spent years building a clandestine movement among junior officers who believed Venezuela's oil wealth was being stolen by a corrupt political class. The 1992 coup failed militarily but succeeded politically: his televised surrender turned him into the most popular figure in a country disgusted by its own government. He won the presidency in 1998 promising to use oil revenue for the poor. He delivered. Social spending under his Bolivarian Revolution funded free healthcare clinics staffed by Cuban doctors, literacy programs that taught over a million adults to read, and subsidized food markets in the barrios. Poverty fell from 49 percent to 27 percent during his first decade in office. But the gains came at a structural cost. He nationalized oil production, television stations, and private businesses, concentrated power in the executive, rewrote the constitution to allow indefinite reelection, and silenced critics through media control and selective prosecution. When global oil prices collapsed, the economy had nothing else to stand on. He died of cancer on March 5, 2013, at fifty-eight. Within three years, Venezuela's economy had imploded into hyperinflation and mass emigration.