Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Trade Review"
We Created Chávez provides a systematic, bottom-up approach to Venezuelan politics from 1958 to the present. It offers a much-needed new perspective on Hugo Chávez's rise to power. Writing in a lively style and demonstrating a thorough command of the issues and personalities in recent Venezuelan history, George Ciccariello-Maher has produced a book essential to understanding the phenomenon of 'Chavismo,' which has attracted widespread interest throughout the world."
—Steve Ellner, author of
Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chávez Phenomenon"In the United States, accounts of Venezuela have been fixated on the figure of Hugo Chávez.
We Created Chávez breaks with this obsession, instead showing the dynamic and contradictory relationship that exists between Venezuela's president and the social forces that gave rise to and sustain the government. It is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the internal dynamics of social change underway in Venezuela today."
—Miguel Tinker Salas, author of
The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela“Ciccariello-Maher’s history of the Venezuelan left is essential to understanding the Chávez era.” -- Dorothy Kronick * The New Republic *
“Terrific.” -- Greg Grandin * The Nation *
“[A] crisply written social and political history of the critical decades leading up to Chávez's election in 1998. . . . For those who want to see the revolution continue, Ciccariello-Maher has made a critical contribution to our understanding, which is in and of itself enough to recommend this book without reservation. But more than that,
We Created Chávez brilliantly demonstrates how social history scholarship can mine the lived experiences of rank-and-file activists and radical leaders for precious stones, and then set those gems in a visible and rigorous theoretical frame that allows us to see history in motion.” -- Todd Chretien * Socialist Worker *
“I've been looking for this book for years.” -- Steve Henshall * Socialist Review *
"In addition to providing readers with an irreplaceable genealogy of the Revolutionary Left in Venezuela and its role in the making of the present,
We Created Chávez deftly illustrates the tensions between constituent and constituted power that make the Bolivarian Revolution a dialectical process rather than a presidential term in office.
We Created Chávez is also a masterful contribution to a thankfully growing body of work responding to dominant portrayals of the Bolivarian process in Venezuela enraptured or enraged by the figure of
el Comandante.” -- Donald V. Kingsbury * Theory & Event *
“In
We Created Chávez, George Ciccariello-Maher offers a masterful ‘people’s history’ of Venezuela…. Through Ciccariello-Maher’s analysis, a Venezuela easily and often ignored both by academia and by the popular press becomes visible. It is this Venezuela from which post-Chávez popular politics will be forged; Ciccariello-Maher offers valuable insight into what the coming years may bring.” -- Erica S. Simmons * Latin American Politics and Society *
"
We Created Chavez is likely to be a point of reference for anyone seeking to assess chavismo as a seminal case of popular resistance to neoliberal globalization, as well as its relevance to twenty-first-century socialism." -- Daniel Hellinger * Hispanic American Historical Review *
"If . . . you want an engaging book that, in the service of a revolutionist mythos, narrates the actions and ideas of many people often neglected by scholars, you may appreciate
We Created Chavez." -- Jonathan Eastwood * American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Map of Venezuela xii
Introduction. What People? Whose History? 1
1. A Guerrilla History 22
2. Reconnecting with the Masses 45
3. Birth of the "Tupamaros" 67
First Interlude. The Caracazo: History Splits in Two 88
4. Sergio's Blood: Student Struggles from the University to the Streets 105
5. Manuelita's Boots: Women between Two Movements 126
6. JoséLeonardo's Body and the Collapse of
Mestizaje 146
Second Interlude. Every Eleventh Has Its Thirteenth 166
7. Venezuelan Workers: Aristocracy or Revolutionary Class? 180
8. Oligarchs Tremble! Peasant Struggles at the Margins of the State 200
9. A New Proletariat? Informal Labor and the Revolutionary Streets 218
Conclusion. Dual Power against the Magical State 234
Notes 257
Index 307
