Revolution? What Revolution?

Episode 6  |  Was Hugo Chávez always a socialist? 

Not exactly. When Chávez first came to power, he rejected socialism and communism—but embraced another label: revolutionary.

In this episode, we trace the ideological roots of Chávez’s "Bolivarian Revolution," from Simón Bolívar and Ezequiel Zamora to Fidel Castro and Norberto Ceresole. We look at how Chávez’s vision evolved, and how it began shaping Venezuela.

We also revisit one of the earliest warnings against Chávez’s authoritarian turn: Jorge Olavarría’s dramatic 1999 speech denouncing the president to his face.

By 2001, Venezuela was not yet the authoritarian state it would later become. But the logic was already there: the enemies, the language, and the revolutionary fervor.

This is the story of what Chávez’s “revolution” really meant—before the world came to know it as "socialist."

Transcript

Speaker 0:08

That's Hugo Chavez. By the 2000s, Chavez was more than just the President of Venezuela. He was a global symbol, the man who stood up to the United States and became a hero to millions who saw him as a voice for the global South.

Speaker 1 0:22

A larger-than-life figure who often seems friendlier with the likes of Fidel Castro, Colonel Qaddafi, and Saddam Hussein than he is with the United States.

Speaker 0:30

And when people think about Chavez today, one word usually comes to mind. But here's the problem. That's not how Chavez came to power. In fact, when he was first elected, Chavez rejected socialism. He rejected communism. For years, he refused to use those labels at all. So what did he call himself? The revolutionary. Because from the very beginning, Chavez didn't promise socialism. He promised a revolution. The Bolivarian Revolution. La Revolución Bolivariana. But what does that actually mean? Because when we hear the word revolution, we think of overthrow, a complete transformation of the system. But was that really what Chavez was doing? To answer that, we have to go back to the 1980s, when Chavez was still an unknown soldier, plotting to take power. Inside the Venezuelan military, Chavez wasn't just part of a conspiracy. He was one of the leaders of a secret movement, the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, el Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario. And even its name reveals what it stood for, because it wasn't just a group of soldiers planning a coup, it was a group of soldiers building an ideology. An ideology built around what they called the three roots, three figures from Venezuelan history: Simón Bolívar, Simón Rodriguez, and Ezequiel Zamora. Now, the first one is obvious: Simón Bolívar, the liberator. For two centuries, basically every Venezuelan government had claimed his legacy, and this transformed Bolívar into more than just a historical figure. He's something closer to a myth, a symbol of national destiny, of liberation, of unfinished revolution. Then there's Simon Rodriguez, Bolívar's teacher. But to Chavez, Rodriguez wasn't just an educator. He represented something bigger, the idea that society itself could be reinvented, that a new nation required new people, new thinking, a new kind of citizen, all of which could be cultivated through education. And then there's the third route, perhaps the one that mattered most, Ezequiel Zamora, a general who claimed to fight for the peasants. He was a leader in Venezuela's bloodiest civil war, the Federal War. Fought thirty years after independence. Zamora was a man who built his reputation on one simple idea, that the country was divided between the people and the land-owning oligarchy. He became known for slogans like free lands and free men and horror to the oligarchy, and Chavez modeled his own revolution, his own ideology, after Zamora. Because when you put these three figures together, a very specific vision begins to emerge. A vision of change led by soldiers in the name of the people against a corrupt elite, not reform, but revolution. And here's the thing to understand. A revolution imagined through soldiers' eyes is rarely a peaceful one. It assumes conflict, confrontation. It assumes that power has to be taken and defended using force. Some people dismiss Chavez as stupid, but that's not just wrong. It's ridiculous. Chavez was a voracious reader, obsessed with Venezuelan history. And he was smart. He didn't just speak like a revolutionary. He understood the story he was trying to place himself into. And after he was released from prison in 1994, that story began to evolve. Because Chavez didn't go straight into politics, he went on a journey across Latin America, giving speeches, meeting allies, connecting with other self-described revolutionaries. And along the way, he met two figures who would shape his worldview in a profound way. The first was Fidel Castro. In 1994, shortly after being released from prison, Chavez traveled to Cuba. Officially, he had been invited by the University of Havana. But when he landed, Castro himself was waiting on the runway. The two men talked for hours, all through the night, until sunrise. And the next day, when Castro's brother asked him about the young Venezuelan rebel, he reportedly said, That man does not know the first thing about the Vietnam War or the Soviet Union, but he knows every corner of Venezuela, all the folklore, the local legends, the entire history of his country. He will become a great president one day. And that perfectly sums up Chavez in that moment. He didn't know much about global communist theory, but he knew everything about Venezuela, its people, its history, its identity. And that meeting with Castro was critical, because over time Fidel Castro would complete Chavez's education, recommending books and ideas, and Venezuela would begin to align itself more and more closely with Cuba, not just politically, but ideologically. And then there was the second influence, a far less well-known figure, a man named Norberto Ceresole. He was a radical Argentine theorist and sociologist. And I don't use that word radical lightly. Ceresole believed that democracy, as it existed in Latin America, had failed. Instead, he argued for a system built around a direct relationship between three forces: the leader, the military, and the people. No parties, no institutions. Just power, concentrated and justified in the name of the masses. In 1999, the same year that Chávez came to power, Cere sole published a book outlining this vision. It was called "Caudillo, Ejército, Pueblo: La Venezuela del Comandante Chávez." "Leader, Army, People: Commander Chavez's Venezuela." And this book is foundational because Cere sole wasn't just some obscure theorist. He was one of Chávez's closest advisors and confidants. But in 1999, Chávez's other allies pushed him out of Venezuela, in part because Cere Sole was a Holocaust denialist, which they believed reflected badly on Chavez and the movement. But if you read Cere sole's book, you'll quickly notice that it doesn't read like a theory. It's a blueprint. And what followed in Venezuela over the next few years begins to look almost exactly like that blueprint. A charismatic leader, backed by the military, claiming to represent the will of the people. All while manipulating institutions to concentrate power in their name. So when Chavez spoke of revolution, he didn't just mean social change. He meant a new relationship between leader, army, and people. Through Bolívar and Zamora, through Castro and Ceresole, there was one constant thread running through it all: the military as the source of the leader's power, and the leader as the embodiment of the people's will. That's why control over the military became a priority for Chavez. It had always been central to his ideology. For Chavez, the military wasn't just an institution. It was supposed to be part of the people, a force that listened to them, represented them, and acted on their behalf. He called this the "Military -Civilian Alliance." And once he took office in 1999, he moved quickly to put that idea into practice. One of his first major initiatives was something called Plan Bolívar 2000, a massive anti-poverty program that sent tens of thousands of soldiers into poor neighborhoods across the country. They built roads, repaired schools, and provided medical care. But this wasn't just a massive social program, because Chávez had just come to power, and while he had managed to reshape Venezuela's political institutions, the military was still the same military as before. And many officers didn't trust him. Others outright rejected him. So Plan Bolívar 2000 became a way to do two things at once, expand the role of the military in Venezuelan society and begin tying it directly into his political project. Chávez promoted his loyalists within the armed forces, but that still wasn't enough. Because loyalty isn't just ideological in Venezuela, it's transactional. Plan Bolívar 2000 quickly became one of the first major corruption scandals of Chavez's presidency. Hundreds of millions of dollars were handed over to military officials to manage. A huge portion of that money simply disappeared. When investigations were launched, they were shut down. And those military officers benefiting from the system, they now had every reason to defend it. So alongside social programs and rhetoric about the people, something else was happening. Chavez was consolidating control over the one institution that could remove him from power, the armed forces. At the same time, Chavez's revolution was beginning to take shape beyond Venezuela's borders. From the beginning, Chavez had viewed the United States with deep suspicion, and for a Latin American revolutionary, that wasn't necessarily unusual. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. had supported brutal right-wing regimes across Latin America. So for Chavez, suspicion of U.S. power was not just foreign policy positioning. It was a much larger historical memory. But in his first years in power, Chavez was very careful. He was not yet openly hostile towards Washington. In fact, before even taking office, he met with President Clinton at the White House, and Venezuela remained deeply tied to the U.S. through its oil. So the shift was gradual. Chavez first moved through oil diplomacy, strengthening ties with oil-producing states and pushing for a more assertive role for Venezuela on the world stage. Then came the symbolic gestures. In 2000, Chavez visited Saddam Hussein in Iraq, becoming the first head of state to meet him since the 1991 Gulf War. On that same tour, Chavez also met with Gaddafi in Libya. These visits didn't yet mean that Chavez had broken with the US, though, but they did signal that Chavez was not interested in Venezuela playing the traditional role of a reliable US ally. He wanted the country to become something else, an independent, rebellious, explicitly Latin American voice in world politics. And abroad, that made him exciting. But in Venezuela, it made people very nervous. Because Chavez had campaigned carefully. He had avoided presenting himself as a communist. He had even called Cuba a dictatorship. But now, as he drew closer to Castro and embraced leaders who openly defied Washington, that ambiguity began to fade. And for many Venezuelans, especially those within the military and among the middle and upper classes, the question became a lot harder to ignore. Was Chávez actually building a more inclusive democracy, or was he pulling Venezuela towards a revolutionary model that he had never fully disclosed? Soon enough, cracks began to appear, because some of the very people who had supported Chávez started to realize where things were headed, and they turned on him. The clearest example of this was Jorge Olavarria. Olavarria wasn't an outsider. He was a veteran politician, a historian, and crucially someone who had initially supported Chavez's rise to power. But just months later, on July 5, 1999, Venezuela's Independence Day, Olavarria did something that shocked the country. He spoke at the special bicameral session commemorating the country's independence. The room was filled with foreign diplomats, congressmen and senators, members of the Military High Command, the President of the Supreme Court, and, of course, President Chávez. And it was here, in this ceremonial session, that Olavarria used his speech to publicly denounce the President, directly, to his face. No one can ignore the repeated threats that the President has made against Congress. The Supreme Court and its justices, the Attorney General and the Comptroller General. Not one. The President sincerely believes that he is the state. Throughout his 50-minute speech, Jorge Olavarrilla was interrupted four times. The Supreme Court president walked out to try to maintain an air of independence. The military generals also left the room, but Chavez remained. To me, this remains one of the most important warnings in Venezuela's modern history, because Olavarria was one of the first high-profile Chavez supporters to publicly break with the president. And he ended his speech by asking Venezuela's political powers to find the courage to stop Chávez before it was too late. But Chavez never backed down, and soon many Venezuelans began to fear that he was recreating elements of the Cuban system in Venezuela. That's when the first major anti-Chavez protests began, not 10 years into his rule, not after Venezuela had already become a dictatorship, but roughly two years from his first term. Two early events captured this sphere. The first came in October of 2000, with a presidential decree called Decree 1011. The decree authorized Cuban teachers to participate in Venezuelan literacy programs and gave the Ministry of Education broad powers to appoint and remove school officials. For Chavez's supporters, this was part of the revolution's promise: education, literacy, and social transformation. But for many Venezuelan parents, it looked like ideological control, and the backlash was immediate. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans, especially mothers, marched under the slogan: "Con mis hijos no te metas," "don't mess with my kids." They accused the government of trying to cubanize the education system and indoctrinate children in schools, and the backlash was so overwhelming that the reform was quietly shelved. And that marked a shift into a new era for Venezuela, because it showed that resistance to Chávez was no longer limited to the old political elites. It was beginning to take root in civil society. And the second warning sign came with the creation of the Bolivarian circles, Los Círculos Bolivarianos. In June of 2001, Chávez began organizing his supporters within poorer communities across Venezuela. Officially, these groups were created to solve local problems and promote the ideals of Bolívar, but in practice they became state-funded political organizations loyal to Chávez and committed to defending his Bolivarian revolution. And the comparisons were obvious. To opponents, the Bolivarian circles looked uncomfortably similar to Cuba's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, neighborhood organizations used to monitor, mobilize, and enforce loyalty to the regime. That fear only grew as Chávez began integrating these groups with the military. By 2001, this was the contradiction at the center of Chavez's revolution. He spoke constantly about participation, democracy, and the people, but the tools he was building told a different story: soldiers involved in politics, government-backed political circles, and schools becoming battlegrounds over ideology. For the first time, many Venezuelans began to wonder whether this so-called democratic revolution was really something else, a dictatorship in the making. By 2001, Chavez's popularity was beginning to falter. But instead of softening his tone, he became more combative. Even after the new constitution and the 2000 mega-election that gave him renewed mandate, Chavez continued to describe Venezuelan politics as a battle against the old order. Crime, inflation, poverty, none of these things were treated as ordinary problems of government. They were symptoms of a deeper struggle against the enemies of the revolution. And that was the word he kept returning to: revolution. The Bolivarian Revolution, the Peaceful Revolution, the Democratic Revolution. But by this point, the obvious question was still unresolved. What was actually revolutionary about this revolution? Chavez had not taken power by force, although he had tried in 1992. He had come to power through elections, and even after the 1999 constitution was adopted, the basic structure of the Venezuelan state remained recognizable. Elections, governors, mayors, courts, ministries, and the same public institutions for the most part. The state had not been overturned from top to bottom. So if the Bolivarian Revolution had not revolutionized the structure of the state, then where was the revolution? And if you ask me, the answer lies in Chávez's relationship to opposition. That was the most revolutionary element of Chavismo. Not socialism, not policy, not even the constitution. It was the way Chavez rejected one of the most basic principles that makes democracy possible: the legitimacy of political opposition. In a democracy, opponents are adversaries. They fight for power, but they accept each other's right to exist. Chavez's revolutionary worldview operated under very different logic. Politics was not disagreement, it was war. And once the revolution represented justice, truth, liberation, and the future, anyone who opposed it became more than just an opponent. They became a counter-revolutionary, an enemy of history. Chavis divided the country into allies and enemies, patriots and traitors, the people and the oligarchy, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries. He portrayed politics not as a contest between citizens with different visions of the country, but as an existential battle between good and evil. And this is where the claim of the Bolivarian Revolution was peaceful and democratic began to collapse, because in May of 2001, Chavez warned that if the unarmed revolution failed, then an armed revolution would become the only way out for Venezuelans. That was the contradiction at the heart of the Bolivarian Revolution. It claimed to be democratic, but refused to accept democratic opposition. It claimed to be peaceful, but constantly invoked the possibility of violence. It claimed to speak for the people, but divided the people into those who belonged to the revolution and those who had to be defeated by it. By the end of 2001, Venezuela had not yet become the authoritarian state it would later become. But the logic was already there. The enemies were there. The language was there. And as Chavez's popularity weakened, that logic only hardened. The movement that had promised inclusion and participation began to recenter itself around class struggle, loyalty, and confrontation. The poor were cast as the true people, the middle and upper classes as the oligarchy. Criticism became sabotage, and political disagreement became counter-revolutionary. And so Venezuela was hurled into a storm that would define the next years of its history. A storm of polarization, class antagonism, and open confrontation between a president who believed he embodied the revolution and a growing opposition convinced that the revolution had become a threat to democracy itself.