The Tragedy of Hugo Chávez

Episode 17  |  In the final episode on Hugo Chávez, The Guacamaya explores the mysticism, charisma and improbable fortune that carried him from a failed coup to the presidency—and kept him there. 

From Bolívar’s Delirium on Chimborazo and the exhumation of the Liberator’s remains to Chávez’s final campaign, illness and death, this episode examines the tragedy of a leader who had the power to unite Venezuela, but chose division, personal rule and an eternal revolution instead. 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

The Andes Mountains are the longest mountain range in the world. They rise from the Caribbean coast in western Venezuela and extend thousands of kilometers south, through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Seven countries tied together by the same mountains, five of them liberated, at least in part, by Simón Bolívar. When you climb into the Andes, the world changes around you. At first, there are dense cloud forests, immense trees shrouded in mist. But as you climb higher, the forest disappears, the temperature falls, and the air becomes thinner. Eventually, you reach the Paramo, the strange windswept landscape above the tree line and beneath the snow. At extreme elevations, there's not enough oxygen. The mind can begin to misfire. Reality becomes distorted, and delirium sets in. During Bolívar's lifetime, Chimborazo, a massive Andean volcano in modern-day Ecuador, was believed to be the highest mountain in the world. It was 1822. Bolíwer had already achieved independence for Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, and was preparing to march south to liberate Peru. According to legend, one night he was consumed by a feverish dream. When he awoke, he wrote a short poem, My Delirium on Chimborazo. In the poem, Bolíwet imagines himself climbing the mountain, beyond the clouds and beyond the limits of ordinary men. At the summit, he encounters time, the father of the centuries, an ancient, godlike figure who challenges everything he's accomplished. Do you in madness suppose that your actions have any value in my eyes? Everything is less than a dot in the presence of the infinite, who is my brother. Bolivar is forced to confront his own insignificance. Why fight for the independence of nations if those nations will eventually disappear? Why spend an entire life pursuing glory if time will erase the memory of everyone who ever lived? For a moment, Bolivar wonders whether the violent passion that has consumed his life has all been for nothing. But then he answers, and not with humility. Surely, O time, the miserable mortal who has climbed this high must perish. I have surpassed all men in good fortune, for I have raised myself above all. The earth lies at my feet. I touch eternity with my hands. Boliwar accepts that he'll die, but he refuses to believe that his life is insignificant. His mission has raised him above ordinary men. By liberating nations, he has entered into a struggle greater than any single human life. A struggle against history itself. Nearly two centuries later, another Venezuelan leader would come to believe the same thing. Hugo Chavez had survived a failed coup, prison, political irrelevance, and even his removal from power. Again and again he escaped moments that should have ended his story. And each time he became more convinced that his survival was not an accident, but a confirmation that he had been chosen to transform Venezuela and continue Bolívar's unfinished mission. And this week's episode is a special one, because it's our final episode on Hugo Chavez. It's taken almost 20 episodes, but we finally made it. There's still much more to Venezuela's story to tell. This is only the end of the first act of a tragedy that continues to this day. But by now, I hope you understand the political events that defined Hugo Chavez's life, and that you've also begun to see the man behind them.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

Tranquila, no te voy a molestar.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Chavez was unbelievably charismatic. He could hold the attention of supporters and enemies alike. He joked, danced, and sang. That was one of his greatest political gifts. Chavez could take history, religion, poetry, and political theory, blend them together, and turn them into a story in which Venezuela, and Chavez himself, stood at the center of the world. But there's another thread running through Chávez's life that's impossible to ignore. He was extraordinarily lucky. His military rebellion in 1992 was a complete failure. Yet instead of disappearing into prison as another forgotten conspirator, he was given 73 seconds on national television. Those 73 seconds made him famous. He was released only two years later and emerged just as Venezuela's traditional political system was collapsing. Then, in April 2002, he was removed from power. But the people who replaced him immediately began dismantling democratic institutions, fractured the coalition against him, and ultimately helped him return to the presidency in less than two days. The coup that should have destroyed Chavez made him stronger. Later that year, a national strike threatened his government. Then oil prices soared. At the precise moment when he needed money to restore his popularity and survive the recall referendum, Chavez received more oil revenue than any Venezuelan president before him. But that luck was only part of the story. Every time Chavez survived, he learned from the danger. The turmoil of the early 2000s taught him that popularity was not enough. He needed control. The armed forces were politicized and absorbed into the Bolivarian Revolution. Officers who could not be trusted were removed, while loyalists were promoted. His government also consolidated control over the courts, the electoral authority, and any other institution that might have threatened him in the future. The tactics that saved Chavez during moments of crisis became permanent pillars of the new political system. Each challenge exposed a weakness, and each victory gave him the opportunity to eliminate it. Still, institutions alone cannot explain the durability of Chavismo. At the center of everything was Chavez himself, his charisma, his conviction, and the almost mystical bond he forged with millions of Venezuelans. It would be a mistake to dismiss him as a cynical man who only wanted power. I think Chavez genuinely believed in his revolution. He believed that he embodied the will of the Venezuelan people. And once his political project became synonymous with the people, anyone who opposed it could be cast outside the nation altogether, as a traitor, an oligarch, or an agent of a foreign power. For Chavez, the Bolivarian Revolution, his revolution, eventually stood above the Constitution, the institutions, and even Venezuela itself. A failed coup leader had gone to prison and returned six years later through democratic elections. He dismantled the old political order, survived his removal from power, defeated strikes and electoral challenges, and bent the Venezuelan state to his will. From a boy raised in a house with a dirt floor to a president who spellbound the country and reshaped an entire continent. Chavez seemed touched by Providence. And eventually, he began to believe that he was. That belief was not confined to political speeches. It shaped the way that Chavez understood the world. His worldview was steeped in the mystical. He spoke of omens, spirits, and signs. Catholicism mixed freely with Venezuelan folklore, the mythology of Bolívar, and Afro-Caribbean religions like Santería. According to the people who knew him, Chávez didn't treat these beliefs as superstition. He sought guidance from them. In the book Los Brujos de Chávez, the journalist David Placer recounts one extraordinary story. Years before the failed coup, Chávez met Cristina Marxman, the sister of his longtime lover, Irma Marxman. Cristina was a Santera witch who claimed to see the future. According to Placer, she told Chavez that he would be imprisoned, that he would become president of Venezuela, that he would later become gravely ill, and that he would die before reaching 60. By 2010, the first two predictions had already come true. That same year, Chavez's obsession with history and fascination with a spiritual world fused together into one of the most surreal spectacles of his presidency: the exclamation of Simón Bolívar. The official purpose was scientific. Chavez had long rejected the accepted explanation that Bolívar died of tuberculosis, and believed that the liberator had been poisoned by the oligarchy of his time. So in the middle of the night, Bolívar's tomb was opened. Chavez watched from the Presidential Palace.

SPEAKER_04 11:08

That skull, looking at the space where his eyes were.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

There's no proof that this happened, but the rumor was believable, because Chavez himself had erased the boundary between politics, religion, and myth. To Chavez, Bolívar was not simply a man who had died two centuries earlier. He was a living force, a spirit moving through Venezuelan history, and Chavez believed that he had been chosen to bring that spirit back to life. Soon another legend began to circulate. Several prominent figures connected, sometimes only loosely, to the exclamation, died the months that followed. The coincidences became known as the Curse of Boliur, a warning that those who disturbed Liberator's remains would be claimed one by one. There was no evidence of a curse, but the story took hold, and the following year it acquired a new and ominous power. In May 2011, Chávez abruptly cancelled part of an international tour because of an inflammation in his knee. The following month, while visiting Cuba, he underwent emergency surgery. Almost no details were released. Ten days later, Chávez appeared on television from Havana and announced that his doctors had removed a cancerous tumor. For the next year, he traveled repeatedly between Venezuela and Cuba for chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and further operations. The government concealed almost everything about his condition, but the treatments were visibly changing him. In August 2011, Chavez appeared before the country with his head shaved and his body transformed by chemotherapy. He smiled at the cameras. My new look, he joked in English. But beneath the performance, Christina Marxman's prophecy likely hung over the president. She had predicted imprisonment and power. Now she had predicted illness and death before 60. For a man already convinced that history had chosen him, the prophecy could only reinforce the belief that his victories, his suffering, and whatever awaited him were all part of the same design. On January 29th, 2012, Chavez hosted the 378th episode of Aló Presidente. It would be his last. There was no farewell and no grand conclusion. The program that had dominated Venezuelan political life for more than a decade simply disappeared. Chavez's personal stage had gone dark. He was still fighting cancer, but another presidential election was approaching, and Chavez threw everything he had into one final campaign. The power of the state, the resources of the oil boom, and his own image everywhere. His face saturated the airwaves. Some of Venezuela's most popular artists appeared in campaign videos, singing Chavez Corazón del Pueblo, Chavez, part of the people. Public housing rose across the country bearing Chavez's giant signature. Families placed their names on waiting lists for the chance that the government might one day hand them the keys to their new home. Housing became a personal promise from Chávez, and voters were repeatedly warned that the opposition would take it all away. For the first time, the opposition held a national primary and united behind a single candidate, Enrique Capriles Radonsky, the young governor of Miranda. Capriles promised to preserve the social programs without Chávez. But Chávez had spent years making that possibility almost unimaginable. He had fused the state with the revolution, and the revolution with himself. The campaign demanded everything that his body had left. His public appearances became shorter and his absences longer. Yet he kept going. Chávez had survived prison, a coup, strikes, and elections. Now he was determined to survive cancer too. On October 4, 2012, he held his final campaign rally in Caracas. The skies opened up, and a torrential rain drenched the enormous crowd. His supporters didn't leave. They stood in the storm, crying for the president that they believed was the only leader who had ever truly understood them. Chavez walked onto the stage already soaked. He sang, danced, and stretched his arms towards the crowd, as if he could embrace them all. His tears disappeared into the rain. Three days later, Chavez won once again, receiving just over 55% of the vote. He had defeated the strongest opposition candidate he had ever faced and secured another six years in power. But this time, victory did not restore him. On December 8th, Chavez appeared on television for the last time. The cancer had returned, and he was going to Cuba for another operation. For the first time, he acknowledged that he might not survive. If he could no longer continue as president, he told Venezuelans to elect Nicolas Maduro in his place. For nearly three months, Venezuelans waited. Government officials released contradictory reports. Supporters gathered to pray for their president. Then, on March 5, 2013, Nicolas Maduro announced that Hugo Chavez was dead. He was 58 years old. The final prediction had come true. Chávez could have stepped down when he became ill, but that was never in his nature. The same conviction that carried him to the presidential palace drove him forward, even as cancer consumed him from within. He believed that he had been chosen to alter the course of history. Only he could complete the transformation of Venezuela. Only he could lead the eternal revolution. But was this fate, or one man's delirium mistaken for destiny? That was the tragedy at the heart of Chávez's Venezuela. He began with an overwhelming popular mandate. Millions of Venezuelans believed in the future he promised: a fresh beginning, a country where the poor would finally be seen, where oil wealth would benefit everyone, and where a broken political system could be rebuilt. Chavez had the charisma to unite Venezuela, the power to reform it, and eventually more money than any Venezuelan president had ever controlled. Instead, he divided the country. He taught one half of Venezuela that they alone were the people, and that the other half were their enemies. Traitors, oligarchs, obstacles standing in the path of history. He concentrated power until the state, the revolution, and Hugo Chávez became impossible to separate. Institutions existed to execute his will. The armed forces served the revolution. Social programs were presented not as rights, but as gifts delivered personally by the president. Everything depended on him. Because Chávez had built a system in which only Chávez could hold everything together. That is the tragedy of Hugo Chávez. Not that he failed to change Venezuela, but what he chose to change it into. His death was not the end of that tragedy. It was only the beginning of its second act. Hugo Chávez spent his entire life trying to touch eternity. And in the end, perhaps he did. Because for more than a decade after his death, Venezuela continues to live inside the nightmare he dreamt for us. See you next week. And as always, if you want to support the show, the Patreon link is in the description.