Cuba's President Fidel Castro, left, talks with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez in Barinas, Venezuela, near Chavez's hometown of Sabaneta. AP Photo/Jose Goitia. 2000
Venezuela was once the democratic exception. In a continent dominated by military dictatorships, the two-party system installed after the fall of Gen. Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958 stood out as peaceful, prosperous and apparently pluralistic. Based on the distribution of oil rents, it began to founder as per capita income slumped in the 1980s, amid a welter of corruption, back-stabbing and political short-sightedness. Into the vacuum strode a military strongman with a messianic streak and a disdain for representative democracy.
Having tried, and failed, to take power by force in 1992, Hugo Chávez was elected president by a large margin in 1998 and survived (albeit barely) a coup attempt against him three years into his presidency. By a stroke of luck, the oil industry was about to experience its most sustained boom in history, enabling Chávez to purchase broad political support both at home and abroad. That his programme was unsustainable in the medium to long term was apparent to anyone with a basic grasp of the commodities cycle. But combined with the charisma of the former coup leader it was more than enough to hold off a fractured and demoralised opposition, whose populist clothes he had stolen.
