by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
[Translated by Mark McHarry]
On December 6, 1998, Hugo Chavez won the presidency of Venezuela, his sixth consecutive election victory. Who really is this man who has awakened as many hopes as fears? With his characteristic style, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude narrates the fateful political biography of Hugo Chavez. He concludes on a doubt. Now that Chavez’ administration is in power, the doubt should be resolved.
In the dusk of the evening, Carlos Andres Perez walked down off the plane which brought him from Davos, Switzerland. On the ramp he was surprised to see General Fernando Ochoa Antich, his defense minister. His curiosity aroused, he asked, ‘What’s going on?’ The minister’s confident reassurances put him at ease, enough so the president did not go to the Miraflores Palace but instead to the presidential residence, La Casona. He had begun to sleep when the defense minister woke him by telephone to inform him of a military uprising in Maracay. He had scarcely entered Miraflores when the first artillery barrages exploded.
It was February 4, 1992. With his penchant for historic dates, Colonel Hugo Chavez FrÃas was commanding the assault from his improvised command post in the History Museum of La Planicie. The president realized his only recourse was the support of the people, and he went to the Venevisión TV studios to talk to the nation. Twelve hours later the military coup had failed. Chavez surrendered on the condition he, too, would be permitted to address the people on television. The young mestizo colonel, with his paratrooper’s beret and his admirable facility with words, assumed responsibility for the movement. He spent two years in prison until he was pardoned by President Rafael Caldera. But his address was a political triumph. Many of his supporters, and not a few of his enemies, believe his speech in defeat was the first in the election campaign which brought him to the presidency of the Republic less than nine years later.
President Hugo Chavez told me this story on the Venezuelan Air Force plane which took us from Havana to Caracas, less than 15 days after he took office as the constitutional president of Venezuela, elected by popular vote. We had met for the first time three days before in Havana, during his talks with Presidents Castro and Pastrana. The first thing that struck me was the power of his cement-reinforced body. He had an easy cordiality and the native grace of a pure blooded Venezuelan. We both tried to see each other again but for both of our faults it wasn’t possible, and so we went together on the plane to Caracas to talk about his life and its miracles.
It was a good experience for an otherwise unoccupied reporter. As he recounted his life, I was discovering a personality which had absolutely no relation to the idea of a despot we had formed from the news media. It was another Chavez. Which of the two was the real one?
During the campaign, the harshest argument against him had been his recent past as a conspirator and coup commander. But Venezuelan history has digested four other coups. Beginning with Rómulo Betancourt, rightly or wrongly remembered as the father of Venezuelan democracy, who overthrew IsaÃas Medina Angarita, a democratic veteran military man who had tried to purge his country of the 36 years of Juan Vicente Gómez. His successor, the novelist Rómulo Gallegos, was overthrown by General Marcos Perez Jimenez, who would stay almost 11 years in power. He, in turn, was overthrown by a generation of young democrats who inaugurated the longest period of elected presidents.
The February coup seems to be the only thing which has turned out bad for Colonel Hugo Chavez FrÃas. He, however, sees it for its positive side, sort of a providential reverse. It’s his manner of understanding good luck, or his intelligence, intuition, astuteness’”whatever thing which may be the charm which has guided his acts since he came into the world in Sabaneta, Barinas, on July 28, 1954, under the sign of Leo. A faithful Catholic, Chavez attributes his good fate to the more than 100-year-old scapular he has worn since childhood, inherited from a maternal great-grandfather, Colonel Pedro Perez Delgado, one of his guardian heroes.
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