Exposes the CIA's attempts to bring down Latin America's most popular leader

In this book, Eva Golinger uses documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act to lay out irefutable evidence that the US knew about the plot to overthrow Hugo Chavez before it happened.

Perhaps no world leader is better placed to challenge the global authority of the United States than Hugo Chavez, the populist leader of Venezuela. As the head of one of the world's largest oil-producing countries. Chavez has been instrumental in raising world oil prices, undermining the control and profits of the multinational oil companies, and introducing innovative plans to use the wealth from this natural resource to help the impoverished in his own country and around the world. When in 2005 Bush ally and Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson called for Chavez's assassination, public outcry forced some questions: Was that, in fact, a CIA goal? Did the US have plans to invade Venezuela? And exactly what was the extent of US knowledge of or involvement in the April 2002 coup against Chavez? Venezuelan-American attorney Eva Golinger used the US Freedom of Information Act to obtain government documents about US intervention in Venezuela. The Chavez Code contains this irrefutable evidence that, at the very least, the US knew about the plot to overthrow Chavez before it happened. The history of US interventions across Latin America, the suspicious blacked-out lines and pages, and the ongoing investigation suggest an even darker tale.

"In this revealing new study, Eva Golinger employs declassified documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and a variety of international sources to uncover an ongoing campaign to contain and cripple the democratically elected government of Latin America's leading oil power. [This book] details how millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used to fund groups - such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Office for Transition - with the express purpose of supporting counter-revolutionary groups in Venezuela. It explores, as well, a build-up of U.S. military troops, operations, and exercises in the Caribbean that threatens the Venezuelan people and government. [This book] exposes Washington's efforts to subvert a socialist revolution for the twenty-first century."--Cover.

A timely look at Venezuela's controversial president Hugo Chavez

Since he was first elected in 1999, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías has reshaped a frail but nonetheless pluralistic democracy into a semi-authoritarian regime—an outcome achieved with spectacularly high oil income and widespread electoral support. This eye-opening book illuminates one of the most sweeping and unexpected political transformations in contemporary Latin America. Based on more than fifteen years' experience in researching and writing about Venezuela, Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold have crafted a comprehensive account of how the Chávez regime has revamped the nation, with a particular focus on its political transformation. Throughout, they take issue with conventional explanations. First, they argue persuasively that liberal democracy as an institution was not to blame for the rise of chavismo. Second, they assert that the nation's economic ailments were not caused by neoliberalism. Instead they blame other factors, including a dependence on oil, which caused macroeconomic volatility; political party fragmentation, which triggered infighting; government mismanagement of the banking crisis, which led to more centralization of power; and the Asian crisis of 1997, which devastated Venezuela's economy at the same time that Chávez ran for president. It is perhaps on the role of oil that the authors take greatest issue with prevailing opinion. They do not dispute that dependence on oil can generate political and economic distortions—the "resource curse" or "paradox of plenty" arguments—but they counter that oil alone fails to explain Chávez's rise. Instead they single out a weak framework of checks and balances that allowed the executive branch to extract oil rents and distribute them to the populace. The real culprit behind Chávez's success, they write, was the asymmetry of political power.

Ruling elites in Venezuela, the United States and Europe, and even Hugo Chávez himself though for different reasons, have been eager to have the world view him as the heir to Fidel Castro. But the truth about this increasingly influential world leader is more complex, and more interesting.. The Chávez that emerges from Bart Jones’ carefully researched and documented biography is neither a plaster saint nor a revolutionary tyrant. He has an undeniably autocratic streak, and yet has been freely and fairly re-elected to his nations presidency three times with astonishing margins of victory. He is a master politician and an inspired improviser, a Bolivarian nationalist and an unashamed socialist. His policies have brought him into conflict with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and major oil companies. They have also provided a model for new governments and social movements in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina. When in September 2006 he declared at the United Nations that ‘the devil came here yesterday … the President of the United States’, it was clear that he was taking on challenging the most powerful nation on earth, in conscious imitation of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar. From the Trade Paperback edition.

This title introducing Cesar Chavez will make readers want to go out and make a change. The title starts off with Cesar's humble beginnings in Arizona with this poor family and takes you with him on his path to being one of the greatest advocates for Latino and farmworker rights. Complete with a timeline and wonderful historical photographs.

The emergence of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela has revived analysis of one of Latin America’s most enduring political traditions – populism. Yet Latin America has changed since the heyday of Perón and Evita. Globalisation, implemented through harsh IMF inspired Structural Adjustment Programmes, has taken hold throughout the region and democracy is supposedly the ‘only game in town’. This book examines the phenomenon that is Hugo Chávez within these contexts, assessing to what extent his government fits into established ideas on populism in Latin America. The book also provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of Chávez’s emergence, his government’s social and economic policies, its foreign policy, as well as assessing the charges of authoritarianism brought against him. Written in clear, accessible prose, the book carries debate beyond current polarised views on the Venezuelan president, to consider the prospects of the new Bolivarian model surviving beyond its leader and progenitor, Hugo Chávez.

Looking beyond Hugo Chávez and the national government, contributors examine forms of democracy involving ordinary Venezuelans: in communal councils, cultural activities, blogs, community media, and other forums.