Hugo Chávez is heavily criticised by the international political class and the press and media.
He is dismissed academically as a 'populist' and dismissed more generally as a rabble rouser
whose anti-American outbursts threaten regional stability at the least. However a lot of the
criticism and reporting lacks context. Outside the country not much is known about modern
Venezuela and even less about the history from which today's reality has emerged. Why is Chávez
so loud and outspoken? If he is so bad why does he keep getting elected? Does he really have
the backing of a majority? Is he destroying democracy in his own country and creating division
and strife? This book not only answers these questions and others such as why in Venezuela
the 1950s dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez is often claimed to have worked better than
democracy. It also shows how Venezuela's Antagonistic State between 1958 and 1998 led to the
destruction of a whole political and economic elite.
