Guenther Maihold (ed.), Venezuela en retrospectiva: Los pasos hacia el regimen chavista

摘要

Venezuela has become the focus of an ever-expanding literature on the merits and shortcomings of the Bolivarian revolution. If many hail it as an attempt to redirect the course of history away from the evils of free-market fundamentalism and to blaze a new era of equality, many others, with similar passion, fear it as a long descent into tyranny by the ideologised masses over the forces of reaction, as well as by the government. It is debatable whether the Fifth Republic is a complete break with the past (if there is ever such a thing) or whether it may be more accurately characterised as the interplay between the old and the new, tradition and novelty. Clientelistic networks continue to be entangled with die state apparatus and public resources. Throughout the tumultuous years of Chavez's presidency, however, a large number of observers both in Venezuela and abroad have been persuaded that the country is on a path of political, economic and cultural transformation.