Contentious Hugo Chavez Holds Presidency
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is an unusual statesman, infamous for his antics: calling President Bush "the devil" in September 2006 when speaking before the United Nations and saying the General Assembly still smelled of "sulfur" a day after he left. In a dispute with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005, Chavez called her "pathetic," "illiterate" and even made sexual jokes.

Chavez has described Mexican President Vicente Fox as the "puppy dog" of U.S. imperialism, and he has fired Venezuelan government employees while addressing his country on television.

Critics have dismissed his rhetoric as unthinking commentary, while supporters insist he is an intelligent and skilled strategist, well aware of the effects of his actions. He has pushed an ambitious social and political agenda in Venezuela since his election in 1998, and he continues to inspire effusive praise from his supporters and overt hatred from his foes after his 2006 re-election.

Friend to the poor or oppressive dictator?
Despite the seemingly bizarre conduct of Chavez as a diplomat, the majority of Venezuelans approve of him. In the December 2006 election, Chavez unequivocally beat his opponent, Manuel Rosales, 63 percent to 37 percent, according to Venezuela's electoral council.

Since his first election, Chavez has benefited from extraordinary oil revenue and in turn poured billions of dollars into social welfare programs known as "missions," designed to better provide health services, education and food to the poor, which until recently accounted for about half of the Venezuelan population.

According to Venezuela's National Institute of Statistics, poverty has decreased during Chavez's presidency from 42 percent in 1999 to roughly 35-38 percent in 2005. Upon election, Chavez promptly eliminated fees for public schools and created volunteer-based schools in rural communities to widen education access. In an infamous "oil-for-services" program, he sold oil to Cuba at a favorable rate in exchange for Cuban doctors to provide health care to Venezuelans who would otherwise have none.

Chavez's critics, however, argue that this social welfare programs equate to handouts.

"[Chavez] has been using a lot of money to provide handouts to Venezuela's poor that keeps them under the illusion that they are solving the problems on a permanent basis, but the handouts are just a temporary cure," says Gustavo Coronel, a former member of the Board of Directors of Petroleos de Venezuela and author of the CATO Institute study, "Corruption, Mismanagement, and Abuse of Power in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela."

"They worsen the main problems of Venezuela society, which includes the dependence of Venezuela on the welfare state."

His critics also say that Chavez's social policies have weakened the economy -- something Chavez blames on an attempted coup in 2002 and the national oil strike in 2002-3.

And Chavez's foes point to a series of moves consolidating political power, including a 1999 referendum that helped create a new Bolivarian constitution permitting consecutive re-election of the president. They also point to larger ambitions.

"Supposedly, he is involved in Bolivia and other weak democracies to try to sabotage those governments there. There are all types of rumors," Miguel Diaz, a Latin American analyst who worked at the CIA in the early 1990s, told the NewsHour.

From the countryside to the presidential palace
Chavez was born to two primary-school teachers of limited means in the countryside of the interior plains of Venezuela. Unable to support him, his parents sent him and one of his brothers to live nearby with his grandmother Rosa Ines.

Chavez's introduction to Marxist ideology was nurtured from adolescence; veteran communist Jose Esteban Ruiz Guevara, father to two of his close friends in secondary school, provided him with works from his personal library.

At age 17, Chavez enrolled at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences.

Disillusioned after witnessing the army's violent put down of leftist rebels, he began volunteering his services to the guerillas' cause through his older brother, a Marxist activist.

Chavez led two lives, working his way up the army hierarchy ladder, while plotting a revolution. As a teacher at the Academy of Military Sciences in Caracas, he formed the core of the group that would later become his Bolivarian movement. He recruited cadets and young officers who would be of assistance in his later plans.

In February 1992, Chavez led a revolt of middle-ranking military officers against President Carlos Andres Perez. Although his cohorts managed to secure control of several key military bases, Chavez's attempt to overtake the presidential palace in Caracas was unsuccessful. His captors thought themselves victorious when he surrendered himself and gave a concession speech calling for his comrades to surrender:

"Lamentably for now, our objectives were not achieved in the capital," Chavez said. "But it now is time to reflect that new situations will arise for the country to take the road toward a better destiny. ... I assume responsibility for this Bolivarian military movement."

In 1994, Chavez was released from his prison sentence for the earlier failed coup and created a political party called the Fifth Republican Movement. Before Chavez emerged, two political parties -- that most of the country saw as corrupt and elitist -- had been dominating Venezuelan politics for the previous 40 years. So Chavez's populist stance made him a national icon, a hero who won 56 percent of the vote in the 1998 presidential election.

"Chavez came to power because of the collapse of the traditional parties, because of a discrediting of the previous system, in a sense. … And he thrives on this confrontation with the United States, in fact to increase his popularity among his people," Arturo Valenzuela, professor of government and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, told the NewsHour in 2005.

Since the 1998 presidential victory, Chavez withstood a coup in 2002, a national oil strike in 2002-3 and a recall referendum on his presidency in 2004. In December 2006, he beat his opponent with ease. The opposition to Chavez remains at square one.

Cunning commando
Chavez has launched a public relations attack against the United States and President Bush, creating diplomatic relations with U.S. foes such as Iran and attempting to rally other Latin American countries to resist U.S. interference in the region.

Although his antics can be alienating to Venezuela's middle and upper classes, they reflect both Chavez's humble origins as well as his ties to Venezuela's poor.

"His discourse can be interpreted as polarizing because it breaks with the protocol one assumes of a traditional president of Venezuela and Latin America," said Miguel Tinker Salas, a professor in Latin American history at Pomona College. "It underscores the reach between the reality most Venezuelans live in and the reality most elites and upper middle class exist in."

But although Chavez's critics prefer to label him a "buffoon," some analysts insist his bravado masks a skilled tactician who knows the political consequences of his behavior.

"He uses strong language, comes forth with contentious statements that are very provocative," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "All of this is a matter of style, not substance."

And although his public speech is often littered with insults more appropriate in a school yard than an international stage, they also are replete with references to philosophical and literary classics. The first Venezuelan president of mixed racial descent and hailing from the interior plains of the country, Chavez is eager to appear an intellectual.

Coronel of the CATO Institute notes that the military did not provide Chavez with a rigorous education. "Social expectations were not fulfilled," he said. "It must have put quite a load of resentment on him. He's obviously driven by social class resentment."

-- By Stephanie Taylor, Online NewsHour