The year 2002 would be one of thunder, full of surprises. The first was a loss that would leave him feeling a bit like an orphan. The man he long considered his political father and his right hand decided to resign from the government: Luis Miquilena quit the Ministry of Justice and the Interior. As he did this, Miquilena swore that “this is not a good-bye but a ‘see you later’…my commitment to and my belief in the project of change will not abate, not for one second.”18 But it was a good-bye. He stayed on temporarily as the chairman of Chávez’s political party, but a couple of months later he cut his ties with the president altogether. By that point, he says, he had seen too much of his pupil’s disturbing metamorphosis. Chávez’s radical rhetoric was bothering him more and more. “That fake revolutionary language…I would say to him, ‘But you haven’t touched a single hair on the ass of anyone in the economic sector! You have created the most neoliberal economy Venezuela has ever known. And yet you go on deceiving the people by saying that you are starting the bla, bla, bla revolution. Which means you deceive the crazy revolutionaries we have here, plus you scare the people, the businessmen who could help you build the country.’”
Miquilena also questioned Chávez’s tendency to attack people who disagreed with him. He criticized Chávez, for example, for publicly denigrating a renowned caricaturist—saying that he was an illustrator for hire—“simply because the man drew a caricature that he didn’t like.” Chávez promised to tone it down, but he would inevitably go back and do the same things all over again. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the package of laws drafted and enacted from Miraflores.
“The day I resigned, he came here at three in the morning and asked me to accept the vice presidency but I refused. Then he offered me the U.S. embassy. ‘Are you crazy? I don’t even speak English!’ I said to him. ‘And the last thing I’m good for is as an ambassador. No, kid, you know that I can’t stand by you anymore because I just don’t agree with you,” recalls Miquilena. In his view, Chávez was a humble man who got carried away “by the temptations of power, for they are too seductive to resist for anyone who isn’t sufficiently prepared. Very shortly after he took over the country, Hugo was another man.”
CHAPTER 11
Around the World in an Airbus
“HE ASKED, HE ASKED, AND HE ASKED. HE ASKED FOR LA VIÑETA SO that he could settle in there, airplanes for flights, travel expenses. I don’t know how much, but without a doubt Chávez’s inauguration was the most expensive Venezuela has ever seen. And in the middle of all that, he was making noise about having to cut costs, having to sell planes…all the while spending more and more, astronomical amounts, on the inauguration, all of which reveals his inconsistency.”
Former president Rafael Caldera does not exactly recall Hugo Chávez for his austerity. Unlike all his predecessors, who continued to live in their own homes during the lull between electoral victory and inauguration, the former conspirator abandoned the borrowed apartment he had been occupying in Alto Prado the morning after his triumph in the 1998 elections.
He had gotten his bags ready and demanded to move into La Viñeta, a residence for state visitors within the Fort Tiuna complex. There “he would have lunch with a hundred people and would organize dinners for two hundred,” recalls José Guillermo Andueza, who served as interior minister under Caldera. “All of that was fun and games for him and his friends. The situation got so out of hand that they decided to send the chef from Miraflores over to La Viñeta, because it was cheaper that way. With Chávez, everything went off the charts. We would have to write up two expense reports just to cover his costs.” Caldera recalls seeing Chávez for the first time when the comandante turned up one day at Miraflores following his election. “Once we were alone, he leaned over and made some excuses for the way he had behaved during the campaign. I don’t remember being impressed in any sense. I got the feeling that he was an astute politician, that he had managed well with the media, and that he projected a likable quality, because that’s what he was always after in his relationships with people.”
Soon after being elected president, Chávez said he would sell everything that he deemed to be excessive: “I have already signed a decree…to auction off the big lot of airplanes. There is no justification for so many. My God, 128 airplanes!” In no time, the fleet of the mammoth state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, was reduced from fourteen to six. Chávez ordered a portion of the proceeds from the sale to go to the Centralized Social Fund for the construction of schools, health clinics, and housing units. He also promised to trim a thousand soldiers from the Honor Guard regiment, leaving him with just four hundred men.
Chávez had always been known for being frugal and detached from material possessions, the kind of person who cared little for things like cars or saving money to acquire the kinds of things that most people dream of: a house, creature comforts, a certain level of well-being. Jesús Urdaneta recalls, “Chávez was a man who never, not in his entire life, worried about buying himself an apartment, not at all. He would take his salary and spend it all, when the rest of us, from a very young age, were always paying off [loans]. When we were lieutenant colonels, Chávez had the worst car, a Fairmont that was all but useless. He really seemed like someone totally detached, without any sense of belonging. I remember saying to him, ‘You’re going to do what all of us have to do [the insurrection], and you haven’t even thought about leaving your family with a roof over their head?’ He would be in my room when we took the General Staff course, and I would say to him, ‘Come on, be responsible.’ And then he bought a little house somewhere in Mariara, which he left to his wife, Nancy.”
Urdaneta also recalls how Chávez reproached people who demonstrated an interest in material things. “When I bought a bigger, more comfortable apartment in Maracay that was 120 square meters, he came over and said, ‘Boy, is this apartment luxurious.’ I told him that I didn’t know what luxurious meant for him, but that as far as I was concerned it was no sin to live comfortably if the money was earned honestly. I said to him, ‘I don’t know, maybe for you, being a good Venezuelan means living under a bridge,’ and he said don’t be like that, that he knew I had worked like hell. Chávez is a man who never made sacrifices, he was lucky—when we ended up in jail, his house had just been paid off by people who identified with him, sympathizers. He always managed to get people to help him. In a speech he gave just after we made it to the government, he said, ‘Anyone who has two apartments has to give up one,’ and I said to him, ‘Oh, sure, isn’t that fine and good—and completely irresponsible of you to say things like that! If I have two apartments, it’s because I worked to pay for them, why should I have to give up anything? It’s easy for you to say—you’ve never had to pay for anything yourself.’ He finally came around, but he wasn’t very happy about it.”
By the time his presidential campaign was under way, Chávez was comfortably ensconced in an apartment financed by his supporters in a middle-class neighborhood in southeast Caracas, but he did not know true abundance until he reached the presidency. From the very start, Chávez has spared no expense when it comes to promoting himself, using government funds to show the world that he is neither a military “gorilla” nor a recalcitrant Communist and most especially to destigmatize his “revolution,” which he knows is viewed with trepidation by many. His efforts to this end are tireless. Paradoxically, his rhetoric has always earned him a reputation as a radical, which he has then had to refute, especially outside Venezuela.
As president-elect, he broke travel records, making it to twelve countries in the space of six weeks. In the Americas, he traveled to Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Canada, and Cuba. In Europe, he visited Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. In Paris, at a forum of French businessmen, he said, “My tour of Europe is an effort to show that I am not the Devil, or that combination of Mussolini and Hitler so many people have talked about. And I am not a tyrant.” He saved the United States for last and visited w
ith Bill Clinton for fifteen minutes, just enough time to give him a little gift, a book entitled Bolívar Forever. This was his first visit to Washington. He also met with U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, and with Michel Camdessus, then the president of the International Monetary Fund, which Chávez would later call a “revolting instrument of exploitation at the service of the world’s powerful.”1 In all the capitals he visited, presidents and prime ministers received him with a degree of curiosity. During all of these encounters, he made a point of appearing a modern, moderate politician.
“We are facing a new century, and I am its legitimate representative,” he immodestly declared in Washington. In what remained of 1999 he visited twenty-three more countries, outdoing even Carlos Andrés Pérez, who had previously been known for being Venezuela’s most globetrotting president.
At the close of 1999, his debut year as president of Venezuela, Chávez had logged fifty-two days out of the country, traveling in an old Boeing 737 that had been in service for twenty-four years. It was hardly the most appropriate plane for transatlantic voyages: a single trip to Europe required four stopovers, a logistical nightmare that took some eighteen hours. The aircraft, moreover, was occasionally refused by certain airports because of the loud noise it made upon landing. The head of state prohibited the consumption of alcohol on the presidential plane, a rule that was not well received by some of his ministers. He did not like unusual food, either, and when he traveled he would bring his own cook along, as well as his doctor, Luis Chang Cheng, an internist of Asian descent who watchdogged his cholesterol. On occasion he would be joined by his daughters from his first marriage. The first lady, who had a fear of flying, traveled little with the president, joining him only when she managed to overcome her nerves or when her jealousy reached the breaking point. When she did make it onto the plane, it was always with a rosary in her hands. Hyperkinetic and sleeping little, Chávez would pass the time reviewing papers and meeting with his ministers, turning the presidential plane into his personal airborne office.
The former military officer from Barinas was literally charmed by the world that opened up before him. In some ways, he was like a VIP tourist, and he left behind the antineoliberal sermons to smile and pose for photos when he rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and tossed out the first pitch at a baseball game in Shea Stadium. At a businessmen’s breakfast in Houston, he crossed paths with former president George Bush and his son, then governor of Texas. Both of them, of course, were unaware that in a few years’ time, once George W. Bush was president of the United States, Chávez would call him enemy number one and claim that the American chief executive was attempting to destabilize and even overthrow his government. From then on, Chávez would refer to George W. Bush as “the man who owns the Venezuelan opposition.”
Three months later, the Venezuelan president returned to New York to speak for the first time at the U.N. General Assembly. At the U.S. mission to the U.N., he had his second meeting with President Bill Clinton, this time for an hour. He also had the opportunity to shake hands with former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who tried stroking Chávez’s ego by praising his “energy and dedication.” One wonders if the figure of Salvador Allende flashed through the mind of the anti-Pinochet ex-comandante right then. In Washington, he couldn’t resist the temptation of playing baseball again, this time with the officers from the Inter-American Defense College. Then, in a move that would leave more than one of his left-wing comrades flabbergasted, Chávez declared that as a member of the armed forces, he had once dreamed of attending this U.S. military institution.
At the Vatican, he fell to his knees when he laid eyes on Pope John Paul II, placing his hands in front of his face, as if deep in prayer. Exuding serenity, he spoke quietly and gesticulated tactfully, exhibiting a discretion that was quite out of character. Away from his home turf, Chávez’s actions began to reveal a particularly intriguing quality, one that had only just begun to emerge during his campaign. Like the protagonist of the eponymous Woody Allen film, Chávez was a kind of Zelig, or at least a tropical version of him—a mastermind of mimesis, adept at blending in with his environment and his interlocutors. He was spontaneous and irreverent at times, unyielding only when it came to military rituals. He would subvert civil protocol every chance he could, but he would always take care to toe the line to some degree.
At the end of 1999, he embarked on an extensive tour through ten countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, traveling with a team of close to a hundred people. Around this time he began to be perceived as something of a ham, a folksy character. In China, he was received by Jiang Zemin in Tiananmen Square. When taken to see the legendary Great Wall, he broke into a run, leaving his ministers and the rest of his companions dumbfounded. “It reminded me of Rocky, the only thing missing was the music; he communicates that same vitality,” said the famous Venezuelan chef Helena Ibarra, who had been hired to supervise the cocktails for the Chávez delegation during the trip.
His spontaneity and sense of humor—at times ill advised and unsophisticated, at times downright vulgar—have a way of wounding people’s sensibilities and making them uncomfortable. On his first visit to Moscow in May 2001, he tried out a little joke with Vladimir Putin before the two men had formally met. As the Russian premier walked toward him, Chávez jumped into a karate pose before shaking his hand. For a few long moments Putin seemed stunned, until it finally dawned on him that Chávez was making a joke, at which point he smiled courteously. Chávez then changed positions, assuming the stance of a baseball player stepping up to bat, and said with a broad smile, “I’ve heard that you’re a black belt in karate. I’m a baseball man myself.” On another occasion, just after meeting Rosario Green, the former foreign secretary of Mexico, Chávez suddenly began crooning the Venezuelan song “Rosario,” leaving Green bewildered. Some time later, at a Caribbean summit, Green was sitting with a group of colleagues when Chávez suddenly walked up behind her and placed his hands around her eyes as if to say, “Guess who?” His efforts to be likable often have the opposite effect: Green probably interpreted his actions as macho and presumptuous.
Chávez often seems uncomfortable with formalities and protocol, as if he wants to dispose of them as quickly as possible. What he wants is to be loved, says Chirinos, his one-time psychiatrist. “[He is] a man for whom all protocol is simply anathema. To a large degree, [this is] because he was raised and educated in the countryside, humble, simple, where there is no protocol. In a town like Sabaneta, I don’t know if people respect the priest or the civil authority, but in general it is a ‘tú a tú’ with everyone,” says Chirinos, referring to Chávez’s affinity for speaking with people in the familiar. This is a curious characteristic given that he spent more than twenty years, from 1971 to 1992, in an institution as formal, hierarchical, and strict as the army.
In Japan, the Venezuelan president shocked the guards of the Imperial Palace when he broke protocol by giving Emperor Akihito a tight good-bye hug before leaving. It must have amused the emperor, however, judging by the smile that came over his face. Chávez then bid farewell to the guards by thanking them and shaking their hands one by one, a gesture he frequently repeats wherever he goes.
“He plays that affection game to disarm people. Whether or not it works, it’s definitely not the kind of thing you forget. It’s a side of him that is disrespectful but naïve. He plays with that, and I think he does it on purpose. It’s a ploy for seducing people. And it delivers results,” Ibarra notes. In Tokyo, Chávez was yet again unable to resist the temptation to test his pitching arm at Meiji Jingu Stadium. In between sessions of back-to-back meetings, as a kind of parenthesis, he would order his aides to put together moments of diversion. There, he revealed himself to be a man with an astonishing attention to detail, noticing everything that went on around him. One day he surprised Helena Ibarra in the lobby of the luxurious hotel where the delegation was staying. Standing around with a lost look in her eyes as a group of Venez
uelan musicians (also part of the delegation) played a tune, she suddenly felt a hand come to rest on her shoulder and a thick voice whisper in her ear, “‘What’s the matter? Why are you so down?’ Evidently, I was thinking about things,” Ibarra recalls. “That’s the way he is with people, and that’s what gets them hooked, he grabs them in the emotional sense. On the airplane he would stop at every aisle, remembering each and every person’s name, telling them anecdotes. That was what it was like the entire trip.”
Once, she recalls, the president’s bodyguards spent all night asking her to bring some hallacas, a kind of tamale that Venezuelans typically eat at Christmastime, up to the president’s suite. By the time Chávez’s meetings ended at around three in the morning, he wanted to eat some of Helena’s hallacas, but there were none left; his guards had wolfed them all down. In response, the president gave them a military-style punishment, making them do leapfrogs on command.
Though she was not in charge of preparing the commander in chief’s food, Ibarra quickly sniffed out the presidential culinary genome. “He just can’t get enough of things that connect him to his culture, his customs, his history. For him the hallaca and the chigüire are the absolute best. There are certainly people with bolder culinary tastes, people who like to discover new flavors. Not him, he’s very stuck on the things he has always liked. In that sense he’s pretty square.” According to Ibarra, Chávez “seems to eat a lot out of anxiety,” which is easy to see—that is, if the change in his body and all his excess weight are any indication. While in office, he has gained no less than thirty pounds, a far cry from the reedy Tribilín of his childhood.
Hugo Chavez Page 18
