In addition to and independent of his work at the Julián Pino school, Hugo de los Reyes had spent twenty-two years as an activist for the Christian Democrat party, COPEI, and was eventually named director of education for the state of Barinas during the administration of Luis Herrera Campins (1979–84). That, however, was as far as his political aspirations went, or so it seemed. After thirty years of work, he had finally retired, to devote himself to his small farm, La Chavera, on the outskirts of Barinas, when his son changed the course of his—and Elena’s—life by convincing him that he had a chance to become the supreme authority of his native state if he so desired. And so, riding high on his son’s popularity and motivated by his insistence, Hugo de los Reyes threw himself into a campaign to become governor of Barinas state on the Fifth Republic Movement ticket. And one month before Hugo Chávez became president, his father won the governorship of Barinas state with a three-thousand-vote victory over his rival.
BARINAS IS A CITY of suffocating heat and charms that are mostly found in the haciendas and landscapes that surround it. Aside from the Ezequiel Zamora University of Los Llanos and a couple of McDonald’s, almost every street corner seems trapped in the early 1970s. The same is true of the city’s two spiffiest hotels, which presumably rate three stars each. It is a city that seems to look inward, focusing on itself, its music, its food, and the rhythms of its residents, who wake up early and vanish when the midday sun emerges. The Chávez family, known as “the royal family” among locals, is an inescapable topic here. It is not unusual to hear the inhabitants of Barinas say things like “The person in charge at the governor’s house is not Maestro Chávez, it’s Elena.” In response, the governor’s wife, accustomed as she is to running the show at home, says with a smile, “I wouldn’t exactly call that a lie.”
The president’s mother, who is the head of the local chapter of the Children’s Foundation, is a woman from the countryside: she is friendly and expressive and has a strong character. She also says that her son takes after her in many ways. “His character is a lot like mine. He is direct, when he doesn’t like something, he says so.” He can also be imprudent at times. “Sometimes he says things he shouldn’t say. Afterward he regrets it, but what’s said is said.” She adds that from his father, Hugo Chávez inherited “his sensitivity. My husband is very humane, very sensitive, very easy to get along with.”
Her husband is also a man who should avoid stress. Less than a year after becoming the governor of Barinas, he had to be rushed to a hospital in Caracas, where he was diagnosed with “arterial hypertension crisis with neurological ramifications, manifested by a localized, moderate cerebrovascular hemorrhagic accident.” After a few days in intensive care, the elder Chávez was released from the hospital under treatment for hypertension. In a few weeks’ time, he returned to Barinas to fulfill his gubernatorial obligations and even went on to run for reelection in the regional elections in 2000, which he won with 58 percent of the vote.
The mother of the president looks quite a bit lovelier today than she did twelve years ago, when her photograph was snapped and splashed across newspapers and on TV for the first time, when visiting her son in jail. Back then there was no makeup to hide her anguish, no adornments of any sort, no beauty salon coiffures. Her appearance is carefully tended nowadays—a reflection of her journey from the humble life to an existence at the highest levels of power.
Ever since the elder Chávez became governor, the president’s family life has become a rich source of local gossip in Barinas. The opposition swears that the Chávez family has dipped into state funds to finance the nouveau riche lifestyle they have grown accustomed to and that they have used their influence inappropriately to benefit family and friends. In 2000, the endless speculations led the local parliament to open an investigation to determine whether or not the direct family of the head of state had managed to accumulate more than 8,600 acres of farmland in Barinas state. La Chavera was among the properties under particular scrutiny, due to the opposition’s claim that it had grown from about 200 to nearly 800 acres in the space of five years and had been subsequently revalued at upward of $700,000. The salary of a governor in Venezuela is approximately $1,500 per month.
The elder Chávez, who has emphatically denied all rumors of embezzlement in his administration, has also come across resistance within the ranks of his son’s political party. One stretch of graffiti in Barinas reads, “Enough, old man, retire already! Signed: Fifth Republic Movement.” In March 2004, polls carried out by the Fifth Republic Movement in anticipation of the regional elections in October of the same year did not predict favorable results for Hugo de los Reyes. The possibility of his reelection did not seem to inspire much enthusiasm within his party either, which led to an internal dispute. In the region there were Fifth Republic militants who had been trying to branch out beyond the Chávez family. Months before the elections, the dissenting faction went to Caracas to garner support for an “internal consultation” to select the gubernatorial candidate, but the matter was quickly snuffed out by the president of Venezuela, who also happens to be the president of the party. Hugo Chávez took care of it personally, deciding that his father would be the party’s candidate. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Elena claims that she wasn’t very keen on the idea: “If it were up to me, Hugo would not have been candidate this year, because what I wanted was for us to fulfill our duties and leave with our heads held high, to go calmly, so that we could rest already. So that when we wanted to go to Caracas to see my son, we could do it without worrying about having to work or going to a meeting. That was what I wanted. But no, things got so ugly around there that they said, ‘No, let the teacher stay.’” Ultimately the elder Chávez won the election, garnering 76 percent of the vote.
IN THE TELEVISED PORTRAIT of Hugo Chávez’s family, the second row offers a lineup of the Chávez brothers: Adán, Argenis, Aníbal, Narciso, and Adelis. The youngest, Adelis, a regional manager of the banking group Sofitasa, is the only one of them who has nothing to do with politics. The other four traded in their old lives when their brother assumed the presidency. Before then, only Adán had ever shown an interest in politics: during his years as a student at the University of the Andes in Mérida, he had been an active member of the Party for the Venezuelan Revolution. As for Argenis and Narciso, as soon as their father won his election, they abandoned their previous activities and went to work for the governor’s office.
Many have confirmed that Argenis Chávez Frías, who previously worked as an electrical engineer, is the person who really runs things in Barinas. His job title is secretary of state, a position that does not exist in any other governorship and was invented exclusively for him.
In early 2001, four of Argenis Chávez’s fellow party members accused him of “extorting certain Barinas government contractors”1 and demanded that the party strip him of his position as state coordinator of the Fifth Republic Movement in Barinas. It is believed that the president intervened in the matter and ordered his party’s National Tactical Command to halt the conflict, a turn of events that was leaked to the press. In the end, it was decided to expel the claimants from the party and withdraw Argenis from the regional coordination of the Chávez party movement.
Another Chávez brother, Narciso, nicknamed “Nacho,” also set tongues wagging in the governor’s office, where he began to work after he failed to get himself elected mayor in the town of Bolívar, also in the state of Barinas. In 1999, the press offered a summary of the various accusations against him, all of them involving presumed insider dealings. Narciso, who trained as an English teacher and lived in Ohio for five years, had recommended that certain government contracts be awarded to certain individuals. When asked about it on one occasion, he replied, “To avoid getting stuck with the adecos [Social Democrats], we recommended our own candidates for the contracts.”2
The scandal caused friction between Narciso and Hugo Chávez’s old friend Vladimir Ruiz, who had assumed the role of acting go
vernor when Hugo de los Reyes had been temporarily unable to fulfill his duties. Ruiz, who would later run for governor on an independent ticket in the 2000 elections, stated, “What’s happening is that in Barinas there has been confusion regarding the difference between governor, party, and family. And Professor Chávez is not aware of those limits.”3 Narciso, the “uncomfortable” brother, left the limelight when the president decided to send him to Canada to fill a position at the Venezuelan Embassy there. Not long ago he was transferred to Cuba, where he holds the position of commercial attaché at the Venezuelan Embassy, where he looks after bilateral cooperation agreements.
Aníbal Chávez Frías, who has a degree in education, has also been unable to resist the charms of power. In 2004 he presented his candidacy for mayor of Sabaneta, his family’s hometown, on the ticket of the Fifth Republic Movement and won the election. But the person who wields the most power and influence in the Chávez administration is Adán, Hugo’s oldest and favorite brother. Given that they grew up together under the care of their grandmother, it is hardly surprising that the two brothers are extremely close. Adán, in fact, was the person who first put Hugo in touch with the ex-guerrillas from the Party for the Venezuelan Revolution when Hugo began to conspire against the government. Adán, who studied physics with middling results at the University of the Andes in Mérida, knew about the 1992 insurrection while it was being planned.
Hugo Chávez has acknowledged that his older brother “was one of the people who had the most influence in my political inclinations. He is very modest, and would never say so himself, but he was very much responsible for my education.”4 Previously a physics professor at the Ezequiel Zamora University of Los Llanos, Adán has been at the president’s side ever since Chávez took office in 1999, first serving as a delegate in the Constituent Assembly, later on as the director of the National Land Institute, and after that as a private secretary. In 2004 Hugo Chávez sent him to Cuba as ambassador, a position of paramount importance to the government. In 2006, the president asked him to return and subsequently named him minister of the secretary of the presidency.
Once, when Elena was asked, “What is nepotism for you?” she replied, “I don’t like it at all. First, because we are not politicians. We are a very honest, sincere family with a deep desire to keep helping the country.”5
When Maripili Hernández, the journalist who has been a key figure in the campaigns for the Fifth Republic Movement, was asked whether she thought there might be some nepotism in the government, she replied, “You have to make a distinction between Adán, who has held posts designated by the president, and the position held by the president’s father, which is [awarded] through popular election. In other words, Chávez does not determine those positions, it was the people…. Well, he has to have some kind of leadership…. If they are through popular election, to me that doesn’t seem like nepotism. It wasn’t Chávez, it was the people of Barinas who cast their votes. They could have voted for someone else.”
Beyond all definitions, one thing is clear: never before, at least since 1958, has a president’s quest for power been quite so contagious among his family. After an entire lifetime without ambitions, the Chávez Frías family has discovered a true passion for politics.
THE YOUNGEST PEOPLE in the 2004 televised family portrait were the head of state’s children: Rosa Virginia, María Gabriela, and Hugo Chávez Colmenares, from his first marriage, and Rosinés Chávez Rodríguez, the youngest, from his second marriage. The older children have always shunned the spotlight and remain relatively unknown to the public. Though the president did have his two older daughters join him on the campaign trail leading up to the 1998 elections, Chávez’s children generally maintain a low profile that the Venezuelan press, by and large, has respected. There are neither paparazzi racing after the young women nor impertinent reporters dogging their every step.
Rosa and María, twenty-six and twenty-four, respectively, at the time of the television event, have often stepped in to fill the void left behind by former first lady Marisabel Rodríguez at certain official events, such as the Independence Day parade. They dress and behave discreetly, and their voices are a mystery to most. They never make statements of any sort. Each has given her father a grandchild: María has a young daughter and Rosa, a little boy. The girls have clearly enjoyed certain privileges but in general seem to lead relatively normal lives. This, however, is likely part of a strategy. It is never easy for the press to gain access to the private world of a nation’s president. There is always someone who looks after public relations. Certain security procedures are put into place in order to ensure the family’s privacy as much as possible.
The greatest enigma in the family, however, is Hugo Chávez Colmenares, born in 1981. Unlike his two sisters, the president’s only son has been conspicuously absent from public events. Until mid-2004, when he appeared at the window of Miraflores next to his father, celebrating the victory of the recall referendum, few Venezuelans would even have recognized him. Some people say that Huguito, as he is known, is a troubled young man whom the president has not managed to control. Unlike his sisters, Huguito is rarely mentioned in public by his father. People once close to the president—Luis Miquilena, Nedo Paniz, and Luis Pineda Castellanos—indicate as much.
“The boy had behavioral problems, he has had some problems with the boy. And, I can give you every assurance, [Chávez] is taking care of him,” Miquilena states. It is known that the young man lived in Madrid and spent a period of time in Cuba.
These three children have lived through some very difficult times. First, their father’s military career kept him away from home for long stretches, as did his conspiratorial project. By the end of the 1980s, his marriage to Nancy was already in bad shape. When Hugo Chávez staged his coup in 1992, his children were just approaching adolescence, at thirteen, eleven, and eight years old.
During his first few years in power, Chávez’s preference for his youngest daughter, Rosinés, was overwhelmingly obvious, to the point that the head of state appeared on his official Christmas cards accompanied only by Marisabel and Rosinés. On Aló, Presidente, his endless remarks about his little girl and the amusing things she says and does contrast starkly with what little he has to say about his older children. After Chávez and Marisabel separated in mid-2002, Marisabel moved to Barquisimeto, five hours away from Caracas, and Chávez has not been able to see his daughter as frequently as before.
“Unfortunately, she almost never sees her father, and me, even less,” Elena says with a heavy heart.
As president, Hugo Chávez has proven himself to be ferocious with his political adversaries. And though they have often retaliated in equal measure, his enemies have never crossed the line with his children. There seems to be a tacit code of nonengagement surrounding them: the president does all he can to keep his children away from the public eye, from the power it holds and embodies. Perhaps he wants to protect them from the battlefield that is his own life. Those who oppose him, it must be said, have never gone searching for scandals by sniffing around his family life, nor have they tried to turn it into a space for confrontation.
On that birthday night, however, all those bits of reality suddenly became terribly fragile. Through the television and radio waves, Chávez had effectively chained the country to his birthday celebration, and everyone in Venezuela found themselves almost forced to witness that very private moment. Beyond the need for exposure, it was clear that in the Chávez realm there was a deep confusion regarding what was supposed to be public and what was private. The absence of boundaries between those two spaces is probably what would make a president decide that his birthday celebration was an affair of state as well as a family affair.
CHAPTER 17
2021: Looking Ahead
THE YEAR WAS 1999. JESÚS URDANETA WAS STILL HEADING UP THE Directorate for Intelligence and Prevention Services when President Chávez called him up on the phone and said, “I’m sick of that old bum, always going
after me. Take care of it, will you?” He was referring to the Argentinian sociologist Norberto Ceresole, who at that moment had forty-eight hours to leave the country. The reason: interference in internal affairs. There is no question that Ceresole was not a simple person. He had served as adviser to the Peruvian president Juan Velasco Alvarado from 1968 to 1975 before being exiled to Europe in 1976. When he returned, according to press reports, he established connections with right-wing military groups such as the carapintadas. He also lived and worked in the Soviet Union. He has also been linked to the military dictatorships of Argentina and various Arab governments.
He and Chávez met in Buenos Aires in the winter of 1994. The good feelings were mutual, and toward the end of 1994, they toured the Venezuelan interior together, traveling around in a beat-up old van. Of those days, Norberto Ceresole is believed to be the person who inculcated the ex-conspirator with a theory.
Ceresole’s formula, which was officially published in Madrid in 2000, states that the caudillo guarantees power through a civilian-military party that acts as an intermediary between the will of the leader and the masses. Among other things, this so-called post-democratic model defends the importance of maintaining one unified and centralized source of power.
Venezuelan history is fertile terrain for this type of paradigm: 67 percent of Venezuelan governments between 1830 and 1999 were led or overseen by people linked to the world of the military, of the caudillo.1 The specific case of Hugo Chávez offered an ideal backdrop for this structure, which legitimized the personalist caudillismo and military hegemony as the only hope, the great political solution.
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