My First Life

June 27, 2016
The late Chávez, president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, emerged as a powerful and eloquent opponent of imperialism and neoliberalism, particularly of the variety he associated with the U.S., and aligned his government with those of Marxist and socialist states throughout the Americas. In so doing, he earned the admiration of many and the enmity of others, both at home and abroad. This volume, based on a series of interviews with sociologist Ramonet, conducted between 2008 and 2011, immerses the reader in the most mundane details of Chávez’s fascinating life, including Chávez’s year as an altar boy, his favorite baseball team in his youth, and the daily routine of the tank unit in which he served during the 1970s. Frustratingly, the narrative ends at the moment that Chávez took office as president. In addition to the dreariness of the minutiae, Ramonet’s admiration of Chávez verges on the comical, as he praises not only his intelligence, idealism, and determination but his “beautiful calm baritone voice,” his abilities as a “natural pedagogue” and “exceptional orator,” and even his knack for cooking and housecleaning. The result is a sort of hagiography that offers readers a welter of often trivial details without allowing them a clearer understanding of Chávez’s significant contributions to Venezuela and beyond.

June 1, 2016
The late Venezuelan leader--or strongman, or dictator, if you like--tells all.Chavez's first life is over and done with, ended by a long bout with cancer in 2013. But before it ended, inspired by his friend Fidel Castro to do so, he sat down with French journalist Ramonet for what was supposed to be a "100 hours with..." portrait but wound up filling twice that many hours of tape. Ramonet is nothing if not admiring: he heralds Chavez as an intellectual who "picked out concepts, analyses, stories and examples which he engraved on his prodigious memory, and then beamed out to the public at large through his torrents of speeches and talks." He also knew his way around a machine gun (and coup d'etat, of course), a "Belorussian tractor" or Picasso-an canvas or Garcia Marquez-ian manuscript or baseball diamond, and all with a native cunning born of desperate poverty and a sharp ambition to make something of himself. Here, prompted by Ramonet's sometimes-softball inquiries--"Did you pray at night before going to bed?"; "Despite your political activity, you didn't give up baseball"--Chavez recounts his rise to the head of the Venezuelan government, a career trajectory helped along by a willing army and inspired by Bolivarian heroes such as Ezequiel Zamora, who "wanted to change Venezuela and make it a fairer, more just country." Thus it ever is with reformistas, and so it was when Chavez, early on, declared, "one of the main aims of our revolution was to distribute Venezuelan land in a fairer, more harmonious way." Venezuela's 1 percenters and the yanquis who backed them notwithstanding, Chavez seems content to have put an end to the previous oligarchy, which, in terms Castro would doubtless applaud, he calls "a false theoretical construct." Monster or savior? Norteamericano leaders accustomed to the view of Chavez as evil incarnate may value this alternate, assuredly self-serving presentation of facts and events.

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August 1, 2016

Chavez (1954-2013) was undoubtedly one of the 21st century's most influential political figures--an ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro and a thorn in America's side. Elected president of Venezuela in 1998, Chavez brought about the Bolivarian Revolution and social change in Latin America. An army officer who led an unsuccessful coup in 1992, he was elected president four times. In a question-and-answer autobiographical format, journalist Ramonet walks Chavez through the years leading up to his first election. Following a presentation style Ramonet used with Castro in 2008, the volume is divided into three sections and 15 chapters. Although it offers some compelling insights into the mind and experiences of Chavez, much of the text is self-serving drivel, softball questions, and little analysis by Ramonet. Of more use are the extensive introduction and occasional explanatory footnotes. In the years following Chavez's death, Venezuela's experiment with socialism has failed miserably, leaving a nation on the brink of collapse and once again ripe for internal revolt. VERDICT Readers wanting a complete portrait of Chavez are better served turning to the biographies by Richard Gott, Rory Carroll, or Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka.--Boyd Childress, formerly with Auburn Univ. Libs., AL

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