[NYTr] Chasing Chavez: New Biography Due Out on Venezuelan President Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 11:38:35 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [Well, The Daily News says it's "non-partisan." We shall see...] New York Daily News - August 8, 2007 http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2007/08/08/2007-08-08_chasing_chaacutevez.html Chasing ChC!vez By Carlos Rodriguez Martorell He called George W. Bush the Devil, he loves Fidel Castro and Pat Robertson wants him dead. That much we all know, but who is Hugo ChC!vez, really? Venezuelan journalists Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka, a married couple, followed their president through numerous sources, from childhood buddies to some of his many girlfriends, to come up with the most authoritative biography to date of the most polarizing Latin American political figure in decades. "Hugo ChC!vez" (Random House, $27.95) goes on sale next Tuesday. One of the authors' main challenges was to pick apart the man?s contradictions -- starting with his brazen political theatrics, which are often out of sync with his actual policies. "ChC!vez is an extremely complex man who can transform depending on the audience and his political goals," Marcano said via e-mail from Venezuela. "But that doesn't mean that his rhetoric and his actions never correspond," she added, pointing to the recent nationalization of the phone and power systems and the control over some oil operations. Sometimes the leftist leader seems to be a sleight-of-hand master. As the book reveals, for all his insults to Bush, ChC!vez has spent record amounts of money to lobby firms in Washington in order to improve Venezuela's image in the U.S. "Beyond the anti-imperialist rhetoric, the U.S. is Venezuela's main commercial partner, and there are interests to be addressed," said Marcano. "It wouldn't surprise me," she added, "[if] in the hypothetical case that Barack Obama won the U.S. presidency, we would see ChC!vez visiting the White House." "Hugo ChC!vez," first published in Spanish in 2004, recounts the extraordinary life of the man who grew up poor in the rural town of Barinas dreaming of becoming a baseball star. Inspired by his hero ? the Libertador SimC3n BolC-var ? he headed a military coup in 1992 that can only be described as disastrous. Still, an imposing TV appearance made him a national hero, and after a stint in jail, he went on to win the presidency in a landslide victory in 1999. ChC!vez's media appeal also turned him into a kind of sex symbol. His former girlfriend, Herma Marksman, is quoted in the book saying she felt "like a widow" after seeing her partner of nine years turn into a "messianic figure" and a womanizer. To the authors' credit, they have written a nonpartisan account in an extremely divided country. "Political debate in Venezuela is limited to personal discrediting or clichC)s instead of analyzing issues or proposing ideas," said Marcano. Thus, she added, the opposition has failed to put forward an alternative to promote democratic values, but ChC!vez doesn't help either: "The government demonizes all dissidence and shuns any possibility of dialogue." President ChC!vez is currently planning an amendment to the constitution he sponsored in 1999 to further develop his "Socialism of the 21st Century." "Only when he offers the parliament his constitutional reforms will we know where he wants to guide the country," said Marcano. * ================================================================= .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org . List Archives: https://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ . Subscribe: https://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================