The American government has shrugged off South American politics for nearly forty years. In the meantime, our neighbor to the south has grown into an unprecedented threat. Hugo Chávez, current president of Venezuela and a self-proclaimed enemy of the United States, commands what even Osama bin Laden only dreams of--but few Americans see him as a true danger. This book, by two political consultants who have lived ten years in Venezuela, argues that we should. Chávez's nation is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States. He has more modern weapons than anyone in Latin America. He has strategic alliances with Iran, North Korea, and other enemies of America, yet he has convinced many Americans that he is a friend. Chávez has the means, and the motivation, to harm the United States in a way that few other countries can.--From publisher description.

"The only first-hand report on contemporary Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, by veteran correspondent Richard Gott, places the country's controversial and charismatic president in historical perspective, and examines his plans and programs. This new edition has a chapter on the attempted and failed military coup, Venezuela's recent recall election, and discusses US covert intervention against this democratically elected public official. The spectre of Simon Bolivar hovers once again over Latin America as the aims and ambitions of the Liberator are taken up by Chavez. Welcomed by the inhabitants of the teeming shanty towns of Caracas as their potential saviour, and greeted by Washington with considerable alarm, this former golpista-turned-democrat has already begun the most wide-ranging transformation of oil-rich Venezuela for half a century, and dramatically affected the political debate throughout Latin America."--Jacket.

"A study of the Venezuelan revolution headed by Hugo Chávez, first elected president in 1999, with emphasis on how Chávez took a frail but still pluralistic democracy and turned it into a semi-authoritarian regime, achieving political transformation at great cost to the country's institutions, including its oil industry"--Provided by publisher.