The People of the Venezuelan Revolution

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He may not say so himself, but Charlie is from the tradition of ‘liberation theology’, a school of thought which links the emancipatory message of Christian teaching to the here and now, and not just to the promised land of the after-life. Liberation theology has a long and proud tradition in
I suspect that Charles Hardy has been called a communist and a whole lot else besides, and when you read this book it is not hard to see why.
Cowboy in Caracas is a personal account of the momentous events that shook the Venezuelan elites out of their complacency and carefully-crafted delusions of social harmony, and propelled the downtrodden masses onto the centre stage of the 21st century. Charlie makes no attempt at a scholarly analysis of
Beginning in 1985, when Charlie was first sent as a missionary to live in a shack in the Nueva Tacagua barrio (a slum on the periphery of Caracas), the reader is taken on a roller-coaster journey that encompasses the Caracazo massacre of impoverished citizens protesting against the IMF reforms, the insurrection that failed to topple those responsible for the killing, the election of Hugo Chavez to the presidency, the defeat of the US-supported coup and oil executives’ strike, and Chavez’s victory in the recall referendum.
At times fast-paced and at other times almost leisurely, Charlie’s unforgettable vignettes bring to life those whom the corporate media chooses to forget: the maid to a wealthy family who travels for hours to and from her cardboard shack each day to wait on them, the taxi driver who recounts hearing two well-dressed passengers saying they saw no value in teaching elderly people how to read and write, and the unemployed woman, hungry and homeless, who is “with Chavez to the end”.
Paradoxically, the weakest chapter of the book should have been its strongest. Charlie was in the
Charlie’s great strength as a writer is that he tells it as it is. He uses simple words and he writes without rancour, hate or sentimentality. The Venezuelans he describes are three-dimensional characters; you will find neither saints nor cardboard cut-out villains in this book. In the chapter on the Caracazo, Charlie recalls seeing a unit of soldiers shoot a man from his barrio and throw his body down the mountain. A few moments later, Charlie stumbles upon a soldier with an automatic weapon:
“No one was near him. I raised my arms in the air and said, ‘My name is Charlie. I am the priest here. The people here are good people.’ I asked him if he was from the barrio, and he replied that he was from the countryside and had been called into action the day before.
“I could see tears in his eyes as he looked at us. My neighbors began to gather behind me. I felt sorry for the young man and imagined how a youth from Cheyenne, Wyoming, would feel if he were suddenly dropped into the slums of a major US city, alone, having been told that it was one of the city’s most dangerous areas.
“Here he was, faced with men, women and children who probably looked like his own family. But I also knew that if someone threw a rock, he had the power to kill us all.”
More of an adventure story than a polemic, this book is a must for anyone who wishes to discover the human stories behind Hugo Chavez’s rise to power and the emergence of Venezuela as the revolutionary centre of the early 21st Century.
Suitable for the general reader, students, academics and opinion formers alike, the book smashes through the lazy journalistic stereotypes and disinformation campaigns of the corporate media. It opens a window to the
Cowboy in Caracas is available from Curbstone Press at www.curbstone.org for $15 plus postage and packing. Major international credit cards accepted.