Reading: George Ciccariello-Maher “We Created Chávez”
Since being elected president in 1998, Hugo Chávez has become the face of contemporary Venezuela and, more broadly, anticapitalist revolution. In “We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution,” George Ciccariello-Maher contends that this focus on Chávez has obscured the inner dynamics and historical development of the country’s Bolivarian Revolution. By examining social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the Chávez era, Ciccariello-Maher provides a broader, more nuanced account of Chávez’s rise to power and the years of activism that preceded it. Author George Ciccariello-Maher is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Drexel University.