My first life, p.5
My First Life, page 5
‘The Revolution is here! Long live Chávez!’ they shouted. ‘PDVSA will pay you everything you’re owed,’ added the president. Some veteran workers, their faces lined from long years of hard labour, shed tears of emotion. Surrounded by a noisy throng, Chávez climbed onto the tugboat Canaima. He started talking to the captain, Simón, a man with twenty years’ experience navigating the lake. ‘Until today,’ he said, ‘this boat belonged to a capitalist; now it belongs to the people, and the Revolution entrusts it to you.’
Later, under a red awning, he spoke to hundreds of the men who operated the boats, some with their wives and children: ‘My soul,’ he confessed, ‘is the soul of the people. Those who want a Patria, join me! Christ said, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s.” And I say, “Render unto the people what is the people’s.” Step by step, we are breathing life into the transition to socialism. Every day the people will have more power. Every day we will have more freedom. This is an act of independence.’ When he finished speaking, the audience leapt to its feet, shouting, ‘That’s it! That’s it! That’s the way to govern!’
One woman stood out for her energetic cheering for the Revolution. The president noticed her, and invited her to speak. He asked her name, and whether she had a family. She made her way to the front. She was young and well-dressed. She introduced herself: ‘Nancy Williams, twenty-nine years old, I have one son and I’m married, but if you want I’ll get divorced …’ Everybody laughed.
On another occasion, I went with Chávez to the inauguration of some work being done to modernize the Dr José María Vargas hospital in the state of Vargas. ‘Our commitment is human,’ he told me, ‘not only political.’ He walked round the hospital corridors with unassuming simplicity, talking to the doctors, the patients and the orderlies, asking questions, delving into things, finding out about the type of care, the technology, the treatments, the medicine, the food.
He talked to one old man of eighty-six, a former soldier and stevedore at the nearby port of La Guaira who had no pension. Chávez was shocked: ‘The bourgeois state and capitalism exploited this man for years, and when they could no longer profit from his labour they threw him away like a used toy.’ He promised him compensation, and said, ‘We will never be able to do enough to honour this country’s martyrs. We are the descendants of those martyrs. This is a heroic people.’
Afterwards, we went out to a courtyard full of people in white coats sitting on rows of chairs. A white tent with red pillars had been erected. Chávez proceeded to distribute the keys of apartments in a medical residence for young doctors. ‘This year,’ he explained, ‘638 new doctors have graduated. They will go to work in people’s clinics. The day will come when the Cuban doctors go back to Cuba, and we’ll have to replace them in remote places in Venezuela and around the world.’
In front of this appreciative audience, he thanked health professionals. ‘You represent the best of Venezuela. Twenty years ago, infantile mortality stood at twenty per thousand. Today it is down to ten per thousand.’ He assured them the aim of the Bolivarian Revolution was ‘to guarantee a quality, integrated health service to all Venezuelans. The day must come when private health centres are irrelevant.’
Amid the cheering, a middle-aged lady spoke up: ‘My name is Inocencia Pérez,’ she said, overcome by emotion. ‘I bless you and commend you to the Archangel Michael. The day of the coup [11 April 2002], I went all the way to Caracas to defend you. I walked so much my feet bled.’
There are myriad testimonies like this. Millions of poor people worshipped him like a saint. Chávez would often calmly say, ‘I will wear myself out serving the poor.’ And he did. The writer Alba de Céspedes once asked Fidel Castro how he could have done so much for his people – education, health, agrarian reform and the rest. And Fidel replied quite simply, ‘With a lot of love.’ Chávez might have said the same.
Farruco Sesto, the poet and architect who served several times as Venezuela’s minister of culture, told me the following anecdote:
‘One afternoon in Caracas, we were going back to the Miraflores Palace after some event. We were in a 4x4 with Chávez at the wheel, driving slowly, looking around. There were three or four of us in the car. Going down a street in El Silencio [a neighbourhood in the centre of Caracas], he noticed a beggar in rags, half naked, sleeping on a piece of cardboard. Without stopping, he asked, “And that man?” Someone answered, “He’s crazy.” Chávez responded sharply, “How do you know?” And he immediately stopped the car. He got out, telling his bodyguards to leave him alone, and went up to the beggar. He kneeled down and began to talk to him, even embraced him. He stood him up and had a conversation with him that lasted a quarter of an hour. We had no idea what they were talking about. That’s what he was like, compassionate, he wanted to help the needy. And it turned out that under the piece of cardboard lay another homeless person, a young man who was also a drug addict, a crack victim. He embraced him too, and they went on talking. From the instructions he later gave his assistant, we guessed that he’d convinced them to accept his help. Sure enough, next day they joined a voluntary drug rehabilitation programme. “I think we saved them,” commented Chávez.’
When I finished my book of conversations with Fidel, it seemed natural to suggest a similar project to the Venezuelan comandante, so as to show people the less public aspects of his personality. Chávez had become one of the most important leaders in Latin America; the power behind the neo-progressive wave then sweeping across the subcontinent, embodied in a new generation of leaders. In his very different context, Chávez could be seen as a kind of ‘successor’ to the veteran Cuban comandante.
I suggested we do a book of interviews about the less well-known part of his biography: the ‘Chávez before Chávez’. ‘Aha! You want to talk about my early life,’ he said, ‘my first life, because I’ve had several.’ Yes, that was the idea; to provide answers to the questions so many people are asking. People wonder, who was Chávez before he became the public figure everybody knows? What was his childhood like? Where did he grow up, in what circumstances? What kind of a teenager was he? How was he educated? When did he become interested in politics? What did he read? What influences was he exposed to? What was he like as a soldier? What was his geopolitical vision? What ideological tendency did he follow? What strategies won him the elections and took him to power in 1999?
Besides answering those and many other questions that arose during some 200 hours of conversations with Hugo Chávez, this book also aims to be a work of history. Removed from contemporary controversies, it looks at a stage of his life than ended in 1999, one that can now be assessed with a certain tranquillity. Hence it is an intimate history that aims to acquaint us with the person of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías; not just the politician, but the human being that he was, his temperament, his character, his humanity, his sensitivity, his complexity.
We did not touch on his illness, the cancerous tumour in the pelvis, which was announced in June 2011. This is simply because this health problem came up when we had already finished the recordings and I, working on the book, had not seen him for months. On 1 June 2011, a day after announcing his illness publicly, Chávez explained how it had been detected. It happened in Havana. Exhausted by his extraordinary workload, the Venezuelan president confided to his friend Fidel Castro that he was in constant pain and that he felt the effects of this pain most strongly in one of his legs.
The Cuban leader took the information very seriously. ‘There was no way I could avoid Fidel’s eagle eyes,’ Chávez told me. ‘He asked “What’s wrong? What kind of pain?” and started quizzing me like a father does with a son. Then he began calling doctors, getting opinions. He took charge.’ As a result, Chávez underwent two urgent operations, one for a pelvic abscess and the other to cut out a tumour which was, in his words, was ‘almost the size of a baseball’. And everything seemed to have been fixed. On 20 October 2011, after rigorous tests, Chávez declared that it had been ‘scientifically verified there were no active malignant cells in my body; I am free of the illness.’
In January 2012, I sent the finished draft of the manuscript for him to read and revise his answers, as we had agreed. But a few weeks later his problems reappeared, and he announced on 22 February 2012 that a fresh lesion had been detected, ‘about two centimetres in diameter in the same place as the extracted tumour, and this means a new surgical intervention to remove it.’ The operation took place in Havana on 27 February 2012. It was followed by several courses of radiotherapy that forced him to spend long weeks in Havana, maintaining active contact with his followers on Twitter. In April 2012, during Easter Week, he went back to the city of Barinas and at a mass that was broadcast live, surrounded by his family, he moved Venezuelans with his emotional prayer:
‘Christ, give me life. Even though it be a life of pain and suffering, I don’t mind. Give me your crown of thorns, Christ, that I may bleed. Give me your cross, a hundred crosses, that I may carry them. But give me life. Do not take me away just yet. Give me your thorns, give me your blood, I am ready to bear them, but let me live.’
Ten months later, on 8 December 2012, when he had won the presidential elections of 7 October by a wide margin, Chávez made a dramatic speech to the nation in which he revealed that his cancer had returned, that he would be having a fourth operation in Cuba, and that there was a risk that he would not return to Venezuela to take office. He went on to express his desire that the then vice president, Nicolás Maduro, be named the candidate of Chavismo in the event of elections to replace him:
‘If any circumstances prevent me from continuing this presidency,’ declared Hugo Chávez, ‘Maduro must complete it for me. My last absolute, unqualified wish, whole as the full moon, irrevocable, is that in those circumstances, which would necessitate calling new presidential elections, as the Constitution requires, you elect Nicolás Maduro as president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. I ask this of you with all my heart.’
He added, ‘Maduro is a man with a great capacity for hard work, group management, and handling difficult situations. He is one of the young leaders best equipped to continue – if I cannot – with his firm hand, his firm gaze, his heart of a man of the people, his way with people, his intelligence, the international recognition he has achieved, his skill as a leader, as president of the Republic, and to guide – always subordinate to the interests of the Venezuelan people – the destiny of this Patria.’
The news of another operation, that Chávez had announced so dramatically, took me by surprise. I’d had the privilege of being with him a couple of months earlier for the presidential election of 7 October 2012, and more frequently during the previous July, in the first two weeks of the electoral campaign. To me he had seemed in fine physical shape.
It was to be his fourteenth encounter with the Venezuelan electorate.30 The official campaign kicked off on 1 July, with two notable differences from previous elections. First, President Chávez was coming out of thirteen months of cancer treatment. The main conservative opposition parties had decided this time not to split the vote, and formed the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD, Democratic Unity Roundtable). Their candidate, selected via primaries, was Henrique Capriles Radonski, a forty-year-old lawyer and governor of the state of Miranda, who was betting on President Chávez’s physical deterioration.31
But that was a mistake – because at the time Chávez thought he had beaten his illness. In fact, he’d had a complete check-up in June to see if he was in good enough shape to stand the exhausting electoral campaign. The results had been conclusive: there was no sign of any malignant cell in his body. Certain that he was cured, Chávez threw himself into the electoral battle with the energy of a centaur.
On 9 July 2012, he declared publicly, ‘I am absolutely clear of any illness, I feel better by the day.’ Those who had counted on the merely ‘virtual’ presence of the Venezuelan leader during the campaign were surprised by his decision ‘to reclaim the streets’ and begin to criss-cross the length and breadth of Venezuela to obtain a third term. He declared, ‘They said, “He’ll be confined to the Miraflores Palace, running a virtual campaign on Twitter and YouTube.” They made fun of me. Well, here I am again, on my way back, with the indomitable force of the Bolivarian hurricane. I missed the smell of the masses and the roar of the people in the streets.’
I have rarely heard as powerful and exultant a roar as that which greeted Chávez in the streets of Barcelona (Anzoátegui state) and Barquisimeto (Lara state) on 12 and 14 July 2012, respectively. A scarlet torrent of red flags, banners and t-shirts. A tsunami of shouting, singing and cheering. For miles and miles, on a red lorry wending through the multitude, a tireless Chávez greeted the hundreds of thousands of supporters who had come to see him in person for the first time since his illness. They came with tears of joy and kisses of gratitude towards a man and a government which, respecting democracy and the rule of law, had kept faith with the poor, paid the social debt and, finally, promised free education, employment, social security and housing, for everyone.
To deprive the opposition of the least sliver of hope, he would begin his electoral speeches (delivered with no sign of fatigue) by saying, ‘I am like Nietzsche’s eternal return, because in fact I’ve come back from various deaths. Make no mistake, as long as God gives me life, I will be fighting for justice for the poor and, when I leave you physically, I will be with you in these streets and under this sky. Because I am no longer myself, I feel I am the incarnation of the people. Chávez is the people, and now we are millions. Chávez is you, señora. Chávez is you, young man. Chávez is you, little boy. You, soldier. You, fishermen, farmers, labourers and shopkeepers. Whatever happens to me, they can’t get rid of Chávez, because Chávez is now an invincible people.’
He invited me to accompany him on his tour. I had several conversations with him, and I could see how well he was. He was back to his old self, the same enthusiasm, dynamism, sense of humour, charm. We talked about the book. He had obviously read and reread the manuscript, which he thought ‘very good, but a bit long, isn’t it?’ He had also given it to Castro.
‘Do you know what Fidel said? We talked about the book, I told him you were coming, and he said, “Chávez, don’t do what I did, let Ramonet put what he wants, because I know you, you’re not going to have time for it. If they give you the manuscript, you’re going to write another book, so leave the creativity to him.” Fidel respects you very much and says he made too many corrections to One Hundred Hours with Fidel32. So I’m going to take his wise advice, because it’s true, I don’t have time. You have done a splendid job, you write very well, but I am so finicky that if I start correcting, I’ll start crossing things out. And I don’t have time now.’
I felt he was happy to have been able to set down in this book, for generations to come, the truth about his early life.
After his fourth, and last, operation in Cuba in December 2012, Chávez suffered a post-operative lung infection, which developed into a respiratory failure that he was not able to survive. It is well known that, after treatment, the Bolivarian leader was breathing through a tracheal cannula for several weeks, which made it difficult for him to speak. His return to Venezuela to be cared for in the Military Hospital in Caracas was interpreted as a sign of improvement. A few days earlier, in fact, Nicolás Maduro had assured people, ‘The comandante is the best we have seen him in these days of fight and struggle.’
But complications kept arising. On 22 February, Maduro admitted, ‘He has a problem with his breathing and is in intensive care; he is still on an iron lung.’ And on 4 March, Ernesto Villegas, the minister of communication, informed that the Venezuelan president’s health had worsened considerably: ‘There is a deterioration in the respiratory system. There is also a new severe infection. The President has been receiving high doses of chemotherapy. His general state of health is delicate.’
Now everyone feared the worst. And only a few hours later, on 5 March 2013, a shocked Nicolás Maduro announced the distressing news to the world: ‘Comandante President Chávez has died, after a two-year battle with his illness.’ And so ended, prematurely, one of the most important political journeys of our time.
I remembered that moment five years earlier when Hugo Chávez agreed to my suggestion to record our conversations. From that day on, with his characteristic seriousness, the Bolivarian leader committed himself to finding time in his crazy diary to devote to our interviews. He always kept his word. He sent me documents, books, pamphlets, and photos to properly document the story of his early life.
Begun in April 2008 in the heart of the Llanos, on that small ranch which served him as a retreat, our work sessions had gone on for three years in different parts of Venezuela and particularly in his modest quarters in the Miraflores Palace in Caracas.
There, on a small terrace, this affectionate, nostalgic, sentimental president had tried to replicate the sights, sounds and smells of that house and garden of his childhood in Sabaneta: there were tropical plants, whistling parrots, noisy cocks and hens, a typical llanero hammock, and even a wooden hut with a palm thatched roof.
A sign of eternal loyalty to his unforgettable childhood with his grandmother Rosa Inés, in some sense the ‘Rosebud’ of Citizen Chávez. He was the driving force of ‘Twenty-First-Century Socialism’, but he never lost sight of his roots among the people. And he never forgot ‘his first life’.
Ignacio Ramonet
Barinas, 15 April 2008
Paris, 5 March 2013
PART I
CHILDHOOD
AND ADOLESCENCE
(1954–1971)
1
