This is the second of a three part review of Bart Jones’ Hugo! The Hugo Chavez Story. Read the first part Chavez: The Hatred of the ‘Dark-Skinned Yokel’ here and the second part Chavaz: ‘A Subversive in Miraflores’?here.

Build-up to the putsch

It’s impossible to discuss the reaction provoked by the Chavez government, of course, without addressing [...]

Castro comes to visit
In 1971, Fidel Castro went to Chile as a guest of its new president Salvador Allende. The Cuban leader left with a gloomy view of the prospects for the first democratically-elected Marxist government in the Americas. Confiding to associates in private, Castro predicted the tragic defeat of Allende’s Popular Unity experiment two [...]

Venezuela faced renewed criticism after the expulsion last month of two members of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from the country, including HRW’s Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco, after they had published a report accusing the Chavez government of undermining democracy. The expulsion was a foolish and paranoid over-reaction which should not be supported by those [...]

Journalists are too often criticised for being pessimistic, lacking balance and failing to take due recognition of good news. One Irish Independent writer referred to this alleged phenomenon as the “doom and gloom blackout of the Irish Times”.
Admittedly, few journalists are known for injecting humour into their work, without, that is, compromising the integrity of [...]

Jeremy Paxman once explained the secret of his interviewing technique - before speaking to a politician, he simply asks himself “why is this lying bastard lying to me?” In the case of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, a journalist would be well advised to stiffen the measure: “Why is this blood-thirsty, amoral gangster lying to me?” [...]