Hugo! : the Hugo Chávez story from mud hut to perpetual revolution / Bart Jones

Includes bibliographical references (p. [475]-530) and index.

Hurricane Hugo -- Roots of rebellion -- A revolutionary is born -- Testing the waters -- A sacred oath -- The conspiracy deepens -- First betrayals -- The massacre -- Waiting in the wings -- Rebellion of the angels -- Jail -- Secret comandante's good-bye -- On the road -- Beauty and the beast -- To power -- A birth and a tragedy -- First defections -- Oil man -- First revolts and the return of the Iran-Contra crowd -- The coup -- The president is missing -- The aftermath -- Oil strike -- The social missions --The recall -- Striking back -- Twenty-first-century socialism.

Hugo Chavez and I were sitting alone on the second floor of the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela. It was close to midnight on April 30, 2007. Venezuela was minutes away from making a small bit of history by taking majority control of four multibillion-dollar oil projects in the eastern Orinoco River basin from international companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron Corp, Conoco, and Total. Like many of Chavez's moves, the oil takeover was controversial. His detractors claimed it was another step in creating a totalitarian dictatorship modeled after Fidel Castro, his mentor. His supporters responded that he was proudly re-establishing national sovereignty over a strategic natural resource that had been exploited for years by foreign companies enjoying a virtual tax holiday. I had a privileged view as Chavez coordinated the takeover. We were alone on the patio from 11:10 P.M. to 1:50 A.M. - prime time for the president. It was my second interview with him in two days - a rare opportunity to spend time with a man flooded by interview requests. In conversations that night and the previous one we had talked for nearly four hours. We covered a lot of territory, from Chavez's impoverished childhood to the 2002 coup in which he was almost killed ... and at least one sensitive topic he had never spoken about publicly and I feared might bring the interview to an abrupt end. Book jacket.