Life ChngesEssay Preview: Life ChngesReport this essayIn December of 1998, candidate Hugo Chavez Frias won the Venezuelan presidential campaign among a fearful environment in which nobody seemed to fit. In the following Months, I remember preparing myself at home before taking a three-block walk to the closest mall. I had to remove my watch, my white gold bracelet, and even take my wallet from my rear blue jeans’ pocket. Once on the streets, everything seemed suspicious: people walking behind me, cars driving too slowly or even young people riding their bicycles on the opposite sidewalk. A few days before, three kids of no more than twelve years old had taken my cap while bicycling fast around the same street where I was walking. There was nothing I could do. When I realized what had taken place, the kids were too far gone. Immediately, a mixture of blood, impotence and anger went straight to my head reddening my face and making my hands shake.
In 1998, the Venezuelan president was running to make a comeback. It was time for an energetic and spirited campaign to push the party of socialist, anti-government opposition President Hugo Chavez in a different direction by running a populist, populist campaign. In response to the presidential election, the Venezuelan Socialist Party (PSUV) sought to make an alternative to the United States of America (US) political system. PSUV took out its full-page media advertisement in local newspapers and the media network was flooded. Thousands of young Venezuelans began to leave their homes. More did so at night, mostly to express political dissatisfaction with the system. The PSUV launched its official campaign on November 19th. On that day, PSUV leader Rochas Lopez and the party’s other allies, Chávez, won the popular vote in the Electoral Commission elections on the National Assembly.
The PSUV had the support and support of both the U.S. National Democratic Party (Democratic) and the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party, which was the primary rival to Socialists, was a social democratic party with a history of promoting universal suffrage and socialist policies. PSUV was running a public-relations campaign, so the most effective way to promote socialism was to make the country more tolerant towards poverty. During the campaign, the Socialist Party tried to turn Venezuela into a country of free trade and capitalism.
PSUV’s public-relations campaign proved to be the most effective way to promote Venezuelan socialism. For Chavez, poverty and the power struggle over the country’s socialist constitution were key issues. The Democratic Party of the Americas, the strongest political movement in Latin America, had already tried to win Venezuela’s votes through street demonstration. The campaign brought all parties and civil society together to help Chavez win a majority of seats in the legislature of the General Constituent Assembly. This was considered an opportunity for grassroots reform in Venezuela, since it gave the PSUV and the U.S., which had been waiting for the Chavez campaign to blow, a new opportunity to put Chavez’s corruption under a microscope.
For this effort, Chavez played a pivotal role for PSUV’s grassroots campaign. In this small movement of people, he had some key assets, as he helped get their support into the state legislature. He had a strong financial support and a network of allies around the country. As he led the struggle toward the election in 2009, his campaign had raised many dollars to help win a large majority in the Assembly, but a majority came from the PSUV. Some of his most trusted advisors had also been instrumental in this effort, including Lina Lobbins (one of the richest men in Venezuela, known as “The Big Oil”) whose son is the vice president of the Venezuelan National Assembly (Vancunogo de Nationale socialiste), the Venezuelan Communist Party (PSUV) and the former head of Venezuela’s national army, Juan Pablo Lopez. Lopez was also one of Chavez’s closest advisers. Lopez and Lobbins had been friends for some time. Lopez’s investment would continue for another decade, and the PSUV received money from Lobbins, the wife of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavezís cousin, Alejandra Lopez.
Lobbins’ family and many other Venezuelan people had joined the PSUV as one of their key allies. Although Lopez played a crucial role, Lobbins was unable to deliver an unconditional support to PSUV. And despite the support and donations from PSUV supporters, the PSUV never made enough in its first few months to win elections. That’s because the country had never been truly independent. The result was the dictatorship that was declared in 1995. The coup took place in January 1998, shortly afterwards Chavez declared
While walking to the mall, I remember that something hit me right between the eyes. I could no longer live in a society where my safety was continuously jeopardized; I had to leave the country! At first, my parents denied completely the idea of having their only son living abroad. They argued I hadn’t even finished high school, and we were doing extremely well as Cuban emigrants in their sixth year of exile. Nonetheless, 1 became annoyingly obsessive with the idea of studying a profession in another country. Every morning until the day I left, as my mother now recalls, instead of giving her the “good mornings” (for she was accustomed to waking me up every day before going to school)^ I used to tell her how eager 1 was to emigrate.
Later on, as it usually happens in Latin American countries, extreme political changes led to economic uproar. People were losing their jobs at a high pace, and poverty took place in a setting already disturbed by the absence of social security. At the same time, my father saw how his construction company decayed as the interest rates for mortgages went up nearly to the hundreds. Little by little, we were losing everything we had fought so hard for during the last years. Our house, our cars, and even our strength as a family were disappearing in front of us. Ultimately, my father would have no other choice