Dublin Book Launch: The Battle of Venezuela

dublin | anti-capitalism | event notice Wednesday January 28, 2004 13:57 by pat c

Book Launch: The Battle of Venezuela
Connolly Books, East Essex Street, Dublin 2
6.30pm, Thursday January 29th

The Battle of Venezuela by Michael McCaughan.

(published by Latin America Bureau) £7.99 Available Jan 21.

Hot on the heels of the award-winning Irish documentary ‘The Revolution will
not be televised’, comes ‘The Battle of Venezuela’, a new book in which
Irish journalist Michael McCaughan brings audiences up to date on the
remarkable events taking place in this oil-rich Latin American nation.

The author explains how President Hugo Chavez caught the imagination of the
Venezuelan people and analyses his ‘peaceful, democratic, Bolivarian
revolution’, inspired by independence hero Simon Bolivar.

The book also investigates the failed coup of April 2002 when Chavez was
kidnapped and held incommunicado by dissident army troops only to be
returned to power by an unstoppable popular reaction. The book examines the
anti-Chavez media monopoly which played a crucial part in that failed coup,
stirring up hostility to the president and censoring all evidence that the
deposed leader was being held against his will, and against the will of the
people.

But what has happened since? What has become of the ‘Bolivarian revolution’
which promised to turn Venezuela into a first world nation within ten years?
What has Chavez achieved since being elected in a landslide vote in December
1998? What is the opposition up to since the failed coup and the subsequent
65-day general strike that virtually bankrupted the country?

McCaughan tussles with reactionary hotel owners and police chiefs, visits
radical new rural resettlement programmes, chats to urban gardeners,
soldiers, businesspeople, domestic staff and journalists in a wide-ranging
and accessible account of President Chavez’s Bolivarian project.

This is a critical moment in the extraordinary career of Hugo Chavez and
this book offers a unique insight from a direct witness to the unfolding
events.

Michael McCaughan has spent the past two decades travelling throughout Latin
America, writing for the Irish Times, Guardian and Sunday Telegraph.
Arrested by the Mexican army in Chiapas, (June 1994) dodging bullets in
Paraguay, (March 1999) and exposing corporate Irish misdeeds in Belize and
Colombia, the author has been on the front line of contemporary events and
has an unparalleled grasp of the issues at stake.

McCaughan has visited Venezuela several times since President Chavez assumed
office in December 1998, witnessing the devastating floods in Vargas state,
the rewriting of the nation’s constitution, pro and anti government street
protests and above all, examining President Chavez’s ‘peaceful, democratic
revolution’ with its promises to improve the lives of the majority poor.