The battle of ideas in the Chávez revolution

"This paper establishes that the ideological roots of the Bolivarian revolution are more robust than what most of its critics claim. Responding to an ideological vacuum in Latin America at the time, the Chávez revolution has nurtured from several traditions: Bolívar’s political philosophy, the authoritarian revival, the revolutionary tradition, and the claim for a distinctive brand of democracy. Each of these themes feed the type of regime emerging in Venezuela, while creating a divide between Hugo Chávez and his opponents, especially regarding how democracy is conceived. Mixing all these components, today Chavismo claims universality for a type of regime advanced to substitute representative democracy, and which can be understood as a mutant resulting from the combination of revolution and democracy. As a result, current trends regarding both political and individual rights are perturbing."--publ. note