The Roadmap of Chavism to Power. Elections and Propaganda During the First Phase of the Bolivarian Revolution (1999–2006)

Abstract

The research will develop a study on the political process in Venezuela following the electoral triumph of Hugo Chávez Frías in 1998 and his second re-election in 2006. The hypothesis of this work considers that, since 1958, Venezuela went through an accelerated phase of its socio-economic and political transformation, which exceeded the ability of the leadership of political parties to establish new scenarios of representativeness and participation of the Venezuelan democratic system. This situation favored the transition to a populist-autocratic regime established in 1999, under the initial name of the Bolivarian Revolution. One of the highlights of the first phase of the Bolivarian Revolution was the rise of public spending between 2003 and 2005, aimed mostly at covering the cost of social missions, an issue that dismissed the importance of investing in infrastructure and expanding the country’s production capacity. This forced Chávez’s government to accelerate the construction of outstanding infrastructure works to reduce criticism from its political opponents. The election strategy in the last months of the 2006 electoral campaign was aimed at linking Chávez’s image with iconic public works already or partly completed. The results of this research showed that the strategy of presenting the Bolivarian Revolution as a government with material achievements allowed to stimulate in the collective imagination the idea of Chávez’s supposed efficiency as a ruler, and consequently led to the popular support for his tenure in power.