In Search of Hugo Chávez

ALMOST AS SOON as a collapsing bridge forced the government of President Hugo Chavez Frfias to shut down the only highway linking Venezuela's main airport and capital city in January, the recriminations began. Ch avez's opponents accused him of wasting the country's oil bonanza on politically driven projects abroad while neglecting infra structure at home. His supporters, in turn, charged the traditional elite that governed before him with squandering resources and ignoring fundamental needs for decades. In fact, both sets of charges were nearly identical. And both were right. Venezuela's leaders, Ch avez as well as his predecessors, have long been guilty of misplaced priorities. As with so many things today in Latin America's most politically polarized society, they all share the responsibility for failing to maintain what is arguably the most important stretch of road in Venezuela. Just before Chavez took office in February 1999, Gabriel Garcfa M arquez accompanied him on a flight to Caracas from Havana, Cuba, where the Venezuelan president-elect had visited with Fidel Castro. "I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had just been traveling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men," the Colombian Nobel laureate later wrote. "One to whom the caprices of fate had given an opportunity to save his country. The other, an illusionist, who could pass into the history books as just another despot."