Sizing up Senor Presidente

KATE TAYLOR

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

November 24, 2008 at 5:18 PM EST

In 1992, Hugo Chavez, the future president of Venezuela, was a military commander with vaguely socialist leanings participating in a failed coup against the country's oligarchic government. He surrendered early and easily in exchange for the opportunity to address his men – and all Venezuelans – on national television. Regretting that change was not possible for the moment, he somehow turned his own failure into a galvanizing media moment.

Understanding that sleight of hand is crucial to understanding the much televised leadership of the mouthy Chavez, Frontline producer Ofra Bikel argues in The Hugo Chavez Show (PBS, 9 p.m.) Aired to coincide with the aftermath of Sunday's gubernatorial elections (in which Chavez's side won a majority but lost several key posts), it's a fascinatingly revealing documentary about South America's democratically elected dictator, the man who keeps preaching about a revolution he has never fought, let alone won.

Decoding Chavez is a topic that lends itself perfectly to television because Chavez himself provides so much evidence with Alo Presidente, his weekly talk-show-cum-harangue that can last as long as five hours and is central to the personality cult around the leader. This documentary alternates between insightful interviews with foreign correspondents and Venezuelan journalists and academics on the one hand, and lots of footage from the weirdness that is Alo Presidente on the other.

Again Chavez manages to somehow deflect his own failures, here by demanding his cabinet members justify how land can continue to lie fallow or why 80 per cent of beans need to be imported. As the stammering young ministers (Chavez leads an amorphous populist movement with no experienced cadres) crave forgiveness and promise to do better, the President once again plays the hero of the people.

In some brilliantly Machiavellian twist, he tolerates more dissent from his opposition than he ever does from his loyalists: His ministers behave like lap dogs and a normally supportive newspaper editor was eviscerated on air for daring to point to a crisis in the health-care system, but the Venezuelan critics interviewed here feel free to speak their minds to an international audience.

It might be tempting to dismiss Chavez as a relatively harmless buffoon – commentators here easily acknowledge how often his mouth runs away with him and how empty his threats to turn off the oil pipeline to the evil American empire really are – but it also important to examine his record with regard to the issues that got him elected, because elected and re-elected he was, in a nation that had been democratic since 1958.

After a few brief years in jail following the 1992 attempted coup, a subsequent government dropped the charges against him and Chavez emerged as a popular hero. Taken under the wing of democratic socialists (who have since broken with him), he won the presidency in 1999. His huge popularity with regular Venezuelans saved him from an attempted coup in 2002 when he had pushed through laws allowing land to be expropriated and doubling the government's cut on oil revenues.

Stupidly, most of the employees and managers of the government-owned oil company, which had supported the coup, then went out on a protest strike, but whether in genuine outrage against an impractical policy or simply to protect their special interests, this film does not speculate. Still, a rough kind of democracy ensued, and Chavez got his way, with the help of Wilmer Ruperti, the one shipping magnate who was willing to break the strike and today is reaping the benefits to his own business.

For all his posturing, however, The Hugo Chavez Show reveals how hollow is Chavez's promise to spread the oil wealth through the nation, largely because of his government's incompetence. Housing projects are announced, but builders go unpaid; the unemployed are trained and encouraged to form co-operatives, but they are never taught the basic business skills to run them; a model socialist city is purposed for a remote mountaintop and the President simply will not listen to a community organizer who tells him the slum dwellers do not want to move there. Meanwhile, the President's response to soaring rates of armed robbery, kidnapping and murder is to feature a cheerful walkabout in downtown Caracas on Alo Presidente.

In 2007, Chavez organized a plebiscite on constitutional reform, reform that would allow him to be elected for life. He lost that vote and has abided by the people's decision – at least for now, this doc says. The implication is that Chavez's dictatorial instincts will not allow him to be thwarted for long, and the results of Sunday's elections, in which the opposition made some gains in a clear rebuke to the man's absolute control of Venezuela, may prove the catalyst for crackdown.

And yet this documentary reveals a democracy that appears resilient and courageous in the face of a man flirting with tyranny. Indeed, one reason it is sad to see Chavez so clearly failing his people is because they have so honestly told him in recent votes that while they agree with his social program, they despair of his dictatorial tendencies.