Download or read book World on the Move written by Paolo Mauro and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-20 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is poised on the threshold of economic changes that will reduce the income gap between the rich and poor on a global scale while reshaping patterns of consumption. Rapid economic growth in emerging-market economies is projected to enable consumers worldwide to spend proportionately less on food and more on transportation, goods, and services, which will in turn strain the global infrastructure and accelerate climate change. The largest gains will be made in poorer parts of the world, chiefly sub-Saharan Africa and India, followed by China and the advanced economies. In this new study, Tomas Hellebrandt and Paulo Mauro detail how this important moment in world history will unfold and serve as a warning to policymakers to prepare for the profound effects on the world economy and the planet.
Download or read book Things Are Never So Bad That They Can t Get Worse written by William Neuman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named Foreign Affairs Best Books of 2022 and the National Endowment for Democracy Notable Books of 2022 "Richly reported...a thorough and important history." -Tim Padgett, The New York Times A nuanced and deeply-reported account of the collapse of Venezuela, and what it could mean for the rest of the world. Today, Venezuela is a country of perpetual crisis—a country of rolling blackouts, nearly worthless currency, uncertain supply of water and food, and extreme poverty. In the same land where oil—the largest reserve in the world—sits so close to the surface that it bubbles from the ground, where gold and other mineral resources are abundant, and where the government spends billions of dollars on public works projects that go abandoned, the supermarket shelves are bare and the hospitals have no medicine. Twenty percent of the population has fled, creating the largest refugee exodus in the world, rivaling only war-torn Syria’s crisis. Venezuela’s collapse affects all of Latin America, as well as the United States and the international community. Republicans like to point to Venezuela as the perfect example of the emptiness of socialism, but it is a better model for something else: the destructive potential of charismatic populist leadership. The ascent of Hugo Chávez was a precursor to the emergence of strongmen that can now be seen all over the world, and the success of the corrupt economy he presided over only lasted while oil sold for more than $100 a barrel. Chávez’s regime and policies, which have been reinforced under Nicolás Maduro, squandered abundant resources and ultimately bankrupted the country. Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse is a fluid combination of journalism, memoir, and history that chronicles Venezuela’s tragic journey from petro-riches to poverty. Author William Neuman witnessed it all firsthand while living in Caracas and serving as the New York Times Andes Region Bureau Chief. His book paints a clear-eyed, riveting, and highly personal portrait of the crisis unfolding in real time, with all of its tropical surrealism, extremes of wealth and suffering, and gripping drama. It is also a heartfelt reflection of the country’s great beauty and vibrancy—and the energy, passion, and humor of its people, even under the most challenging circumstances.
Download or read book We Created Ch vez written by Geo Maher and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since being elected president in 1998, Hugo Chávez has become the face of contemporary Venezuela and, more broadly, anticapitalist revolution. George Ciccariello-Maher contends that this focus on Chávez has obscured the inner dynamics and historical development of the country’s Bolivarian Revolution. In We Created Chávez, by examining social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the Chávez era, Ciccariello-Maher provides a broader, more nuanced account of Chávez’s rise to power and the years of activism that preceded it. Based on interviews with grassroots organizers, former guerrillas, members of neighborhood militias, and government officials, Ciccariello-Maher presents a new history of Venezuelan political activism, one told from below. Led by leftist guerrillas, women, Afro-Venezuelans, indigenous people, and students, the social movements he discusses have been struggling against corruption and repression since 1958. Ciccariello-Maher pays particular attention to the dynamic interplay between the Chávez government, revolutionary social movements, and the Venezuelan people, recasting the Bolivarian Revolution as a long-term and multifaceted process of political transformation.
Download or read book Venezuela written by Steve Ellner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before 1989, US scholars emphasized Venezuela's status as an exceptional Latin American nation. Most importantly, it served as an ideal model for US policy in Latin America. All this changed in the mass unrest during the week of February 27, 1989. This book explores the changing attitudes about Venezuela and it's role in the rest of the world.
Download or read book Autocracy Rising written by Javier Corrales and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2023-02-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Nicolás Maduro reinvented authoritarianism for the twenty-first centurVenezuela, which once enjoyed periods of democratically elected governments in the latter half of the twentieth century, has descended into autocratic rule, coupled with economic collapse. In his new book, Autocracy Rising, veteran scholar of Latin American politics Javier Corrales explores how and why this happened. Corrales focuses on two themes: party systems and institutional capacity. He argues that Venezuela’s democratic backsliding advanced when the ruling party obtained far too much electoral clout while the opposition fragmented. The state then took control of formerly independent agencies of the state. This allowed the ruling party to use and abuse of the law to favor the president—which in turn generated a permanent economic crisis. After succeeding Hugo Chávez in 2013, Nicolás Maduro confronted, unexpectedly, another change in the party system: a rising opposition. This triggered deeper autocratization. To survive, the state was compelled to modernize autocratic practices and seek alliances with sinister partners. In short, Maduro concentrated power, paradoxically, by sharing power. Autocracy Rising compares what occurred in Venezuela to twenty other cases throughout Latin America where presidents were forced out of office. Corrales illuminates the depressing cycle in which semi-authoritarian regimes become increasingly autocratic in response to crisis, only to cause new crises that lead to even greater authoritarianism.
Download or read book The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela written by Dan Kovalik and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at the US threat to "save" Venezuela Since 1999 when Hugo Chavez became the elected president of Venezuela, the US has been conniving to overthrow his government and to roll back the Bolivarian Revolution which he ushered in to Venezuela. With the untimely death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, and the election of Nicolas Maduro that followed, the US redoubled its efforts to overturn this revolution. The US is now threatening to intervene militarily to bring about the regime change it has wanted for twenty years. While we have been told that the US’s efforts to overthrow Chavez and Maduro are motivated by altruistic goals of advancing the interests of democracy and human rights in Venezuela, is this true? The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela answers this question with a resounding “no,” demonstrating that: The US’s interests in Venezuela have always centered upon one and only one thing: Venezuela’s vast oil reserves; The US has happily supported one repressive regime after another in Venezuela to protect its oil interests; Chavez and Maduro are not the “tyrants” we have been led to believe they are, but in fact have done much to advance the interests of democracy and economic equality in Venezuela; What the US and the Venezuelan opposition resent most is the fact that Chavez and Maduro have governed in the interest of Venezuela’s vast numbers of poor and oppressed racial groups; While the US claims that it is has the humanitarian interests of the Venezuelan people at heart, the fact is that the US has been waging a one-sided economic war against Venezuela which has greatly undermined the health and living conditions of Venezuelans; The opposition forces the US is attempting to put into power represent Venezuela’s oligarchy who want to place Venezuela’s oil revenues back in the hands of Venezuela’s economic elite as well as US oil companies. The battle for Venezuela which is now being waged will determine the fate of all of Latin America for many years to come. The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela lets readers know what is at stake in this struggle and urges readers to reconsider which side they are on.
Download or read book Bad News from Venezuela written by Alan Macleod and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the election of President Hugo Chavez in 1998, Venezuela has become an important news item. Western coverage is shaped by the cultural milieu of its journalists, with news written from New York or London by non-specialists or by those staying inside wealthy guarded enclaves in an intensely segregated Caracas. Journalists mainly work with English-speaking elites and have little contact with the poor majority. Therefore, they reproduce ideas largely attuned to a Western, neoliberal understanding of Venezuela. Through extensive analysis of media coverage from Chavez’s election to the present day, as well as detailed interviews with journalists and academics covering the country, Bad News from Venezuela highlights the factors contributing to reportage in Venezuela and why those factors exist in the first place. From this examination of a single Latin American country, the book furthers the discussion of contemporary media in the West, and how, with the rise of ‘fake news’, their operations have a significant impact on the wider representation of global affairs. Bad News from Venezuela is comprehensive and enlightening for undergraduate students and research academics in media and Latin American studies.
Download or read book Dragon in the Tropics written by Javier Corrales and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since he was first elected in 1999, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías has reshaped a frail but nonetheless pluralistic democracy into a semi-authoritarian regime—an outcome achieved with spectacularly high oil income and widespread electoral support. This eye-opening book illuminates one of the most sweeping and unexpected political transformations in contemporary Latin America. Based on more than fifteen years' experience in researching and writing about Venezuela, Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold have crafted a comprehensive account of how the Chávez regime has revamped the nation, with a particular focus on its political transformation. Throughout, they take issue with conventional explanations. First, they argue persuasively that liberal democracy as an institution was not to blame for the rise of chavismo. Second, they assert that the nation's economic ailments were not caused by neoliberalism. Instead they blame other factors, including a dependence on oil, which caused macroeconomic volatility; political party fragmentation, which triggered infighting; government mismanagement of the banking crisis, which led to more centralization of power; and the Asian crisis of 1997, which devastated Venezuela's economy at the same time that Chávez ran for president. It is perhaps on the role of oil that the authors take greatest issue with prevailing opinion. They do not dispute that dependence on oil can generate political and economic distortions—the "resource curse" or "paradox of plenty" arguments—but they counter that oil alone fails to explain Chávez's rise. Instead they single out a weak framework of checks and balances that allowed the executive branch to extract oil rents and distribute them to the populace. The real culprit behind Chávez's success, they write, was the asymmetry of political power.
Download or read book Revolutionary Doctors written by Steve Brouwer and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Revolutionary Doctors gives readers a first-hand account of Venezuela's innovative and inspiring program of community healthcare, designed to serve--and largely carried out by--the poor themselves. Drawing on long-term participant observations as well as in-depth research, Brouwer tells the story of Venezuela's Integral Community Medicine program, in which doctor-teachers move into the countryside and poor urban areas to recruit and train doctors from among peasants and workers. Such programs were first developed in Cuba, and Cuban medical personnel play a key role in Venezuela today as advisors and organizers. This internationalist model has been a great success--Cuba is a world leader in medicine and medical training--and Brouwer shows how the Venezuelans are now, with the aid of their Cuban counterparts, following suit. But this program is not without its challenges. It has faced much hostility from traditional Venezuelan doctors as well as all the forces antagonistic to the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions. Despite the obstacles it describes, Revolutionary Doctors demonstrates how a society committed to the well-being of its poorest people can actually put that commitment into practice, by delivering essential healthcare through the direct empowerment of the people it aims to serve"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Revolution in Venezuela written by Thomas Ponniah and published by David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution under Hugo Chávez truly revolutionary? Some see the president as a shining knight of socialism, while others see him as an avenging Stalinist strongman. But the Chávez government does not fall easily into a seamless fable of emancipatory or authoritarian history, as these distinguished essays make clear.
Download or read book The Inter American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Venezuela written by Rafael Uzcategui and published by See Sharp Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical look at the Chavez regime from a leftist Venezuelan perspective, this account debunks claims made by Venezuelan and U.S. rightists that the regime is antidemocratic and dictatorial. Instead, the book argues that the Chavez government is one of a long line of Latin American populist organizations that have been ultimately subservient to the United States as well as multinational corporations. Explaining how autonomous Venezuelan social, labor, and environmental movements have been systematically disempowered by the Chavez regime, this analysis contends that these movements are the basis of a truly democratic, revolutionary alternative.
Download or read book The Postmodern Military written by Charles C. Moskos and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2000 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assesses contemporary civil-military trends by looking at specific areas in the US military. This book provides the student and defense professional with a foundation on which to base organizational and personal policies. It also tells readers about what life is really like in military, and how it is both the same and different around the world.
Download or read book Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution written by Richard Gott and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authoritative first-hand account of contemporary Venezuela, Hugo Chávez places the country’s controversial and charismatic president in historical perspective, and examines his plans and programs. Welcomed in 1999 by the inhabitants of the teeming shanty towns of Caracas as their potential savior, and greeted by Washington with considerable alarm, this former golpista-turned-democrat took up the aims and ambitions of Venezuela’s liberator, Simón Bolívar. Now in office for over a decade, President Chávez has undertaken the most wide-ranging transformation of oil-rich Venezuela for half a century, and dramatically affected the political debate throughout Latin America. In this updated edition, Richard Gott reflects on the achievements of the Bolivarian revolution, and the challenges that lie ahead.
Download or read book My First Life written by Hugo Chavez and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hugo Chávez’s extraordinary story—in his own words Hugo Chávez, military officer turned left-wing revolutionary, was one of the most important Latin American leaders of the twenty-first century. This book tells the story of his life up to his election as president in 1998. Throughout this riveting and historically important account of his early years, Chávez’s energy and charisma shine through. As a young man, he awakens gradually to the reality of his country—where huge inequalities persist and the majority of citizens live in indescribable poverty—and decides to act. He gives a fascinating description of growing up in Barinas, his years in the Military Academy, his long-planned military conspiracy—the most significant in the history of Venezuela and perhaps of Latin America—which led to his unsuccessful coup attempt of 1992, and eventually to his popular electoral victory in 1998. His collaborator on this book is Ignacio Ramonet, the famous French journalist (and editor for many years of Le Monde diplomatique), who undertook a similar task with Fidel Castro (Fidel Castro: My Life).
Download or read book Two Spies in Caracas written by Moisés Naím and published by AmazonCrossing. This book was released on 2021-08 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Power comes an edge-of-your-seat political thriller about rival spies, dangerous love, and one of history's most devastating revolutions. Venezuela, 1992. Unknown colonel Hugo Chávez stages an ill-fated coup against a corrupt government, igniting the passions of Venezuela's poor and catapulting the oil-rich country to international attention. For two rival spies hurriedly dispatched to Caracas--one from Washington, DC, and the other from Fidel Castro's Cuba--this is a career-defining mission. Smooth-talking Iván Rincón of Cuba's Intelligence Directorate needs a rebel ally to secure the future of his own country. His job: support Chávez and the revolution by rallying the militants and neutralizing any opposing agents. Meanwhile, the CIA's Cristina Garza will do everything in her power to cut Chávez's influence short. Her priority: stabilize the greatest oil reserves on the planet by ferreting out and eliminating Cuba's principal operative. As Chávez surges to power, Iván and Cristina are caught in the fallout of a toxic political time bomb: an intrepid female reporter and unwitting informant, a drug lord and key architect in Chávez's rise, and personal entanglements between the spies themselves. With everything at stake, the adversaries find themselves at the center of a game of espionage, seduction, murder, and shifting alliances playing out against the precarious backdrop of a nation in free fall. A thrilling fictional story based on unimaginable real-life events.
Download or read book Venezuela s Chavismo and Populism in Comparative Perspective written by Kirk A. Hawkins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the populist movement of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and argues that populism is primarily a response to widespread corruption. It defends a definition of populism as a set of ideas and measures populism across Venezuela and other countries. It also explores the influence of populist ideas on political organization and policy.
