ABSTRACT
Venezuela was an unlikely nation for the type of social and political turbulence that began during the 1990s and peaked following the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998. The rival Liberal leader Antonio Guzmán Blanco gained control and ruled Venezuela between 1870 and 1888. Guzmán Blanco was notoriously corrupt and abandoned the Liberals' democratic commitments. The October 1945 coup that initiated the trienio period of AD rule between 1945 and 1948 deepened the steps toward reform, modernization, and democracy of the previous ten years. Critics of Venezuelan democracy have pointed to two distinct dates signaling the changes that inflicted the most damage on the nation and its political system. In elections held in July 1999, voters gave Chávez's party, the Fifth Republic Movement , absolute control of the National Constitutional Assembly. The most important source of friction at the outset was Chávez's refusal to allow United States surveillance planes to pursue drug smugglers from neighboring Colombia into Venezuelan space.
