ABSTRACT
The tasteful but unostentatious apartment of the comandante confirms the side of the still largely unknown renegade military officer who has become the most compelling new political figure on the continent. Originally, Hugo Chavez explained, he went into the military to play baseball, but soon he was shocked by its corruptions. Chavez entered the military academy at the time when there was also a growing reform movement; as the son of rural schoolteachers, he was prepared intellectually to become one of its leaders. It was 1982, and he and two other soldiers sat down under a famous tree dedicated to Bolivar and took an oath together to create the “Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement.” When 300 were killed, the stage was inevitably set for a Chavez. Meanwhile, revealingly, out on the streets, some of “the comandante’s” campaign signs read in both Spanish and English: “Chavez: Don’t be afraid.”
