Hugo Chávez

A new leader for the anticapitalist movement?

At the January 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Lula's attendance as Brazil's new President was a hurried affair, a stop-over on his way to Davos to attend the bosses World Economic Forum. The real star was the man Lula invited to Brazil.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez arrived at the WSF as, "the uncrowned king of the growing popular movement against corporate globalisation" as one account recalls.

Elected in 1998 to massive popular enthusiasm he had spent most of the following two years drawing up a new constitution, getting it passed in a referendum and then forcing all elected office holders including himself to stand for re-election on the basis of it in 2000.

Towards the end of 2001 Congress adopted 49 laws which embraced radical reforms to land ownership, labour laws and education. These laws prompted the Venezuela's rich and its business class to declare open war on Chávez's government.

So Chávez arrived at the WSF having faced down a coup attempt in 2002 after being briefly ousted for 24 hours, and in the midst of an oil industry strike engineered by the management to try once more to oust him from power.

Chávez was greeted enthusiastically in Porto Alegre. People lined up for hours to hear him speak. The vast hall was too small and many more spilled onto the surrounding streets to listen to him.

He had something to boast about other than his survival in office. By 2002 unemployment was down, school fees had been abolished, allowing 600,000 more children to enter into education. Child nutrition...

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