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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.
"The one source that sets reference collections on Latin American studies apart from all other geographic areas of the world.... The Handbook has provided scholars interested in Latin America with a bibliographical source of a quality unavailable to scholars in most other branches of area studies." —Latin American Research Review Beginning with volume 41 (1979), the University of Texas Press became the publisher of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the most comprehensive annual bibliography in the field. Compiled by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and annotated by a corps of more than 130 specialists in various disciplines, the Handbook alternates from year to year b...
This book explains why Venezuela is so rich in natural resources—it has been producing oil since 1922 and harbors the largest oil reserves in the world—and yet it is also a failed nation of class-divided citizens exhibiting deep poverty in a corrupt, incompetent state. Venezuela is a bipolar nation, where two marked poles in the society exist which have historical origins and are mutually exclusive. The book provides a critical analysis of Venezuela's history, economy and politics and explains the context and implications of the bipolar poles, known as the elite pole and the resentful pole. Both, it shows, have done serious harm to Venezuela’s prosperity. The author describes the vicious circle of oil wealth, corruption, inefficiency and world market dependency and gives recommendations for a better future.
Entre amores y desamores corre la existencia, toda la existencia humana. Y parte de eso nos lo enseña la autora en esta historia novelada, que la descubre, una vez más, como escritora de fuste, decantada, sin temores a lo mundano, capaz de exprimir las desgracias hasta obtener de éstas algún zumo de sublimidad.Vivir el amor y sufrirlo es el acto que más dice sobre la vida y el que le otorga su mejor sentido, revelándonos la vocación, la trascendencia.Pero recrear el amor mediante la escritura y comprometer anímicamente al lector haciéndolo presa de juegos infinitos hasta que haga suyas las angustias, las ansiedades, los momentos de explosión sideral provocados por la misma narración, es obra única de la imaginería, del encantamiento, de los maravillosos hechiceros de la palabra.
A Blessing and a Curse examines the lived experience of political change, moral uncertainty, and economic crisis amid Venezuela's controversial Bolivarian Revolution. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in an urban barrio over the course of a decade, Matt Wilde argues that everyday life in this period was intimately shaped by a critical contradiction: that in their efforts to capture a larger portion of oil money and distribute it more widely among the population, the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro pursued policies that ultimately entrenched Venezuela in the very position of dependency they sought to overcome. Offering a new synthesis between anthropological work on e...
Crime and violence soared in twenty-first-century Venezuela even as poverty and inequality decreased, contradicting the conventional wisdom that these are the underlying causes of violence. The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela explains the rise of violence under both Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro—leftist presidents who made considerable investment in social programs and political inclusion. Contributors argue that violence arose not from the frustration of inequality, or the needs created by poverty, but rather from the interrelated factors of a particular type of revolutionary governance, extraordinary oil revenues, a reliance on militarized policing, and the persistence of concentrated disadvantage. These factors led to dramatic but unequal economic growth, massive institutional and social change, and dysfunctional criminal justice policies that destabilized illicit markets and social networks, leading to an increase in violent conflict resolution. The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela reorients thinking about violence and its relationship to poverty, inequality, and the state.
Written by an international group of experts and endorsed by leading scientists, this multi-author book answers two of today's most pressing questions: the origin of the virus and the consequences of lockdown. Aimed at the general reader as well as at researchers and medical doctors, its span includes previously suppressed data on the origin of the virus, the development of novel mRNA vaccines, the case for a Swedish type of mild lockdown, and analyses of social and political issues thrown up by the pandemic. Evaluating a Pandemic is an incisive account of how civilisation grappled with the greatest world crisis since WWII. Join Charles Pasternak and his authors as they sketch a future of health, equity, and hope.