Which Way Venezuela?

Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution is exciting and exemplary, yet few people know much about where Venezuela is headed. Misrepresentations abound. Data is limited and people interpret it in contrary ways. Information deficit plus skewed interpretations cause many people who ought to support the Bolivarian Revolution to instead doubt or even reject it. Hugo Chavez became President in 1999 and in that year, largely due to the ravages of neoliberal reforms in the 80s and 90s, the Venezuelan poverty rate had reached 50%. The aim and promise of Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution was to not only eliminate raging poverty, but to attain a new system consistent with the highest standards of human fulfillment and development. In the 1999 constitution, Article 299, for example, emphasizes 'human development' as the cornerstone of social judgements and Article 70 states that the 'involvement of people in the exercise of their social and economic affairs should be manifest through citizen service organs, self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms, community enterprises, as well as other kinds of associations guided by the values of mutual cooperation and solidarity.'