In We Created Chávez, George Ciccariello-Maher offers a history of Venezuelan politics that is radically at odds with the conventional wisdom among political scientists. He rejects the claim that for decades prior to Hugo Chávez, Venezuela was a model of democratic stability. He argues instead that the political system (or “democracy”—always placed in quotation marks or otherwise qualified [e.g., p. 9]) created by the power-sharing pact of Punto Fijo (which followed the overthrow of the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958) was exclusionary and repressive in its treatment of popular movements. The author dismisses the idea that the Bolivarian Revolution began with the 1998 election of Chávez, and that it is a “story of an evil and all-powerful, would-be dictator centralizing all power in his own hands” (p. 6). Rather, it is the people, the poor and oppressed, who in various moments—particularly the urban uprising in Caracas in February 1989 (known as the Caracazo) and the restoration of Chávez in April 2002 in the face of a coup attempt—“created Chávez” and propelled the Bolivarian revolutionary process forward: “the Bolivarian Revolution is not about Hugo Chávez” (p. 7, italics in original).

The book is also at odds with currents of radical thought that downplay the importance of the state, power, and institutions—as in John Holloway’s call to “change the world without taking power” (quoted on p. 16). Against this view, Ciccariello-Maher advocates what he calls, following Lenin, a struggle for “dual power”: an “ongoing, tense, and antagonistic opposition to the state, straining insistently upward from the bases to generate a dialectical motion allowing the revolutionary transformation of the state and its institutions, with the ultimate goal of deconstructing, decentralizing, and rendering it a nonstate” (p. 19). This strategy implies the use of workers’ councils, popular militias, and other forms of (often armed) self-defense outside and against the state.

The idea of building popular power from below “into a radical pole that stands in antagonistic opposition to the state” (p. 240) implies a militant rejection of constituted power, even under the government of Chávez. Ciccariello-Maher’s “people’s history” is really a history of former guerrillas from the 1960s (some of whom support Chávez, while others do not); Communists who infiltrated the military and rose to senior ranks within the Chávez government; guerrilla leaders who later organized urban militias; students who abandoned the university to join popular movements; feminist, Afro-Venezuelan, and indigenous activists who have fought for recognition within popular organizations; and street activists who organized informal labor, like the strategically important motorcycle couriers. Many of these activists were (and are) wedded to militaristic forms of struggle in which the goal is to annihilate the enemy. Take Valentín Santana, a leader of a revolutionary collective in a working-class neighborhood called La Piedrita, in Caracas: “This Revolution is dirty,” he says. “I think we can cleanse it, strengthen it, but we might need to pass through a bit of a bloodbath first” (p. 85).

On the basis of the verbal violence that crops up throughout the book, one may reasonably surmise that the radical leaders who were excluded and repressed under the Punto Fijo pact—precisely because this was a democratic regime, however “formal” (p. 9)—never underwent the kind of reassessment of democracy and human rights that occurred in countries that experienced repressive military dictatorships. Ironically, Venezuela’s once-vaunted “exceptionalism” may have contributed to the persistence of forms of militancy that are incompatible with democracy and the rule of law. For example, according to Ciccariello-Maher, “Venezuelan political analysis is rife with comparisons to the September 11, 1973, coup against Salvador Allende” (p. 177). Allende is criticized for failing to “arm the people and the workers to defend the government from right-wing aggression” (p. 177). Determined not to make the same mistake, the 2009 Organic Law of the Armed Forces established Boliviarian militias to offset the power of the military hierarchy (p. 249) and prevent the Right from seizing power in a coup. These militias played a conspicuous role in the street clashes in Venezuela in 2014–15 (which occurred after this book was published). They may yet contribute to the bloodbath for which some chavistas yearn, especially as the regime loses electoral legitimacy in the post-Chávez era.

If they missed the revalorization of democracy and human rights that occurred elsewhere in the region, what kind of democracy do chavistas advocate? Ciccariello-Maher emphasizes the importance of direct participation and the exercise of “constituent power”—“that radically unmediated force aimed against those institutions and which itself resists institutionalization” (p. 15). One especially important expression of constituent power is the community council—self-governing local councils that operate throughout Venezuela and may number in excess of 40,000 (p. 244). For Ciccariello-Maher, they represent “a powerful weapon against the corrupt state and local bureaucracies that many hope the councils will eventually replace entirely” (p. 245). According to the author of the law that created these councils, David Velásquez, “what is sought is to transfer power and democracy to organized communities to such a degree that the State apparatus would eventually be reduced to levels that it becomes unnecessary” (quoted on p. 245). Community councils were linked to popular militias through the creation of government-sponsored communes.

The idea that community councils might replace bureaucracy, restrain corruption, and supervise other levels of government does not appear to be working well, even on Ciccariello-Maher’s account. There is growing uneasiness about corruption and opportunism among the chavista rank-and-file. Chávez may have “proven himself,” as he suggests, but many of his militant supporters believe that “most of his advisors are merely corrupt opportunists” (p. 84). Ciccariello-Maher interprets this rather benignly to mean that people can distinguish between the president and the revolutionary process, but a more skeptical interpretation is that the Bolivarian Revolution has always been vulnerable to what the author is most keen to deny: excessive reliance on the personal leadership qualities of Chávez. The Bolivarian Revolution is about Hugo Chávez.

Whether the reader agrees with We Created Chávez, or not, the analysis it contains helps explain some of the more puzzling aspects of contemporary Venezuela. One cannot fathom the intense antagonism between the government and the opposition, the repeated warning by government officials of coups and conspiracies, the intensity of political polarization, the periodic explosions of violence and repression, or the role of militias and community councils without a grasp of the history provided by the author. At the same time, the book is a testament to the failure of chavismo to grapple with the question of democracy and human rights. However flawed the pact of Punto Fijo may have been, and this book provides persuasive evidence of its exclusionary and repressive features, the Bolivarian Revolution has been unable to create a viable alternative to democracy based on competitive elections.

“I fail to see the impossibility of the Boliviarian process,” Ciccariello-Maher says in the conclusion (p. 253). Yet for many observers of contemporary Latin American politics, the reasons for the impossibility seem all too clear. They are eloquently, if unintentionally, underscored by this fascinating book. Ciccariello-Maher’s sympathetic identification with the poor and oppressed of Venezuela allowed him access to people whose voices are rarely heard, especially outside of Venezuela, and through their stories we gain insight into aspects of the revolutionary process that are rarely appreciated by more critical commentators. Nonetheless, the information and analysis provided in this book points to the serious limits of the Boliviarian Revolution, which have become even more obvious since Chávez himself passed from the scene.