Book presentation at Housmans Bookshop hosted by WRI: Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle by Rafael Uzcategui

Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle analyses the Chávez regime from an antiauthoritarian Venezuelan perspective. It debunks claims made by Venezuelan and U.S. rightists that the Chávez government is dictatorial, as well as claims made by Venezuelan and U.S. leftists that the Chávez
government is revolutionary. Instead the book argues that the Chávez regime is one of a long line of Latin American populist regimes that - "revolutionary" rhetoric aside - ultimately have been subservient to the United States as well as to multinational corporations. The book concludes by explaining how Venezuela's autonomous social, labour, and environmental movements have been systematically disempowered by the Chávez regime, but that despite this they remain the basis of a truly democratic, revolutionary alternative.

Rafael Uzcátegui has contributed to many antiauthoritarian publications in Venezuela and the rest of the world, including CNT, Earth First! Journal, Platanoverde, and Profane Existence. He's been an editor of the long-running Venezuelan anarchist paper, El Libertario, since 1995. His first book, Corazón de Tinta (Heart of Ink), was released in 2001. Since 2006, Rafael Uzcátegui has been the chief investigator for the Venezuelan human rights group PROVEA (Programa Venezolano de Educación de Derechos Humanos), and was co-writer of its documentary, El Masacre de El Amparo: 20 Años de Impunidad (The El Amparo Massacre: 20 Years of Impunity). Since January 2010, he is a member of the WRI Council. He is presently working on a new book on independent and social
movements in Latin America.

Event location: Housmans Bookshop