Hugo Chavez; “Humble Soldier” and a Peasant revolutionist.

 "This is the path: the hard, long path, filled with doubts, filled with errors, filled with bitterness, but this is the path, the path is this: socialism." Chavez, 2011.

Why the death of Hugo Chavez has taken centre stage in almost all the news media? Is it because he was a defiant leader who revolutionized the Venezuela? Is it because he just stood strong rebelling against the USA hegemony right under their nose? Is it because he paved way for “New Socialism?”

Whatever it may be one cannot deny the role he played in total reformation of Venezuela. By bringing smiles to the face of his own countrymen.  

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of Sabaneta in Venezuela's western plains. He was the son of a school teacher father and was the second of six brothers. His mother was also a school teacher who met her husband at age 16. 

Hugo and his older brother Adan grew up with their grandmother, Rosa Ines, in a home with a dirt floor, mud walls and a roof made of palm leaves.

Chavez was a very good baseball player, who wanted to pitch in the major baseball league in USA when he was young. He joined the Military at the age of 17 in the hope of honing his baseball skills. But his military carrier shaped his political life.  The young soldier immersed himself in the history of Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes who had overthrown Spanish rule, and his political ideas began to take shape.

Chavez public life became highlighted with the failed coup led by him against the President Rafael Caldera in 1992. As a Para troop commander leading a military rebellion that brought tanks to the presidential palace. When the coup buckled, Chavez was allowed to make a televised statement in which he stated that his movement had failed "for now." The speech, and those two defiant words, propelled his career, shooting his image into the memory of Venezuelans.

Two years later He and his other coup prisoners were released by President Caldera dropped the charges against them. 

In 1998 Chavez formed a political party and ran for the president election, promising to clean up Venezuela's ingrained corruption and break its traditional two-party system. At age 44, he became the country's youngest president in four decades of democracy with 56 present of the vote.

After he took office he called for a fresh constitution and renamed the country as “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” and extended the presidential term from 4 years to 5.  In 2000 his close relationship with Cuba and his confrontational style ended him losing the middle class supporter who voted for him. There were attempts by his opponents to remove him from power. This all ended in a blood bath in 2002 with a failed coup led by Rebellious military officers detained the president and announced he had resigned. But within two days, he returned to power with the help of military loyalists amid massive protests by his supporters.

Chavez emerged as strong president.  He defeated an opposition-led strike that paralyzed the country's oil industry and fired thousands of state oil company employees. The coup also turned Chavez against the U.S. government more, which had quickly recognized the temporary leader who briefly replaced him.

Chavez, created political and economic relationships that excluded USA and its allies. He categorically denounced the existence of Israel.  He strengthened the ties with Iran and Syria in large part; it seemed, due to their shared bitterness toward the U.S. government. Despite the souring relationship, Chavez kept selling the bulk of Venezuela's oil to the United States.

One cannot forget the remark he made in the U.N. General Assembly, he called President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulphur after the U.S. president's address. And At a summit in 2007, he repeatedly called Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist, prompting Spain's King Juan Carlos to snap, "Why don't you shut up?" 

Critics saw Chavez as a typical Latin American political-military leader, a strongman who ruled through force of personality and showed disregard for democratic rules. Chavez concentrated power in his hands with allies who dominated the congress and justices who controlled the Supreme Court. But, Chavez maintained a core of supporters who stayed loyal to their "comandante" until the end.

Chavez will be remembered as a "humble soldier" as he used to name himself, in a battle for socialism and against U.S. hegemony.  Chavez used his country's vast oil wealth to launch social programs that included state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programs. Poverty declined during Chavez's presidency in the middle of a historic boom in oil earnings. 

He will be remembered for truing the rest of the world attention towards a Latin American nation.  As the country with the world's biggest proven oil reserves took a turn to the left under its unconventional leader, who considered himself above all else a revolutionary. 

Chavez was a very good communicator and know-how political strategist, and managed to turn his struggle against cancer into a supporting voice, until the illness finally defeated him.  He identified himself as the heir of Bolivar, who led much of South America to independence.  Chavez also was inspired by his guide Fidel Castro and took on the Cuban leader's role as Washington's chief opponent in the Western Hemisphere after the ailing Castro turned over the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006. 

Supporters compared Chavez with revolutionary legends ranging from Castro to Argentine-born rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Chavez encouraged that out of the ordinary of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long stretches fighting cancer, his out-sized image appeared on buildings and billboard throughout Venezuela. The broadcasting frequencies boomed with his words: "I am a nation." Supporters carried posters and wore masks of his eyes, chanting, "I am Chavez."

In the battles Chavez waged at home and abroad, he enchanted his base by defending his country's poor.

Running a revolution ultimately left little time for a personal life. His second marriage, to journalist Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency, and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines, Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before he ran for office. His daughters Maria and Rosa often appeared at his side at official events and during his trips. He had one son, Hugo Rafael Chavez.

After he was diagnosed with cancer in June 2011, he acknowledged that he had recklessly neglected his health. He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of coffee a day. He regularly summoned his Cabinet ministers to the presidential palace late at night.

Chavez ran himself for one final election campaign in 2012 after saying tests showed he was cancer-free, and defeated younger challenger Henrique Capriles. With another six-year term in hand, he promised to keep pressing for revolutionary changes.

But two months later, he went to Cuba for a fourth cancer-related surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane.

After a 10-week absence, the government announced that Chavez had returned to Venezuela and was being treated at a military hospital in Caracas. He was never seen again in public.

In his final years, Chavez frequently said Venezuela was well on its way toward socialism, and at least in his mind, there was no turning back.

His political movement, however, was mostly a one-man miracle. Only three days before his final surgery, Chavez named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his chosen successor who was a bus driver himself, with a simple smile.

Now, it will be up to Venezuelans to determine whether the revolution can survive, and how it will evolve, without the leader who inspired it.

Chavez said he felt a deep connection to the plains where he grew up, and that when died he hoped to be buried in the savannah. 

"A man from the plains, from these great open spaces ... tends to be a nomad, tends not to see barriers. What you see is the horizon,” Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias (July 28, 1954 – March 06, 2013)