Hugo Chavez Show, The 1x57 or 1x87

He’s been portrayed as a savior and an autocrat; a hero to his nation’s poor, and a bombastic, would-be dictator eager to launch himself onto the world stage. But who is the real Hugo Chavez? In The Hugo Chavez Show, FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel travels to Venezuela to offer an illuminating portrait of the Venezuelan president famous for calling George Bush a devil and cultivating a close friendship with Fidel Castro. Through interviews with former government officials, Chavez’s associates and ordinary Venezuelans, this documentary chronicles Chavez’s relatively swift ascent to power and his efforts to use the powers of the presidency to stay there. Upon his release from prison in 1994, Chavez began laying the groundwork for his eventual rise to the presidency in 1998. The Hugo Chavez Show chronicles the highs and lows of Chavez’s 10-year tenure—from his successes of pushing through radical laws that sent Venezuelan society veering to the left, to injecting billions of dollars in oil revenue into socialistic government missions and cooperatives. Yet he also faced an attempted coup and suffered last year’s stinging defeat at the polls when Venezuelan voters rejected his attempts to pass laws that would allow him to stay in office indefinitely.

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