Chavez

Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as]; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was the President of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. He was formerly theleader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which heled until his death.
Following his own political ideology of Bolivarianism and "socialism of the 21st century", he focused on implementing socialist reforms in the country as a part of a social projectknown as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has seen the implementation of a new constitution, participatory democratic councils, the nationalization of several key industries, increased governmentfunding of health care and education, and significant reductions in poverty, according to government figures.[1] Under Chavez, Venezuelans’ quality of life improved according to a UN Index[2] and thepoverty rate fell from 48.6 percent in 2002 to 29.5 percent in 2011, according to the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America.[2]
Born into a working-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez becamea career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system, he founded the secretive Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s to worktowards overthrowing it. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Releasedfrom prison after two years, he founded a social democratic political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998.
He subsequently introduced a new constitutionwhich increased rights for marginalized groups and altered the structure of Venezuelan government, and was re-elected in 2000. During his second presidential term, he introduced a system of Bolivarian...