Hugo Chávez is a Venezuelan soldier-turned-politician who harnessed soaring oil revenues and simmering class resentments to make himself the hub of anti-American sentiment in Latin America. As a colonel, Mr. Chávez led a failed coup in 1992 against the government, which had traditionally represented the interests of the country's monied elite. He was pardoned after two years in prison, and emerged as one of Venezuela's most popular figures.

In 1998 he won election as president and announced he would be seeking to make sweeping changes to benefit the poor. In fact, he proceeded cautiously and succeeded in lowering chronically high inflation. His policies, including the firing of the management of the state-owned oil company that is the source of most of the government's wealth, angered members of the middle class, and in April 2002 he was briefly ousted in a failed coup.