Rebuilding Venezuelan Democracy
In 1988, very few people outside Chile thought that a ruthless dictator like Augusto Pinochet could be removed through the ballot box, just as few people today believe that Hugo Chávez can be removed in Venezuela’s presidential election on October 7. But Pinochet lost, and Chávez appears increasingly vulnerable.
SANTIAGO – Excitement, anxious young faces, the sense of a nation’s best and brightest coming together for a noble cause: the scene was an office building in Caracas, Venezuela, in July 2012. But, to a Chilean like me, it could have been Santiago in October 1988. The campaign headquarters of opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles feels and looks a lot like the headquarters of the “No” campaign against Chile’s military dictator of a quarter-century ago, Augusto Pinochet.
SANTIAGO – Excitement, anxious young faces, the sense of a nation’s best and brightest coming together for a noble cause: the scene was an office building in Caracas, Venezuela, in July 2012. But, to a Chilean like me, it could have been Santiago in October 1988. The campaign headquarters of opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles feels and looks a lot like the headquarters of the “No” campaign against Chile’s military dictator of a quarter-century ago, Augusto Pinochet.