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The Bolivarian revolution: a quarter of a century 
FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign pays tribute to the achievements of the late Hugo Chavez 25 years on from his presidential inauguration
President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez addresses crowds of supporters at the Camden Centre, London, May 14, 2006

ON February 3, exactly 25 years ago, Hugo Chavez Frias was inaugurated as president of the then Republic of Venezuela. Under his political leadership it would, in less than a year, become the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, unleashing a process of radical transformation that would not only transform his country but that would catapult him and his nation into the vanguard of the struggle against neoliberalism. 

In fact, the 1999 Bolivarian constitution of Venezuela was the first anti-neoliberal constitution of the whole continent after a brutal three decades of savage capitalism imposed under the dominant Washington consensus that followed the US-led military coup which ousted democratically elected president Salvador Allende in 1973.

The appeal of Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution was so strong that other countries, in their own nationally specific ways, in what is known as the “pink tide,” followed suit by adopting similar policies to address the inequities created by capitalism in their own states. 

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