BOOK TOUR
Cowboy in Caracas:
A Personal Account of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution by Charles Hardy
Read the book review by VSN Interim Coordinator Chuck Kaufman

Published by Curbstone Press
321 JACKSON STREET, WILLIMANTIC, CT 06226 TEL: (860) 423-5110 FAX: (860) 423-9242 e-mail: info@curbstone.org
WWW: http://www.curbstone.org

April & May, 2007

READING SCHEDULE FOR CHARLES HARDY 2007

New England:

April 10: East Greenbush Community Library, NY, 7PM.
April 11: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, MA, 7PM
April 12: Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME, 11:30 AM
April 12: Gulf of Maine Bookstore, ME, 7PM
April 13: Peace and Justice Center, Bangor, ME, 7PM
April 14: Camden Public Library, ME, 2PM
April 14: Blue Hill Library, ME, 7PM
April 15: Fare Share Commons, Norway, ME, 5 PM
April 16: The Bolivarian Circles, Boston, MA, 7PM
April 17: The Bookstore, Gloucester, MA, 7PM
April 18: WNPR “Where We Live,” Hartford, CT, noon.
April 18: Mitchell College, New London, CT, 4PM
April 19: WILI 14AM, Willimantic, CT radio interview, 7AM-9AM.
April 19: WHUS 91.7 FM, Storrs, CT, interview 1:30 PM.
April 19: Taping, Lumberyard Journal, Storrs, CT, 2:30pm-3:00pm
April 19: Eastern Connecticut State University, CT, 4 PM
April 20: Connecticut Post interview, Bridgeport, CT, noon
April 20: World Affairs Council, Hartford, CT, 6PM (Mark Twain House Visitors Ctr)

New York and Mid-Atlantic:

April 22: Community Group at Memorial United Methodist Church, NY, 11:30 AM
April 23: Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY, 1:30 PM.
April 23: Catholic Workers Group, Elizabeth, NJ, 7 PM.
April 24: William Paterson University, NJ, 12:30PM
April 25: Dickinson College, PA, noon
April 25: Robin’s Bookstore, PA, 7 PM.
April 26: Villanova University, Villanova, PA, noon.
April 26: Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C., 7 PM.
April 28: Books & Crannies, Middleburg, VA, 7 PM.
April 30: Venezuelan Embassy, Washington, DC, 7PM.
May 2: Rochester Committee on Latin America, Rochester, NY, 7PM

West Coast:

May 5: Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA, 2 PM
May 10: Cody’s Books (San Francisco downtown store), CA, 7 PM.
May 18: South Puget Sound Community College, Olympia, WA, noon.
May 18: Orca Books, Olympia, WA, 7 PM.
May 19: Elliott Bay Book Co, Seattle, WA, 2 PM.

BOOK REVIEW:
This Cowboy is No Cowboy
By Chuck Kaufman
Interim Coordinator, Venezuela Solidarity Network

Cowboy in Caracas: A Personal Account of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution by Charles Hardy, Curbstone Press, 321 Jackson St., Willimantic, CT 06226, 176 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-1-931896-37-5, $15.00.

I met Charles Hardy, author of Cowboy in Caracas: A Personal Account of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution, in October 2006 when he arranged the appointments and logistics for a delegation I led to investigate US interference in Venezuela's presidential election. I believe the delegation members learned as much about Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution from Charlie as we did from all the meetings combined.

The cowboy in the title refers to the fact that Charlie is from Wyoming. It's a bit of an unfortunate title since the word cowboy is identified with Ronald Reagan and the Ramboesque foreign policy that the US has pursued in Latin America and beyond. Charles Hardy embodies the opposite qualities of Ronald Reagan, so don't let the title prevent you from picking up the book.

I highly recommend Cowboy in Caracas for people who want to understand the vast changes in Venezuela and the hope the "Bolivarian revolution" offers for the construction of that better world we often talk about. Fr. Charles Hardy arrived in Caracas in January 1985 as a Maryknoll missionary. For the next eight years he lived in a cardboard and tin house in a government project on the edge of Caracas. The book covers the big and the small changes in Venezuela up to the present day, but it explains them from the perspective of a barrio with no running water, sewers, or public transportation, and few, if any, other government services.

Charlie is no longer a priest and the barrio he has lived in has been replaced with decent housing by the Chavez government. Nevertheless, the story of the last 23 years is told from the eye level of the people who never received any benefit, or even acknowledgement of their humanity, from the old governments. It is told from the perspective of the people who in 1989 spontaneously flooded the streets in a paroxysm of rage and violence when President Carlos Andres Perez implemented neoliberal economic policies and the price of bread and gas skyrocketed. Those same people spontaneously flooded down from the barrios on the hills surrounding central Caracas in April 2002 to demand the return of their president, Hugo Chavez, who was kidnapped on April 12 and returned to power on April 14 thanks to the actions of those millions of barrio dwellers.

The riots of 1989 and the state violence and repression that followed them is what radicalized a young officer named Hugo Chavez and many of his fellow young officers. The coup in 1992 failed "por ahora" [for now] as Chavez said on television when he appealed to his fellow rebelling military units to lay down their arms. Most of us in the United States know nothing of what was happening in Venezuela from the 1989 riots to the 1998 election of a military officer named Chavez who we heard was a leftist.

It's impossible to understand the social progress under the Bolivarian revolution and the hatred of it by Venezuelan elites, US government officials, and corporate executives without understanding the period that preceded it. Charles Hardy tells that story and tells it evocatively as seen from the barrio.

And then came the election of 1998.

Charlie writes that on election night the music that was heard were the songs of Ali Primera, a Venezuela protest singer who died in a suspicious automobile accident in 1985. The hatred and anger of the forty percent who didn't vote for Chavez were masked on that night of December 6 by the sounds of celebration from the sixty percent majority, but "forty years of concentrated power and corruption do not end with a single election," he wrote.

Most of the last half of the book, which covers 1998 to the present, examines the efforts of the Venezuelan elites and their US corporate and government allies to turn back the clock to the days when they had unchallenged control of political and economic power. This includes a look at the media, labor and business groups, civil society, and US "democracy building" projects run out of the US embassy.

The most emotionally compelling chapter is the first person account by his wife, Suzanna. She was one of many people trapped on the bridge near the presidential palace when snipers fired on Chavez supporters and opposition demonstrators – the event that caused the pretext for the April 12, 2002 coup. I felt like I was there with her.

While the actions of Hugo Chavez figure prominently in this era of Venezuela's history and therefore feature prominently in Cowboy in Caracas as well, the book is not about Chavez. It is about the millions of previously marginalized Venezuelans who are changing their country. Near the end of the book Charlie writes, "Love him or hate him, Chavez is not the problem. It is what he represents. An old and evil way of life is dying and those who enjoyed it so abundantly are fighting its death all the way."

This is a book work reading. It is a book worth giving as a gift to someone who would like to know the truth about Venezuela. At 176 pages it is readable in a few hours. Curbstone Press is the publisher. Charles Hardy will be conducting a nationwide book tour in April. His schedule will be posted on the Venezuela Solidarity Network website www.vensolidarity.org when finalized.

Chuck Kaufman is National Co-Coordinator of the Nicaragua Network and Interim Coordinator of the Venezuela Solidarity Network. Both organizations are housed at the Alliance for Global Justice in Washington, DC