We Created Chávez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book, like the revolutionary process it documents, would not be possible without the blind faith and irrational support of many. My dissertation committee—Wendy Brown, Mark Bevir, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Kiren Chaudhry, and Pheng Cheah—let me make what must have seemed like two terrible decisions: to move to Venezuela for no apparent reason and to write a book while also writing a dissertation. I am grateful for their patience and unflagging support. Similarly, my editor at Duke University Press, Valerie Millholland, responded to my proposal with encouragement from day one, despite the fact that it had sprung, only recently and partially formed at best, onto a restaurant napkin. Gisela Fosado has helped to carry the project forth as it ascended from the abstract to the concrete. My thanks go out as well to two anonymous reviewers for Duke University Press, who x acknowledgments truly surprised me with their generosity and helped to improve the manuscript through several drafts. Many friends and comrades read the manuscript and o√ered suggestions that proved decisive for the revised version, including Dan Berger, Lainie Cassel, Fred Fuentes, Kiraz Janicke, Elliott Liu, Naomi Schiller, and of course Je√ St. Andrews, whose incredible images grace these pages and who tempted fate with me on many an occasion to take them. Steve Ellner, Michael Lebowitz, and Gregory Wilpert have proven supportive through the years both as incisive commentators and as the source of a collective wealth of detailed knowledge of the Venezuelan process. I also owe thanks to the editors of Counterpunch, Je√rey St. Clair and the late Alexander Cockburn , in whose digital pages many of these ideas and arguments were first tested. Dante Canoura of Euroamericana de Ediciones was kind enough to allow me to reprint epigraphs from the lyrics of Alí Primera. My deepest debt of gratitude goes to the subject of this book, the bravo pueblo venezolano, whose inspirational actions occasionally confound analysis and whose singular multiplicity makes the task of this book—and especially that of acknowledgment—impossible to the point of absurdity. I therefore will simply say thank you to x, to y, and to z for the example that you provide and the path that you light. Those whom I came to know concretely and often accidentally taught me the importance of this openended acknowledgment, since they were but few among many millions. Thanks to the fiercely a√ectionate community of 23 de Enero, to those I interviewed and those I spoke with less formally, and especially to my students from the Venezuelan School of Planning. Both in Venezuela and closer to home, I am indebted to the many inspiring comrades who continue to bring the ruckus and build the new world in our hearts: you are the air I breathe, and this work would have been impossible without you. Thank you Abbey and Oakley Francisco for making writing di≈cult, for promising joy and love as the perennial temptation that awaits where work ends. This opposition is only apparent, however, as they infuse these pages. Loving thanks, too, to Oakley’s incredible birth parents, Matt and Missa, who gave us more gift than one, inviting us into their families as they joined our expanding circle of Abu and Aba, Nonno and Sasa. This circle would not be complete without our dearest Je√ and Alicia, Oak’s ‘‘guard dogs,’’ whose love we can feel even from a vast distance and whose new addition we breathlessly await. For their indescribable contributions to the rebellious joy of my past, present, and future, I dedicate this book to Abbey and acknowledgments xi Oakley. I also dedicate it to the memory of Joel Olson, who read and discussed the manuscript with me but whose presence in this work far exceeds the comments he gave. I may have changed your mind about Venezuela , but you changed my mind. ...