FROM THE PUBLISHER

Hugo Chavez, elected President of Venezuela in December 1998 with a large popular mandate, is the most intriguing political figure to have emerged in Latin America since Fidel Castro. A former army colonel with a philosophy of leftwing nationalism, he staged an unsuccessful coup in 1992 and spent two years in prison, yet his fierce opposition to the country's corrupt and unpopular ruling elite turned him into a popular hero.

Chavez made his mark on the outside world in his first year in office by facilitating a three-fold increase in the world oil price. Reviving Venezuela's membership of OPEC, the cartel of oil-exporting countries, he put new life into this potentially powerful organization.

Chavez has also thrown down a challenge to the neo-liberal orthodoxy imposed on Latin America by the United States. With a radical cabinet, some of whose members were guerrilla fighters in the 1960s, he has formulated a wide-ranging programme of reform. His plans to develop the country's most neglected areas, both the forgotten rural regions and the urban shanty towns, have created huge interest in Latin America itself, where the neo-liberal policies of the 1990s wreaked great havoc. His progress is being monitored in Washington with some alarm.