El entusiasmo en el poder de la palabra: Hugo Chávez y una tradición Latinoamericana

Abstract

When Hugo Chávez appeared on television before millions of Venezuelan people after a failed coup d’état in 1992, he showed up part of what he later would use to rule: the use of words on mass media. During his administrations, Chávez used public discourses as tools for social transformation. Throughout the power of his images, ideas, and labels, Chávez tried to transform social paradigms in Venezuela. His rhetoric gave life to the almost dead enthusiasm for the word as a tool for social-political change in Latin America. This essay explores this rhetoric. It presents the way of renovation of collective identities and cultural and political spaces as a regional heritage. We argue that the History of Latin America has been a continued way to represent and create communal identities taning into account subaltern people.