Charles Hardy's Cowboy in Caracas
Venezuela's Democratic Revolution as seen by an Expat American
Hardys account of the Hugo Chavez years upon his return to Venezuela in 1994.
Cowboy in Caracas A North American's Memoir of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution by Charles Hardy. (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 2007) picks up after his arrival in Venezuela early in 1985 after 19 years serving as a Catholic priest in Wyoming. He had been accepted as an associate Maryknoll priest, and this was his first assignment.
As he soon learned after taking up residence in a barrio in Caracas, the country's capital, he had been appointed to a country on the verge of broad political changes. Hardy returned to Venezuela in 1994 after having left the priesthood and marrying a Venezuelan woman. Cowboy in Caracas is about the charismatic Hugo Chavez as much as it is about the local people and culture.
Chavez was jailed for two years in the early 1990s for his role in a failed coup to take over the government. In 2002, serving as President of Venezuela after having been elected in a landslide in 1998, Chavez was ousted by the corporate and political oligarchy controlling the country's lucrative oil business. The coup took place with the approval of the U. S. State Department. T
Chavez also saw the hand of the U. S. government in regular distorted portrayals of him in leading U. S. media, including the New York Times. Hearing that Chavez had been deposed, his legions of supporters came out of the Caracas barrios and other nearby areas by the thousands and surrounded the presidential palace. This huge, spontaneous show of support for Chavez caused revolt among factions of the military taking part in the coup. The coup collapsed, and Chavez resumed power.
Hardy's affection for the country "comes from having lived for eight years in a pressed-cardboard-and-tin shack in a barrio hidden from the mainstream of Caracas." Hardy admits he writes from the "viewpoint of the oppressed" to give" an important view of Venezuela that is seldom presented."
Hardy takes the reader into the byways and undercurrents of Venezuelan society. In vignette-like diary passages, the author presents a wide-ranging picture of these ordinary and unseen Venezuelans.
75+xii pages. $15.00 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-931896-37-5.
