This monograph comes at a time when the U.S. and Venezuelan governments are intensifying an ongoing series of acrimonious charges and countercharges. Each country has argued repeatedly that the other is engaged in a political-economic-military struggle for Western Hemisphere hegemony. On a more personal level, the United States maintains that President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is playing a destabilizing role in the region, and is compromising the quality of democracy and the exercise of power in Venezuela and other parts of the Americas. Chavez rebuts that the only destabilizing factor in the hemisphere is President George W. Bush, and that democracy and power long since have been perverted by American capitalists and local elites for their own purposes. And the U.S.-Venezuelan verbal sparing match continues unabated. The author's intent is to explain who Hugo Chavez is, where it appears that he is going, and how he intends to get there; and the implications for democracy and stability in Latin America.