Bolivarian Revolution

The Bolivarian Revolution is a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela led by late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement and later the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The "Bolivarian Revolution" is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule. According to Chávez and other supporters, the "Bolivarian Revolution" seeks to build a mass movement to implement Bolivarianism, popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar's ideas from a socialist perspective.

On his 57th birthday, while announcing that he was being treated for cancer, Chavez announced that he had changed the slogan of the Bolivarian Revolution from "Motherland, socialism, or death" to "Socialist motherland and victory, we will live, and we will come out victorious."

Simón Bolívar has cast a long shadow over Venezuela's history.

Chavez as a military cadet was "a celebrant of the Bolivarian passion story". Chávez relied upon the ideas of Bolívar, and on Bolívar as a popular symbol, later in his military career as he put together his MBR-200 movement which would become a vehicle for his 1992 coup-attempt.

Chavismo policies include nationalization, social welfare programs (Bolivarian Missions), and opposition to neoliberalism (particularly the policies of the IMF and the World Bank). According to Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan socialism accepts private property, but this socialism seeks to promote social property too.Chavismo also support participatory democracy and workplace democracy. In January 2007, Chávez proposed to build the communal state, whose main idea is to build self-government institutions like communal councils, communes, and communal cities.

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