Jones, Bart

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Jones, Bart

PERSONAL:

Education: Graduated from Fordham University; Columbia University, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Newsday, Melville, NY, reporter. Formerly worked as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press in Venezuela, and for the Atlantic City Press.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Received awards from the Philadelphia Press Association.

WRITINGS:

¡Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution, Steerforth Press (Hanover, NH), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Newsday reporter Bart Jones is the author of ¡Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution, a biography of the charismatic South American politician that serves as "a nuanced account of the Venezuelan leader's life … that is, if not sympathetic, certainly more balanced than previous ones," according to a reviewer writing for Publishers Weekly. Most readers in the United States know Chávez as the outspoken critic of President George W. Bush. Jones points out that Chávez is a groundbreaking politician in many other ways: unlike the elite that led the country since independence, his ancestry includes African and Native American forebears, he was born in poverty (in a mud hut in the Venezuelan interior), his political plan operates on a unique model of Pan-American nationalism based on the philosophy of nineteenth-century revolutionary Simon Bolivar, and he promotes a program of "social justice" for all citizens of Venezuela. "Dark-skinned, mixed-ancestry Chávez," declared a Kirkus Reviews contributor, "is a mold-breaker in a racist society whose ‘light-skinned elite’ have traditionally not shared power." Donald Rumsfeld, a former U.S. defense secretary, "has likened Chávez to Hitler," New York Times Book Review contributor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan explained; "Chávez has likened himself to Jesus Christ."

Chávez first won international recognition after his failed 1992 attempt to seize power from President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Even though he was forced to surrender to the authorities, according to Jones, many poor Venezuelans saw his stance as an attempt to strike a blow against government corruption. By 1998, Chávez had won much broader support than he had enjoyed before or during his coup attempt, and in December of that year he was elected president with a fifty-nine percent majority of the vote. "Chávez's arrest and imprisonment only strengthened his popularity among the poor," explained Library Journal reviewer Boyd Childress, and "his failure was a critical step in his eventual success." "While gleefully playing the buffoon, he has dismantled and refashioned most of Venezuela's political institutions, taken control of its crucial industries (oil, most importantly) and rewritten its Constitution—twice," declared Kurtz-Phelan. "He has used headline-grabbing rhetoric, aggressive diplomacy and petrodollars to become one of the most famous political figures in the world." Jones's biography, concluded Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush, is an "important chronicle of one of the most compelling figures in politics today."