The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela

Historian Nelson recreates the dramatic 2002 attempted coup against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, beginning with accounts of citizens who attended the million-person, violent protest that precipitated the three-day power vacuum. He moves to recounting the events from the perspectives of high-level officials, including Chávez himself, to demonstrate how the stories of ordinary chavista and anti-chavista citizens intertwine with the fates of officials in the highest levels of the Venezuelan government and military. Nelson takes readers from the streets to the halls of the presidential palace, from frightened journalists smuggling tapes of riots back to their stations to be put on the air to a terrified Chávez. For a fuller and fairer picture of the events, the book should be read in conjunction with other accounts of the coup, since Nelson is admittedly biased toward the military figures he interviewed. But his status as a foreigner familiar with the culture of Caracas and an experienced journalist and academic gives him a unique vantage point from which to tell the very personal stories of those three days of chaos. (May)