Hugo Chávez's election launches Latin America's 'Pink Tide'
- Date
- 6 December 1998 (Chávez elected)
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Latin America
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
On 6 December 1998 Hugo Chávez, a former army officer who had led a failed 1992 coup, was elected president of Venezuela with about 56 percent of the vote, promising to write a new constitution, fight corruption and redistribute the country's oil wealth to the poor.
His 'Bolivarian Revolution' and 1999 constitution inaugurated what became known as the 'Pink Tide' — a wave of left-leaning governments elected across Latin America over the following decade, including Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay. These governments expanded social spending, asserted greater independence from Washington and promoted regional integration through bodies such as UNASUR and ALBA. Buoyed by the 2000s commodity boom, the Pink Tide significantly reduced poverty in much of the region. Its later phase, however, was marked by economic strain, accusations of authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, most acutely in Venezuela, making the movement one of the defining political phenomena of the early twenty-first-century Global South.
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Empires active in 6 December 1998 (Chávez elected)
Related politics & governance events
- The end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela's election in South Africa27 April 1994 (election); 10 May 1994 (inauguration)
- Dissolution of the Soviet UnionAugust–December 1991
- German reunification3 October 1990
- Fall of the Berlin Wall9 November 1989
- Revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe1989 (Autumn of Nations)
- Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika1985–1991 (from 11 March 1985)
Also relevant
- Adoption of the Kyoto Protocol11 December 1997
- Guantánamo Bay detention camp opens11 January 2002
- Launch of the African Union9 July 2002
Further reading
The wider story
The Americas: A Hemispheric History
Brisk single-volume history of the whole hemisphere since European contact.
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