Reply #29: A slightly different characterization one would get from Gott's book

[1932]

and from the Aleida Guevara book on Chavez.

When Chavez was in the army he was banished to an outpost in the middle of nowhere.

He used his time there to build ties with the local indigenous tribes. They were actually hunted by whit, european hunters. Chavez brought an end to that. He got the army involved in starting a community theater and recording oral histories and building infrastructure. IIRC the president of the senate is a woman from that tribe. She discusses this in the Guevara book.

What it amounts to is that Chavez sees the army as an opportunity for poor people to make a living and to contribute to society, and not an instrument for protecting the prerogatives of capital.

(Chavez himself joined the army to get a free education and to become a professional baseball player -- it was his only opportunity out of rural poverty -- and he used it as a springboard to address the terrible poverty and unequal distribution of power in Venezuela.)

However, it's also clear from the documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, that a big reason the coup failed is because these people in the army, who believed in these same things, were actually in the army and had the power to undo the coup.