The Politics of Culture in the Chávez Era

The dawn of the twenty-first century was accompanied by a turn to the Left for the Latin American state, heralded by the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. To date, no single book has assessed the manifold impacts that the politics of chavismo had on the cultural sphere. The Politics of Culture in the Chávez Era maps key shifts and trends in cultural policies and political cultures that accompanied Chávez’s four presidential terms (1999- 2013), situating these in the regional context of “Pink Tide” politics. The chapters in this ambitious, interdisciplinary volume offer a range of perspectives, from broad overviews of cultural and media policy, to close readings of varied aesthetic manifestations. Encompassing conventional cultural products, such as recent film and literature, as well as engagements with cultural imaginaries that play out in political protest, urban culture, and grassroots heritage projects, the authors examine how individual and collective imaginaries were negotiated and formed within, alongside or against the state with the advancement of the Bolivarian Revolution.