In We Created Chavez, by examining social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the Chavez era, Ciccariello-Maher provides a broad, nuanced account of Chavez's rise to power and the years of activism that preceded it.

Since being elected president in 1998, Hugo Chávez has become the face of contemporary Venezuela and, more broadly, anticapitalist revolution. George Ciccariello-Maher contends that this focus on Chávez has obscured the inner dynamics and historical development of the country’s Bolivarian Revolution. In We Created Chávez, by examining social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the Chávez era, Ciccariello-Maher provides a broader, more nuanced account of Chávez’s rise to power and the years of activism that preceded it.

Based on interviews with grassroots organizers, former guerrillas, members of neighborhood militias, and government officials, Ciccariello-Maher presents a new history of Venezuelan political activism, one told from below. Led by leftist guerrillas, women, Afro-Venezuelans, indigenous people, and students, the social movements he discusses have been struggling against corruption and repression since 1958. Ciccariello-Maher pays particular attention to the dynamic interplay between the Chávez government, revolutionary social movements, and the Venezuelan people, recasting the Bolivarian Revolution as a long-term and multifaceted process of political transformation.

"“Ciccariello-Maher’s history of the Venezuelan left is essential to understanding the Chávez era.”" - The New Republic

"“Terrific.”" - The Nation

"“[A] crisply written social and political history of the critical decades leading up to Chávez's election in 1998. . . . For those who want to see the revolution continue, Ciccariello-Maher has made a critical contribution to our understanding, which is in and of itself enough to recommend this book without reservation. But more than that, We Created Chávez brilliantly demonstrates how social history scholarship can mine the lived experiences of rank-and-file activists and radical leaders for precious stones, and then set those gems in a visible and rigorous theoretical frame that allows us to see history in motion.”" - Socialist Worker

"“I've been looking for this book for years.”" - Socialist Review

"In addition to providing readers with an irreplaceable genealogy of the Revolutionary Left in Venezuela and its role in the making of the present, We Created Chávez deftly illustrates the tensions between constituent and constituted power that make the Bolivarian Revolution a dialectical process rather than a presidential term in office. We Created Chávez is also a masterful contribution to a thankfully growing body of work responding to dominant portrayals of the Bolivarian process in Venezuela enraptured or enraged by the figure of el Comandante.” - Theory & Event

"“In We Created Chávez, George Ciccariello-Maher offers a masterful ‘people’s history’ of Venezuela…. Through Ciccariello-Maher’s analysis, a Venezuela easily and often ignored both by academia and by the popular press becomes visible. It is this Venezuela from which post-Chávez popular politics will be forged; Ciccariello-Maher offers valuable insight into what the coming years may bring.”" - Latin American Politics and Society

"We Created Chavez is likely to be a point of reference for anyone seeking to assess chavismo as a seminal case of popular resistance to neoliberal globalization, as well as its relevance to twenty-first-century socialism." - Hispanic American Historical Review

"If . . . you want an engaging book that, in the service of a revolutionist mythos, narrates the actions and ideas of many people often neglected by scholars, you may appreciate We Created Chavez." - American Historical Review