The Socio-Political Thought of Chavez: Discourse, Power and History (1998-2009)

This study deals with the theme of political discourse in the thought of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias. This discourse is studied from a multidisciplinary viewpoint, on the one hand, using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) understood as a review of the context in which a speech is produced, in order to understand its cultural nature. On the other hand, the discourse is approached from the field of political philosophy to deconstruct the handling in Chavez's speeches of the categories democracy, participation and socialism, which are key in his utterances or speech acts. Finally, an approach based on historical sociology is made to reconstruct and analyze the socio-historical context in which his actions and the diverse moments in the construction of his discursiveness are defined. To accomplish this, a set of speeches emitted by Hugo Chavez during the period from his rise to power in December, 1998, to those pronounced during the execution and triumph of the referendum called to amend the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (CBRV) in February, 2009, are studied and analyzed. The paper concludes by establishing the use he makes of speeches as a convincing factor for collective mobilization and action, as well as the conception and application of diverse concepts of power and the link established with Venezuelan history.