He arrived in Venezuela in March 1999, just one month after the newly elected president, Hugo Chávez, took office. With plans to start a new life in Venezuela, Daniel Benveniste, a clinical psychologist from San Francisco, would soon become intimately acquainted with Venezuela's collapsing social, economic and political life under the Chávez regime.
Written specifically for the North American reader, The Venezuelan Revolution: A Critique from the Left takes a critical look at the Bolivarian Revolution, the Venezuelan opposition, the North American Left that has supported the Chávez regime, and United States foreign policy as it relates to Venezuela.
After years of being hidden under the rhetoric of a so-called "leftist revolution," news of Venezuela's soaring murder rate, food and medicine shortages, deteriorating economy, political prisoners, corruption, and gross violations of civil rights is finally coming to light.
This illuminating report of the Chávez and Maduro government's corrupt, violent, antidemocratic reign of power for the past seventeen years is profoundly disquieting and thought provoking but it also includes suggestions for US foreign policy going forward.
About the Author: Daniel S. Benveniste, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in Bellevue, Washington. Originally from California he lived and worked in Caracas, Venezuela, from 1999 until 2010.
During that time, Benveniste maintained a private psychotherapy practice while teaching in the master's degree programs in clinical psychology at Universidad Central de Venezuela and in community psychology at Universidad Católica Andres Bello.
After a devastating flood in December 1999, Benveniste helped organize psychological services for survivors. His article, "Intervención en Crisis Después de Grandes Desastres" ("Crisis Intervention after Major Disasters"), was used in various shelters after the flood and became a component of psychological training at several Venezuelan universities.
A clinical psychologist, now maintaining a private practice in Bellevue, Washington, Benveniste is also the author of The Interwoven Lives of Sigmund, Anna, and W. Ernest Freud: Three Generations of Psychoanalysis, as well as the editor of Anna Freud in the Hampstead Clinic: Letters to Humberto Nágera.
