Military Radicalism in Venezuela: How Relevant for Other
Developing Countries?  â€œAn Army of the Peopleâ€  That
something interesting and unusual is taking place in Venezuela
first really struck me when, in response to a sarcastic comment
about an anti-war meeting of the 2006 World Social Forum taking
place in an Air Force base, a member of the audience rose and,
in the best pedagogical manner, told us foreigners, â€œLook,
what we have here in Venezuela is not a regular army but an army
of the people.â€  Venezuela is undergoing, if not a revolution,
a process of radical change, and the military is right in the
center of it. How could this be happening, many skeptics ask,
when the military, especially in Latin America, is usually an
agent of the status quo? Others, less skeptical, ask: Is
Venezuela the exception, or is it the wave of the future?  Many
explanations have been advanced for the behavior of
Venezuelaâ€™s military. Edgardo Lander, a noted Venezuelan
political scientist, says that one reason could