"I the Supreme,'' the classic novel by Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos to which Chávez referred, is a brilliant portrait of a president-for-life, one in a subgenre of dictator literature that flourished in Latin America before multiparty democracies began taking root. Whether Chávez is indeed a latter-day caudillo or simply a charismatic populist with authoritarian tendencies or actually a genuine leftist revolutionary is a matter of fierce debate in Venezuela. But many believe that he is so gifted and yet so flawed a leader that he almost seems to be the fictional creation of a Bastos or a Gabriel García Márquez.
In Venezuela, almost everyone is either passionately for Chávez or against him, a Chavista or an anti-Chavista. The poor who feel embraced by Chávez worship the Venezuelan president as their redeemer: ''Hugo the Messiah!'' His equally zealous foes see him as Hurricane Hugo, with the power to transform Venezuela into a Communist backwater like Cuba or, alternatively, a violent, riven republic like Colombia.
Whether they love him or loathe him, Venezuelans say that Chávez, who took office in early 1999, has awakened Venezuela from its political somnolence, empowered the poor and stirred the elite to re-engage after years of inactivity. He has been like a shock therapist, exposing and exploiting the profound class divisions in Venezuelan society that can never be ignored again.
''There is no going back to the way things were B.C.,'' before Chávez, said Nelson Ortiz, president of the Caracas Stock Exchange and a self-proclaimed ''anti-Chavista light.'' ''In the passions that he arouses, Chávez is one in a million. For many generations to come, people will be talking about him and about this very surreal, probably defining, moment in our history." ***