Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a walking knot of contradictions -- a former
             paratrooper who paints landscapes, a former coup plotter who writes poetry.

             Chavez was born July 28, 1954, to schoolteacher parents in Sabaneta, a town in
             the Orinoco River floodplains, 340 miles southwest of Caracas, but left for
             Caracas at age 18 to join the army.

             He attended the Military Academy, which he still calls his ``alma mater, and
             eventually commanded a paratrooper battalion, reaching the rank of lieutenant
             colonel.

             But on Feb. 2, 1992, he led a failed military coup against President Carlos Andres
             Perez that left 56 dead and landed him in prison. Perez was forced to resign two
             years later because of allegations of corruption, and his successor, Rafael Caldera,
             pardoned Chavez and other coup leaders.

             He later formed a legal political movement, the Bolivarian Revolutionary
             Movement 200, but continued to wear his red paratrooper's beret as a symbol of
             his military upbringing.

             Venezuela's ninth elected president in 41 years of democratic rule now paints,
             writes and sprinkles his speeches with quotes from South American independence
             leader Simon Bolivar.

             Chavez has a daughter, Rosaines, with his second wife, Maria Isabel Rodriguez,
             and four other children from his first marriage.

                                                          -- JUAN O. TAMAYO
 

                               Copyright © 1999 The Miami Herald