48.6 percent in 2002 to 29.5 percent in 2011, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America. Born into a poor working-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chavez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system, he founded the secretive R

ise of a Rebel Hugo Rafael Chavez Frfas was born on July 28, 1954, the second of six sons of primary school teachers who lived in an adobe house in Sabaneta, a town in the western Venezuelan state of Barinas, a region known for its cattle estates. His impoverished parents sent him and his older brother,