Eva Golinger's Confidante of "Tyrants"

I've been making my way through a stack of books I received as gifts. As it turns out, two of them were memoirs published at independent presses by female activists from the United States who traveled extensively to a Latin American country. The first one I read was Dana Frank's on Honduras. The second was Eva Golinger's Confidante of "Tyrants."  They couldn't be more different.

The title is misleading because her story is not one of a confidante. Her own narrative does not indicate that either she or Hugo Chávez confided anything to each other. She did very public work based on documents she obtained through FOIA and presented the the work to him (and then to other leaders in Iran, Russia, and elsewhere) so he could use it however he found useful. She interacted with him only sporadically and then only quickly. Indeed, she spends a considerable amount of time dealing with aides blocking her out. (And you find out a lot about the content of hotel minibars around the world and what she eats and drinks from them).

She even starts to contradict the title, which has "tyrants" in quotations. She hesitantly probes at the people she deals with, but never quite explores the political context. Qadafi and Assad just seem like pleasant guys and their cities were so enchanting. How could it be that Assad murdered people later? This quote from Human Rights Watch just before Golinger's 2010 visit sums it up perfectly:

So while visitors to Damascus are likely to stay in smart boutique hotels and dine in shiny new restaurants, ordinary Syrians continue to risk jail merely for criticizing their president, starting a blog, or protesting government policies.

Compare that to this:

There was no evidence of repression or the heavy hand of the state, as Syria had been portrayed in Western media. The city was vibrant and alive, the mix of the old historic buildings and streets with modern infrastructures and venues. The food was delicious, by far the best Middle Eastern food I'd ever had in my life" (p. 242). 

She does the same hesitant questioning about Chávez, but never uses the same incisive analysis she employs for U.S. policy. Chávez was a good guy who only wanted good things. The people around him dragged it all down. Therefore disaster cannot possibly be his legacy.

Both at the beginning and the end of the book, she compares Chávez to Donald Trump. Loyalty over competence. Corrupt practices. Cult of personality. It's here that she could have really explored her interactions with Chávez then and his legacy now more deeply. At the time, she was an uncritical supporter--her English language and government-funded Correo del Orinoco did not reflect concerns about corruption or unlimited power. She does not discuss whether that bothers her now as she looks back. I wonder if others like her, the Sean Spicers of the world, feel bothered.