`I hope the rains keep up so they don't come down to vote," said one well-dressed woman arriving at a polling booth in the exclusive Country Club district in Caracas, where she cast her vote against Venezuela's new constitution on December 15th.
Torrential rain fell all day and they, the poor, had difficulty getting to polling booths, battling the rising rainwater which lapped around the doors of their precarious mud and tin shacks on the Caracas hillsides.
Death struck with characteristic indifference; in Naiugata district, on the edge of Caracas, the angle of a school building diverted an avalanche of mud and saved thousands of lives. A few miles away, 800 people who sought refuge in a church were buried under several metres of mud, mistakenly believing they were safe inside God's house.
Venezuela's impoverished majority has given unconditional support to president Hugo Chavez and his "peaceful, democratic revolution", the most radical social experiment in South America since Chilean president Salvador Allende fused Marxism and democracy in 1973, paying for his audacity with his life. In Venezuela however, the army is on the side of the president, himself a former paratrooper.
Under the new constitution, the state pledges to provide health, housing and jobs for its citizens, women's work in the home is to be rewarded with a pension, like any other job, while prisoners have the right to rehabilitation and recreation.
Venezuela boasts the third-largest oil reserves in the world, yet $100 billion worth of revenues have been squandered by corrupt politicians in the past decade. The countryside has ceased to produce food, while millions have been forced into the cities and settled in homes which folded like a pack of cards when the rains came.
At the final "Yes" rally in Caracas last month, half a million people turned out to support Chavez, who delivered a two-hour speech, promising to transform Venezuela into a first-world country within 10 years. A tall order. He criticised reckless macho men who abandoned their children and large landowners who sucked the country dry, but spared particular venom for "the rotten political class which kidnapped the country for the past 40 years".
The crowd enjoyed Chavez's populist style, his vulgar nicknames for political opponents and his attack on business leaders and the Church hierarchy, who have stridently opposed the new constitution. The final result in the referendum was 71 per cent in favour of the constitution, 29 per cent against, with 55 per cent abstention.
The highest No vote occurred in Miami, Florida, over 1,000 miles from Venezuela, where 634 expatriates turned up at the Venezuelan consulate to cast a vote. Seventy-six per cent rejected the proposed magna carta, with just 23 per cent in favour, almost an exact inversion of the result at home. Observers attributed the No vote to president Chavez's friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, which has caused resentment among some Venezuelans living in Miami.
Hugo Chavez Frias, aged 45, grew up among the rugged cowboys of Venezuela's southern plains, where his parents, both teachers, encouraged him to become a painter, baseball player and historian. Chavez particularly enjoyed the tales about his great-grandfather, who led a failed uprising against the brutal dictator Juan Vicente Gomez in 1914.
Chavez joined the army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, becoming a training instructor. In the 1980s he participated in a clandestine army organisation, the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, (MBR200), which plotted to take power with the help of left-wing guerrillas.
Venezuela's guerrilla movement, a powerful influence in the 1950s, was defeated by 1967, but the surviving rebels were unrepentant and dreamed up a new way to defeat the army - by infiltrating their ranks.
Hugo Chavez was one of the conspirators who met guerrillas and discussed ways to organise labour and student groups behind progressive army elements. He was a committed Bolivarian, following the principles of independence hero Simon Bolivar, who liberated Venezuela from Spanish rule in 1811.
The history of Venezuela's armed forces is utterly different from nearby Argentina and Chile, whose national armies consider themselves an elite caste, contemptuous of civilian rulers.
In February 1989, spending cuts by president Carlos Andres Perez led to widespread looting and riots, with army troops sent to restore order, killing hundreds of unarmed citizens. "I didn't join the army to massacre civilians," said Chavez, a sentiment shared by thousands of troops.
Chavez launched an unsuccessful coup in 1992, was imprisoned for two years and on his release set about reorganising the Bolivarian Movement to challenge power through electoral means. In December 1998, Chavez swept home with 57 per cent - having won the highest number of votes in Venezuelan history.
The international press has portrayed Chavez as an old-school military man, preparing to impose a benign jackboot on a cowed nation; "Dictatorial Chavez loved in Venezuela" said the New York Times, warning of creeping authoritarianism while adding that "change has happened without infringing democratic rights and freedoms".
Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa called the new constitution "the suicide of a nation", while the Economist described the constitutional review as a slippery slope to "an almost totalitarian. . . elected dictatorship". The Financial Times delivered an editorial which had the ring of an order, calling on Chavez to "defuse immediate political tensions by adopting a more conciliatory approach to his opponents and by introducing more market-oriented and consistent economic policies". The international media has turned verbal cartwheels in an attempt to define Chavez, who claims he is neither left nor right but "humanist".
The new constitution places the wellbeing of the citizen ahead of corporate profits and opens the door to participatory democracy, while guaranteeing private property and the market economy. Only time will tell whether Chavez can balance the rights of foreign investors while improving the lot of the majority poor.
Chavez has launched an ambitious rural resettlement plan which, if successful, could prove a model of sustainable development for the 21st century. The recent floods accelerated the process, known as the "Bolivar Plan 2000" whereby poor families can leave their hillside homes and move to two rural development zones. The resettled families will receive building materials and temporary state subsidies, forming co-operatives to grow food and market their produce.
The Venezuelan army benefited from a state policy which encouraged soldiers to study in universities, during the 1970S, filling the barracks with doctors, engineers and psychologists. Chavez has sent troops out to poor neighbourhoods, to engage in medical and dental care, build roads and repair sewers and schools.
The key to civilian participation in Venezuela's reshaped political system is through "Citizen Power", a series of measures which include revocation of mandate, whereby a group of citizens can remove any elected representative, from a neighbourhood delegate to the president, by collecting signatures and forcing a plebiscite.
The most remarkable aspect of the unfolding political process in Venezuela has been the open discussion on the future of the country, not just in the national media, which enjoys unlimited freedom of expression but also in parks, supermarkets, bus stops and homes across the country.
Opponents of the process criticised Chavez for "dangerously dividing" the country at a time of deep economic crisis. The reality, however, is that Venezuela was deeply divided before Chavez appeared, as poverty, inequality, unemployment and insecurity tear the nation apart. On an average weekend in Caracas, 80 people are killed as a result of violent crime.
Most of the deaths occur in street violence - a teenager who offers resistance to rapists or a youth refusing to hand over money to a petty thief. Also, the country's prisons are vastly overcrowded, and hundreds of deaths occur in internal disputes each year.
On my first night in the city, after asking directions to a restaurant, a former boxer insisted on accompanying me to eat, fearing for my safety. At a street corner he pointed to a stain on the pavement, "a teenager was stabbed and killed here yesterday," he said, doing little to ease my anxiety.
The two parties which ruled Venezuela for the past 40 years, social democratic Accion Democratica, (AD), and the Christian democrat party, COPEI, have been routed by Chavez, their combined support now adding up to just 5 per cent of voters.
"No one says it's going to be easy," warned Chavez recently, "but together we can make it better." On a European trip, he expressed the same sentiment in more graphic terms: "We are sitting on a time bomb and I have been elected to defuse it." Chavez is probably the only Venezuelan politician who can convince hungry, desperate people to wait years for improvements in their social situation, while guaranteeing labour stability and creating an ideal investment climate.
The risks surrounding the Chavez adventure are immense, as are the odds stacked against him: "Chavez wants to turn this country into another Cuba," Betty Lehrens told me, lowering her voice in case she was overheard. Lehrens belongs to one of Venezuela's wealthiest families. Her parents took off on a cruise ship to Miami on Christmas Day, worried about their security.
Under the new constitution Chavez must put his post up for grabs this year, and if re-elected, will govern for five years, at which point he is entitled to run for one further five-year mandate. "If I don't do my job the people will send me packing," said Chavez, dismissing criticism of his plan to rule the country until 2010.
President Chavez has presided over one of the worst years in Venezuelan history, in which unemployment reached 20 per cent, capital flight soared to $4.6 billion, international brokers advised investors to stay away and 250,000 jobs were lost in the recent floods.
Chavez understands his delicate role as the last line of defence between a hungry people and violent social unrest. "If I don't do my job the people will send me packing," added Chavez, although the guillotine seems more likely for this ambitious tightrope act.