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This book examines the process of dismantling the democratic institutions and protections in Venezuela under the Hugo Chávez regime. The actions of the Chávez government have influenced similar processes and undemocratic manoeuvrings in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Honduras. Since the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in 1998, a sinister form of nationalistic authoritarianism has arisen at the expense of long-established democratic standards. During the past decade, the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution has been systematically attacked by all branches of the Chávez government, particularly by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, which has legitimized the Chávez-ordered constitutional violations. The Chávez regime has purposely defrauded the Constitution and severely restricted representative government, all in the name of a supposedly participatory democracy controlled by a popularly supported central government. This volume illustrates how an authoritarian, nondemocratic government has been established in Venezuela

"Together with the expansive process of human rights constitutional declarations, in addition to the writ of habeas corpus and of habeas data, Latin American constitutions created a specific judicial remedy for the protection of constitutional rights, known as the suit, action, recourse, or writ of amparo. It originated in Mexico in 1857 and developed into the amparo suit of judgment (juicio de amparo), still to be found only in Mexico. In slightly different forms, it spread throughout Latin America and was incorporated in the American Convention of Human Rights. It is similar to the "injunctions" and the other equitable remedies of the United States legal system." "This book examines, with a comparative constitutional law approach, the most recent trends in the constitutional and legal regulations in all Latin American countries regarding the amparo proceeding. It is an up-to-date abridged version of the course of lectures the author gave at the Columbia Law School of Columbia University in the city of New York, analyzing the regulations of the seventeen amparo statutes in force in Latin America, as well as the regulation on the amparo guarantee established in Article 25 of the American Convention of Human Rights."--Jacket