Steve Ellner earned his Ph.D. in Latin American history at the University of New Mexico in 1980. Since 1977 he has taught economic history and political science at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz. He has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University (2004), Duke University (2005), Universidad de Buenos Aires (2010), Australian National University (2013), and Tulane University (2015). Among his book publications are: Venezuela’s Movimiento al Socialismo: From Guerrilla Defeat to Electoral Politics (Duke University Press, 1988); Organized Labor in Venezuela, l958-l991: Behavior and Concerns in a Democratic Setting (Scholarly Resources, l993); Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Polarization and the Chávez Phenomenon. (Lynne Rienner, 2008). Among his edited books is Latin America’s Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-First Century (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). He has published on the op-ed page of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and has been a regular contributor to NACLA: Report on the Americas, Commonweal and In These Times.