Chávez grew up in Sabaneta, a small town in the southwestern plains of Venezuela. He was the second of six surviving children, all boys. His parents, both schoolteachers, did not have enough money to support all their children, so Hugo and his eldest brother, Adán, were raised in the city of Barinas by their grandmother, Rosa Inés Chávez, who instilled in Hugo a love of history and politics. As a teenager, Chávez was heavily influenced by José Esteban Ruiz Guevara, a local historian, who introduced him to the teachings of Bolívar and Karl Marx, the German philosopher who was one of the fathers of communism, both of which had a profound impact on Chávez’s political philosophy.
