This post is part of a series on the Latin American pink tide, moderated and edited by Massimiliano Mollona (Goldsmiths, University of London).

I still clearly remember Margarita,[1] the first “Bolivarian activist” I got to know in Venezuela. It seems so long ago now. For more than ten years, I have followed what I in my mind envisage as the rise and fall of the Bolivarian Revolution’s golden years as seen from the grassroots’ perspective. My first encounter with President Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela was in the fall of 2005, when I as a master’s student in Anthropology of Development came to Caracas for the first time. Through a friend of an acquaintance of an acquaintance, I was brought to the barrio (shantytown) of La Vega to meet with a group of women engaged in a housing and infrastructure project through the recently established Committees for Urban Housing (Comités de Tierra Urbana).
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