But ever since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, the flamboyant, charming, anti-American and increasingly autocratic president of Venezuela, real power rests in the hills. The hills hold the barrios, violent slums and shantytowns perched above the heart of the city. Here, and in similar places across the country, Chávez draws his most ardent supporters among those who feel — with good reason — that Venezuela's traditional politicians ignored them during the decades of democracy that began in 1958.

Chávez pledged to change this. The career military officer, who led a failed coup in 1992, compared himself to Simón Bolívar, the hero of Latin America's wars of independence, and promised a socialist "Bolívarian Revolution" to lift the poor out of their squalor. He vowed to stand up to the United States and has long been a thorn in the side of George W. Bush, whom he describes as the devil, even as America buys most of Venezuela's oil. Chávez has also embarrassed the U.S. President by spending millions of dollars on aid projects in poor American neighbourhoods, and he regularly seeks the friendship of other world leaders in U.S. crosshairs, most notably Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

At home, Chávez ordered the army to distribute food and vaccinate children. He established "missions" where residents can buy subsidized groceries or receive free health care at clinics that are often staffed by Cuban doctors sent to Venezuela in exchange for cheap oil. Other missions teach literacy or provide land titles to urban squatters. "We're taking control of our country," Nelson Becerra, a chávista from the Guarataro slum of Caracas, told Maclean's. "We've had 40 years of misery. Now we want freedom."

But after almost nine years of the Chávez presidency, and despite booming oil wealth, many Venezuelans still live in miserable conditions. Others resent the president's tightening grip on power and his efforts to silence those who oppose him. For a new generation of opposition politicians in Venezuela, this presents an opportunity to erode Chávez's still-strong support base.

Defeating Chávez means winning the slums. One man willing to try is Leopoldo López, the 36-year-old mayor of Chacao, a small and prosperous municipality in Caracas. Articulate and — even his female opponents on the far left admit — very handsome, López is emerging as one of the more prominent challengers to Chávez's rule.

For his efforts, López has had more than 20 charges filed against him, ranging from the alleged mismanagement of funds to "ecocide" after he replanted trees, which he claims are now thriving elsewhere in his municipality. He is officially barred from running in another election until 2017. More seriously, López has survived a kidnapping and three assassination attempts. During the most recent, last year, bodyguard Carlos Mendosa was shot six times in the passenger seat of their car, where López usually sits. "He died in my arms," López told Maclean's.

López positively identified the murderer, yet the man spent only one hour in police custody before he was released. "It all suggests something with somebody close to the government," he said. "Because it is unexplainable how, if we caught the assassin, if we have material proof that this guy was responsible for the assassination, he was let free." López's car still has the bullet holes, now rusting slightly around the edges. A friend says she doubts he will ever get them fixed.

Many anti-chávistas have little faith in electoral politics. Hundreds of thousands of them backed an attempted coup against Chávez in 2002 that failed when chávistas poured into the streets and loyal members of the military rescued Chávez, who'd been detained by rebellious officers. And today, opponents point to anti-democratic manipulations employed by Chávez to help ensure his victory in the December 2006 presidential election, which nonetheless passed the scrutiny of international observers. According to International Crisis Group, a global think tank, these included the use of soldiers to wake residents in the barrios on election day and urge them to vote for the president, and blanket positive coverage for Chávez by government-controlled news channels. For some, this is proof that any election in which Chávez runs will be fixed in advance, and other means to defeat him are necessary.