Word: castros
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...Even if Chavez were to turn Caracas into Havana, there is little Washington could do. The U.S. depends on Venezuela as its fourth largest foreign-crude supplier, which all but precludes swinging the trade embargo stick Washington has used against Castro for 45 years. Political isolation is a weak bet, too. In a region with the world's widest gap between rich and poor, Chavez's gospel of Latin American self-determination has spawned a resurgent left and unusually coordinated anti-Yanqui sentiment, evidenced by the region's rejection of President Bush's hemispheric free-trade proposal. Warns Luis Vicente...
...many in Washington, the emergence of Adan is one more reminder of Chavez's autocratic urges - and of the possibility that Chavez himself is Fidel Castro's real successor in Latin America. His nationalization scheme evokes the seizure of private businesses in Cuba after Castro's 1959 communist revolution: it ousts U.S.-based companies like Verizon, part-owner of the Venezuelan telecom giant CANTV, and the AES Corporation, which controls Venezuela's main power utility. Chavez asserted this week that while he'll compensate both U.S. firms, he won't pay them a market rate. And when the Bush Administration...
...objective standards, Chavez is still not Castro. Says one Chavez official, "We're a hell of a long way from a [Castro-style] regime." Chavez gushingly admires and subsidizes Castro. But many officials in Caracas, especially younger ones, wince when you equate the two. They insist their democratically elected commandante is hardly poised to snuff out free speech and free enterprise or stoke armed revolution abroad. Chavez may control the hemisphere's largest oil reserves, but they believe he can't afford to squander a more valuable commodity - his democratic legitimacy, something Castro never had and which gives Chavez...
...Until then, says Leon, the U.S. should avoid the kind of diplomatic warfare that is Chavez's political oxygen. It made a start this month by finally indicting (at least on immigration charges) Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro Cuban exile accused by Cuba and Venezuela in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner as it left Venezuela. Chavez has pointed to the U.S.'s failure to prosecute Posada as evidence of Washington's double standard on terrorism. That charge could ebb if Bush puts Posada away - just as Chavez's anti-U.S. harangues have slowed ("Go to hell...
...Perhaps if we don't treat Chavez like Castro, the new theory suggests, the Venezuelan leader may be less compelled to become Castro...