Word: chã
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Ch??vez, 52, believes it's his destiny to be the leftist David who puts the brakes on what he calls Bush's imperialist Goliath--not just in Venezuela, which has the hemisphere's largest oil reserves, but in Latin America and the world. In his eight years as President, Ch??vez has gone from a backwater strongman to a genuine global player, capitalizing on sky-high oil prices to spread his influence across Latin America and to win attention when he denounces the Bush Administration. That has made Caracas a hot destination for leftist tourists, bolstered Ch?...
...problem for the Bush Administration is that while many Americans recoil, much of the rest of the world applauds. That's a big reason the U.S. is lobbying hard to prevent Venezuela from winning a nonpermanent seat next month on the U.N. Security Council, where Ch??vez could run interference for his friend, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions. The U.S. is backing Guatemala for the seat, but Ch??vez has lined up the support of such influential nations as Russia, China and Brazil. And if Venezuela does win it, it would...
...Ch??vez has long been an insurgent. He grew up idolizing his great-grandfather, who went into the mountains to lead a revolt against an early 20th century Venezuelan dictator, and Simón Bolívar, South America's 19th century independence hero. "Ch??vez has always seen himself as that kind of heroic man of action on horseback," says Alberto Barrera, co-author of the biography Hugo Ch??vez sin Uniforme (Hugo Ch??vez Out of Uniform). Venezuela's ambassador to the U.N., Francisco Arias, a former classmate who took part with Ch??vez in a 1992 coup attempt, says...
...When Ch??vez went to jail in 1992 for attempting to overthrow the government, the joke on the streets was that he deserved 30 years: one for the coup and 29 for failing. The incident won him admiration among ordinary Venezuelans, who backed Ch??vez for taking a stand against their criminally corrupt élite, who for decades had pillaged the oil wealth and left half the population in poverty. That popular support got him and his comrades released, and Ch??vez set out to take power at the ballot box instead. In 1998 he won a landslide presidential victory...
Having vanquished Venezuela's political establishment, Ch??vez has set his sights on bigger targets. Exploiting the fact that the U.S. gets about 15% of its foreign oil from Venezuela, he pushed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Venezuela is a founding member, to pump up crude prices. In 1998, Venezuela's state-run oil monopoly, PDVSA, earned less than $14 billion in export revenue; this year it is expected to rake in almost $40 billion. In 2002 the White House was widely perceived to have backed a failed coup attempt against Ch??vez. (The Bush Administration denies...