Word: ch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...married into one of Venezuela's cogollo (élite) families and then, as one of the country's smartest bankers, learned to swim in its prodigious and often corrupt oil industry. But while many of Venezuela's business and financial titans have chafed under the left-wing revolution Hugo Chávez began a decade ago, Vargas and his Banco Occidental de Descuento (Venezuela's fifth largest) have thrived. (See a video clip of Barack Obama meeting Hugo Ch...
Critics say Vargas made a backroom deal with Chávez's government to handle some of the revolution's murkier financial transactions, such as more than $1 billion in Argentine bond swaps, or the handling of hard currency between Venezuela's official exchange rate of about 2.15 bolivares to the U.S. dollar and the quasi-legal black-market rate of almost six to the dollar. Vargas has long denied the accusation, insisting he's not part of the "boli-bourgeoisie" (named for Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution) that got rich cozying up to Chávez while...
...That bonhomie was hardly assured beforehand. Obama and Chávez had been critical of each other in recent months, with Obama suggesting that Chávez supported Colombian guerrilla violence and Chávez suggesting, as a result, that Obama was an "ignoramus." To many observers it was a toss-up whether Chávez - who has pledged that he and his leftist allies in the region will not sign the gathering's final declaration, to protest the fact that communist Cuba is still not invited to these summits - would upbraid Obama in Port of Spain or, given Obama...
...seems, does the rest of the region after this summit. To most Latin Americans, Obama could not present a starker contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush, whom Chávez once called "the devil" and whose relations with the hemisphere were strained at best. Even Bill Clinton as President didn't set foot south of the border until five months into his second term. Latin America, according to many experts, has the worst gap between rich and poor of any region in the world - a big reason why the U.S. has so many immigration-policy headaches. And what Obama...
...same time, if Chávez and other Latin leftists want Obama to read Galeano, they in turn should read Obama. In his own books, like The Audacity of Hope, Obama lays out the common-sense, post-ideological political philosophy that has led to the U.S. shift on Latin America that so many in the region are now applauding. It's something Latin America's yanqui-bashers, if they want to keep receiving applause from Latin voters themselves, should keep in mind...