Word: ch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Chávez seems confounded no more. He has called yet another national referendum, for Feb. 15, to revisit the term-limits question. And this time he's doing a more effective if controversial job of thwarting the youths who once thwarted him. "If they block a street, tear-gas them good," he has urged the police. With the students neutralized, and with the regular opposition parties still unable to challenge Chávez on a national level, the leftist revolutionary looks likely to win this new bid for indefinite re-election. Chávez "is playing a more effective...
...till now, the only people who have figured out how to beat Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have been kids. Since first winning the presidency in 1998, Chávez had never lost an election until December 2007, when he was stunned in a constitutional referendum that he had hoped would eliminate presidential term limits and greatly expand his socialist project. But his nemesis in that plebiscite wasn't Venezuela's feckless political opposition. It was a broad and unexpected university-student movement that took to the streets, mobilized the victorious "no" vote and flummoxed Ch...
...quarter. Every inch of wall space in this grottolike shop is hung with elaborate masks skillfully handpainted in vibrant colors. "The secret of wearing a mask is to invent a personality for yourself and interact with the people around you," says master maskmaker Guerrino Lovato, whose papier-mâché creations were worn by Nicole Kidman in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. (See pictures of the glitz and glamour at the Venice Film Festival...
...Obama says he's willing to sit down and talk with Chávez and Castro - but he's not a big fan of the Latin left's populism. In a speech last May in Miami, he did slam Bush's Americas policy as "negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in people's lives and incapable of advancing our interests in the region." Yet he also suggested that "demagogues like Chávez have stepped into the vacuum. [Their] predictable yet perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government and checkbook diplomacy...
...Chávez responded to Obama's criticisms on Thursday: "Don't say Chávez is throwing stones," he said. "Obama already threw the first one." So while Saab says Latin pols like himself have "reasonably positive expectations" about Obama, they're "skeptical." But even if the U.S. doesn't give Saab a visa while Obama is President, a sufficient number of Latin Americans are likely to see enough change in gringo policy to soften their resentment toward the U.S. And if Obama is smart, he'll see that as a good start instead of an afterthought...