Word: chavez
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...course. Chavez, 47, controls the hemisphere's largest reserves, which are often touted as America's long-term relief from Middle East oil dependence. And with his economy staring into an Argentine-style abyss, he needs to sell more of it - especially since the financial crisis has his military enemies itching to stage another coup. (During last week's march, Vice Adm. Alvaro Martin Fossa, the nation's second most powerful military figure, resigned in protest of Chavez's government.) The U.S., meanwhile, bracing for the possibility of petro-market chaos if it invades Iraq, needs more reliable supplies...
...result, officials inside Chavez's government say it's more than coincidence that he hasn't made a peep about Saddam in months, or that he backed Bush's recent U.N. speech condemning the Iraqi leader. In fact, the insurrection Chavez faced last spring--which he frequently likens to a terrorist attack--has made him more supportive, he says, of the war on terrorism. "I revere the U.S. as the nation of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King," he says now. "I want Americans to know that our revolution is about their ideals." For its part, the Bush Administration...
...Chavez is still a reminder of the late Nobel author Octavio Paz's lament that Latin America's revolutions are inevitably "squandered in violent agitation." His 1998 landslide election overthrew one of the world's most rotten political systems, but he seems incorrigibly wedded to a bellicose and autocratic style that many fear could eventually evolve into a left-wing dictatorship like Cuba's. Chavez recently threatened to seize businesses that close for whole days to protest his erratic government. His neighborhood organizations, the Bolivarian Circles, do aid the poor, but they sometimes morph into armed gangs like the ones...
...polls say Chavez, whose term ends in 2007, would win a referendum on his presidency, which, under Venezuela's new constitution, he is not required to call until next August. The impoverished masses who march for him, and who had little if no voice in pre-Chavez Venezuela, are the key to his resilience, just as Brazil's exasperated poor, fed up with the unfulfilled promises of a decade of capitalist reforms in Latin America, are likely to vote Workers Party candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva into the presidency next week. "The oligarchs in this country just want...
...During the two days Chavez was in military custody in April, local TV aired scenes of the nation's venal political elite romping in the Miraflores presidential palace, cocktails in hand, as if it were a country club again. It reminded many Venezuelans of what they elected Chavez to throw out in 1Images like that explain so many Venezuelans still support Chavez. And as long as the oil flows, the U.S. can apparently live with him too - and the beret...