Word: chavez
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...soldiers and rescue workers continued digging near the northern coastal town of La Guaira, just across Mount Avila from Caracas. Still, officials said the toll would certainly surpass 5,000 and could even reach 30,000. "There are bodies in the sea, under mud, everywhere," said President Hugo Chavez, as corpses filled the tarmac at nearby Simon Bolivar Airport. "It's horrible." How horrible was evident in the spectral gaze of Alegra Rangel, who had seen her four small children buried alive, inside the family's car, by a roaring mud slide. "I got out for a moment...
That is largely why Venezuelans last year elected the populist, corruption-busting Chavez. A former army paratrooper colonel, he led a bloody but failed coup attempt in 1992 that was widely applauded by citizens fed up with cogollo rule. Many citizens complained that Chavez's government was initially slow to respond to the disaster. They conceded, however, that he was doing more than his effete predecessors would probably have done--dispatching troops to set up relocation camps and touring the devastated areas in his trademark red beret. On Dec. 15, the day the flooding began, voters approved his new federal...
...Cesar Chavez...
Venezuelans may agree with President Chavez on the causes of the country's high flood-death toll, but they may not like his solutions. Chavez blamed the "criminal irresponsibility" of previous governments for the estimated 50,000 deaths from last week's floods, citing the widespread construction of illegal shantytowns on hillsides. The left-leaning populist president warned that there would be no rebuilding of some of the worst-hit neighborhoods, and that people would be forbidden from building in areas vulnerable to mudslides. And while the former paratrooper has earned top marks for his hands-on supervision of relief...
...fact that prices are rising for the country's premier cash cow, its oil industry (which is largely unaffected by the flooding), persuading citizens to move away from urban centers - and the jobs they contain - will be difficult. By declaring a break with past patterns of urbanization, Chavez may be attempting a bit of social engineering that taxes both his country's resources and his own considerable inventory of political goodwill...