Word: chavez
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...Yris Machado, 41, a widow, could only feed her four children one meal a day until a Chavez-backed program began supplying her with food staples. Now, she and her children eat three times a day. She is also beginning to benefit from a government program called "Mothers of the Barrio," which gives stipends to poor mothers with handicapped children. She will use the extra funds to help pay for anti-convulsive drugs and a new mattress for her daughter, who has Down syndrome. "Thanks to my president, now I can say that I'm going...
...Across town in the low-income area of El Valle, Gladys Garcia is thrilled with the Chavez government for a different reason. After noticing unusual lesions on her skin - and being denied treatment by a private hospital because she couldn't pay - Garcia is now getting attention at a free government-sponsored health care clinic. The program - called Barrio Adentro, Spanish for "inside the neighborhood" - brings tens of thousands of Cuban doctors to work in Venezuela in exchange for sending Venezuelan oil to Cuba under preferential terms. Since 2003, thousands of redbrick clinics have sprung up across the country, giving...
...voters like Garcia and Machado that the Rosales campaign is failing to win over. His main proposal is a debit card, called "Mi Negra," that would tap oil revenues to give anywhere from $300 to $1,000 a month in cash to Venezuelans in need. Chavez supporters dismiss the card, whose name refers to a term of endearment and to the color of oil, as an idea crafted to capture votes that won't assist them in the way that Chavez's programs...
...card - it's shameless populism that can't be compared to the benefits we're currently receiving," said Jesus Sanchez, 62, who is an industrial mechanic. With the help of the government, Sanchez has started a small business and now has a contract to install public lighting at a Chavez-backed cooperative in western Caracas. "I feel like I have a second life," he said...
...course, not everyone in the lower classes supports Chavez. One woman from the poor and dangerous Caracas neighborhood of Petare, who asked to remain anonymous, said Chavez's programs were just a way of buying votes. "Chavez has bought all the people in the barrios," she said. She also told her son to vote for the President, wary that opposing Chavez could bar him from access to government jobs and programs. Her fears are not unfounded - countless people who signed in favor of holding a referendum to oust Chavez in 2004 say they're blacklisted...