Word: chavez
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Listening to his campaign speeches, you might think Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was running against George Bush - whom he has been known to call "the devil" - rather than Manuel Rosales in Sunday's presidential election. The Venezuelan leader is convinced that Washington is behind Rosales's effort to unseat him, and told an enormous campaign rally on Sunday that his real opponent was the "imperialist government of the United States." But the President's supporters say his hostility to the Bush Administration is not the main reason Chavez holds a commanding 20-point lead over Rosales according to most polls...
...Foreign policy has an effect, but obviously a leader grows stronger through the solution of internal problems," said deputy William Querales, who is on the National Assembly's foreign policy committee. "President Chavez has confronted the problem of poverty and the serious social problems in our country." The opposition counters by pointing to studies showing that Chavez has failed to put a major dent in poverty and that crime has actually increased. But many in the dilapidated barrios on the outskirts of Caracas say they are better off since Chavez was elected in 1998. And since the majority of Venezuelan...
...community that might be expected to ask how much Chavez had done for them would be the residents of Tacagua, a dilapidated neighborhood clinging to a mountainside near Caracas, where many homes are made of scraps of tin pieced together. Here, gang violence and drugs are part of everyday life, and the government has been slow to provide new housing for families whose homes are in danger of collapsing in mudslides. Even so, posters and graffiti praising Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution," named after South American independence leader Simon Bolivar, permeate the neighborhood...
...Luis Guevara, 50, is a Caracas cabbie who for decades drove wheezing, beat-up taxis because an elitist banking system denied him the kind of small business loan so desperately needed all over Latin America. Last year, under a microcredit project for wannabe capitalists created by Chavez from Venezuela's record oil windfalls, Guevara got a $15,000 loan at a reasonable interest rate; now he owns a new Chevrolet he can use to pick up fat fares at the airport. Guevara could care less what you call the policy: "It works for me whatever...
...dealers, who amidst the oil boom of recent years have seen sales of their luxury autos (which can cost $100,000 in Venezuela) jump an annual 30%. Welcoming clients to a party at a swank Caracas restaurant, local marketing manager Andres Haiek admits that BMW's and Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution look compatible - "so far," he cautiously adds...