Word: chavezes
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...Venezuelans also appear to have told Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolution (named for South America's 19th-century independence hero, Simon Bolivar) that despite the country's enjoying the fruits of record oil prices - the country has the hemisphere's largest oil reserves - they're fatigued by almost a decade of polarizing revolutionary rule and would like to return to some normalcy. "This is a country divided in two," said Stalin Gonzalez, a student at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. "There's a part that loves Chavez and a part that hates him. A middle ground is lacking...
...movement led by Gonzalez and tens of thousands of fellow students proved decisive: They articulated an opposition message and galvanized its sympathizers far more effectively than Venezuela's older political elite ever could. It was a force Chavez had not planned on reckoning with, particularly since students have long been a bloc that Latin America's political left could depend on. Chavez also couldn't withstand the defections within his own bloc, including socialist state Governors and, perhaps most important, his erstwhile pal and former Defense Minister, Raul Baduel, who earlier this month called Chavez's amendments a "constitutional coup...
...just as important was Chavez's concession. The opposition "won this victory for themselves," he admitted in a voice whose subdued calm was in contrast to his frequently aggressive political speeches. "My sincere recommendation is that they learn how to handle it." Despite his authoritarian bent, Chavez (whose current and apparently last term ends in 2012) had always insisted he was a democrat - that he was, in fact, forging "a more genuine democracy" in a nation that had in many ways been a sham democracy typical of a number of Latin American countries. His presidential election victories...
...resonate far beyond Venezuela. Latin Americans in general have grown disillusioned by democratic institutions - particularly their failure to solve the region's gaping inequality and frightening insecurity - and many observers fear that Latin Americans, as they so often have in their history, are again willing to give leaders like Chavez inordinate, and inordinately protracted, powers. Chavez, critics complained, was in fact leading a trend of what some called "democratators" - democratically elected dictators. His allies in Bolivia and Ecuador, for example, are hammering out new Constitutions that may give them unlimited presidential reelection. The fact that Venezuelans this morning resisted that...
...seemed unable to even fathom an electoral victory. But, in the early morning hours on Monday, it sealed a surprising triumph over the constitutional reform proposal of a President who, in nine years, had never lost an election. Scrambling to explain this aberration in a land where Hugo Chavez dominates the political landscape, many political observers point to the thousands of university students, who, dormant until this year, clogged the streets to protest the reform in the weeks leading up to the vote. Raul Baduel, the former defense minister and longtime ally of the President, also injected life into...