Word: maracaibo
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...Since then, of course, U.S.-Venezuela relations have plummeted farther than a Lake Maracaibo oil drill. Both sides share the blame. But the 1999 phone call bears significance. If anything, Chávez has lately supplanted Castro as Washington's priority regional pariah, yet he celebrated a decade in power this month by winning a democratic referendum that scraps presidential term limits, allowing him to run for re-election for as long as he chooses to. (See pictures of people around the world watching Barack Obama's Inauguration...
...result, he's been reluctant to promote anyone else to the national stage. The Chavista rebels complain that the theatrics of revolution have superseded the obligations of governing in Venezuela. That concern is a big reason why the PSUV lost last week in large urban centers like Caracas and Maracaibo. In those areas, Chávez, to his credit, has spent billions on long-overdue social projects. But violent crime has nonetheless reached horrific levels, basic services like trash collection seem to have collapsed, and corruption is growing. Chávez, whose brother Adan defeated a breakaway Chavista candidate last...
...also faces the very real risk of voter fatigue. If a referendum is held next year, it will be the third hard-fought election Venezuelans have been asked to engage in in as many years. Said opposition leader Manuel Rosales, the Maracaibo mayor-elect whom Chávez has recently threatened to imprison for allegedly plotting to assassinate him: "It's an insult to people that at this time we're already talking about a new electoral campaign, when they're overwhelmed by far more pressing problems." Maybe so, but Chávez "lives to be on the offensive," says...
Manuel Rosales, who captured the Maracaibo mayoral post amid threats by Chávez to have him arrested for allegedly plotting the President's assassination (a charge Chávez often hurls against his critics), said, "The map of Venezuela has started to change." Maybe. But Chávez and the opposition did make Venezuela seem a bit less angrily polarized. Caracas mayor-elect Antonio Ledezma reached out to work with Chavez - a gesture that would make any reported attempts by Chávez to cut off budget resources to opposition victors look petty...
...this week. Until the vote, the opposition had held only two governor seats. Of the five it won Sunday, three control some of the nation's largest population centers, including western Zulia state, the heart of Venezuelan oil production and home to the country's second largest city, Maracaibo. Perhaps worse for Chávez, the socialists lost the mayor's seat in the largest city, Caracas, the nation's capital - even after Chávez's government had successfully engineered the disqualification of the most popular opposition candidate in that race, Leopoldo López, on murky corruption charges...