Word: portly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...shook his head and handed me Eduardo Galeano's The Open Veins of Latin America - the same book Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made a show of giving Barack Obama on Saturday before Obama's meeting with South American leaders at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad. (See TIME's photos of Carnival in Trinidad...
...many observers it was a toss-up whether Chávez - who has pledged that he and his leftist allies in the region will not sign the gathering's final declaration, to protest the fact that communist Cuba is still not invited to these summits - would upbraid Obama in Port of Spain or, given Obama's international popularity, reach out to him. But they shared a warm handshake Friday night, during which Obama tried his Spanish (mucho gusto, or "pleased to meet you") and Chávez insisted, according to a Venezuela communiqué, "I want to be your friend...
...carry the same swagger into this weekend's Americas summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad? At first glance, his decade-old Bolivarian Revolution (named for South America's 19th century independence hero, Simón Bolívar) seems as potent as it was four years ago. Chávez, still Venezuela's most popular political figure, just won a referendum that will let him run for re-election as long as he wants. His small but radical leftist bloc of Latin American nations (including Bolivia and Nicaragua) has helped blunt U.S. hegemony and ushered non-hemispheric allies like Russia...
...contrast to the summit in Mar del Plata, Chávez isn't expected to hold the regional reins in Port of Spain or breathe the same anti-U.S. fire. More moderate leftists like Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are regarded as Latin America's standard bearers today. Even if the global economic crisis has borne out Chávez's condemnation of capitalism, it has also sent oil prices plummeting - and his populist largesse along with them. At the same time, some supporters worry that as Chávez accumulates more power at home...
...April 1980, a downtown in the economy caused thousands of dissatisfied Cubans to seek political asylum in foreign countries. Anyone who wanted to leave, Castro announced, could do so through its northwestern port, Mariel Harbor. Over the next six months 125,000 Cubans clambered onto boats and made their way to the U.S. in a mass flotilla. Castro also released criminals and mental-hospital patients, of whom as many as 22,000 landed on the shores of Florida; Cuba refused to take them back...