Word: venezuela
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Brazil and Mexico, as well as in coca producers like Peru and Ecuador. Leftists have toppled conservative governments in Uruguay and Honduras, and socialist Michelle Bachelet is favored to win Chile's presidential runoff on Jan. 15. To punctuate the situation, the radical left-wing President of oil-rich Venezuela, Hugo Chávez--the "new mayor of the Latin American street," says Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs--is all but certain to be re-elected at year...
...elected president of Bolivia on Sunday, he would be "a nightmare for the U.S." Bolivia, as the second poorest nation in the hemisphere, is an unlikely specter disturbing Washington's dreams. But he could, nonetheless, present a similar nuisance value in Washington to that of his self-proclaimed ?model,? Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez. For one thing, Morales wants to fully legalize the growing of coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived, reversing decades of U.S. efforts to eradicate the crop in Bolivia. And he also hopes to nationalize the tens of trillions of cubic feet of recently...
...Next to Venezuela's gargantuan oil industry, gold once seemed an unlikely target of resource nationalism. But Venezuela possesses about 2.5% of the world's 1 billion oz. of unmined gold reserves, and experts say about half its gold is mined by some 30,000 illegal miners. So as bullion approaches $500 per oz.--and as miners call attention to their squalid lives--gold has become a hot political as well as economic commodity...
Industry analysts say even Chávez, for all his provocative socialist rhetoric, realizes that the best way to achieve those results is to tap into the capital and technology of the multinationals. Says Luis Rojas, vice president of Venezuela's mining chamber: "He knows foreign investment is the only way Venezuela can boost its production and increase its reserves." While Chávez's September speech may have scared the mother lode out of mining execs, many believe it was meant more to appease the restless miners than to presage the ouster of the foreigners...
...Hecla], we'd still be out there with our picks and shovels getting nowhere," says Mireya Cobarrubia, 42, a mining veteran. Says local Hecla manager José Pino: "It isn't a problem as long as things are organized correctly." But as the conflict over Las Cristinas shows, organization in Venezuela's mining industry can be as rare as gold...