Word: venezuelan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Hugo Chávez owned the last Summit of the Americas, in 2005. Thanks to rising oil prices, the Venezuelan President, who controls the hemisphere's largest crude reserves, suddenly had the petro-wherewithal to spread his gospel of a more socialist Latin America free of Washington's imperialist interference. At that summit, in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Chávez led large and raucous demonstrations against President George W. Bush and U.S. plans for a hemispheric free-trade pact, which effectively died at the gathering...
...UPDATE: Chávez and his allies had declared that they would not be signing the summit's final declaration in order to protest U.S. policy on Cuba. But when the presidents of the U.S and Venezuela met in Trinidad, they appeared to exchange warm handshakes. According to a Venezuelan communique, Chávez told Obama: "With this same hand I greeted Bush eight years ago. I want to be your friend." Obama reportedly responded in proper and polite Spanish, mucho gusto - or "my pleasure...
...appears to be groping for the right approach to Obama, oscillating in recent weeks between acerbic criticism and conciliatory praise. When Obama said that Chávez aids Colombia's Marxist guerrilla violence (which Chávez in fact has renounced), the Venezuelan President shot back that Obama had "the same stench" as Bush. But when the U.S. Coast Guard called Venezuelan authorities last week for permission to board a Venezuelan boat involved in a cocaine bust, Chávez called it a "positive signal that never would have happened" under Bush...
...with so many of his own. But Bush's exit may throw a brighter international spotlight on measures like the new Caracas government law - which to many observers makes Chávez look as if he's nullifying a democratic election to spite his opponents. In recent weeks the Venezuelan President has moved to wrest control of ports and other infrastructure from opposition governors and mayors, declaring corruption charges against some of them while seemingly ignoring complaints about official venality among Chavistas...
...overthrow the communist regime of then Cuban leader Fidel Castro (who officially ceded power to his younger brother Raúl last year because of failing health). At the time of the 1976 airliner bombing, he worked for Venezuela's secret police. Despite abundant evidence against him, a Venezuelan military tribunal acquitted him of the Cubana attack. That verdict was overturned, however, and in 1985, while Posada was being tried in a civilian criminal court, he escaped disguised as a priest. Posada and three other Cuban exiles were convicted in 2000 of conspiring to kill Fidel Castro during a summit...