Word: vez
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Having vanquished Venezuela's political establishment, Chávez has set his sights on bigger targets. Exploiting the fact that the U.S. gets about 15% of its foreign oil from Venezuela, he pushed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Venezuela is a founding member, to pump up crude prices. In 1998, Venezuela's state-run oil monopoly, PDVSA, earned less than $14 billion in export revenue; this year it is expected to rake in almost $40 billion. In 2002 the White House was widely perceived to have backed a failed coup attempt against Chávez. (The Bush Administration denies...
...Chávez has also poured the country's oil windfall into a New Deal's worth of social programs in Venezuela, including the first medical clinics that many dirt-poor Caracas barrios have ever seen--usually staffed by doctors from Cuba whom Castro sends in exchange for cut-rate oil. "I don't care if our doctors are from Mars," says Manuel Tejera, who is helping build a clinic and lay potable-water pipes in the La Vega barrio. "We feel more like real citizens here for once...
...Chávez is also a polarizing figure at home. Although his approval ratings are in the high 50s, there is growing impatience with the country's stubborn unemployment and violent crime. Teodoro Petkoff, an erstwhile socialist leader who is a campaign strategist for Chávez's main opponent in the December presidential election, Manuel Rosales, says Chávez's "21st century socialism" is only a short-term fix. "The real fight against poverty is a fight against unemployment," Petkoff says. Others complain that Chávez is a Castro wannabe who has subverted Venezuela's democratic institutions, especially the courts...
What may ultimately erode Chávez's stature are exactly the things that he has skillfully used to boost it. As the price of oil begins to fall, critics predict Chávez's radical influence will too. Some analysts believe that Mexico's leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, narrowly lost the recent presidential race in large part because his conservative opponent painted him as a Chávez clone. The same thing happened a month earlier in presidential elections in Peru...
...Chávez considers his bravado his chief asset, but critics say it too often makes it hard to take him seriously as a statesman. While Ahmadinejad wowed U.S. audiences with his verbal dexterity last week, Chávez seemed only to enhance his reputation for gratuitous Bush baiting. After Chávez's speech at the General Assembly, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, called the performance "a comic-strip approach to international affairs." A product of Venezuela's llanos, or rural plains, Chávez patterns his style after the straight-talking llaneros (cowboys) he grew up with...