U.S. evangelist Pat Robertson may have called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but South American countries have a less malevolent view of him.
Under Chavez, Venezuela has bought hundreds of millions of dollars in Ecuadoran and Argentine bonds and sold oil to Cuba and Jamaica at below-market prices.
This month, Chavez raced through Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina to negotiate trade agreements and lend political support to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who’s fighting charges of corruption in his administration and political party.
“He’s seen as someone whose semi-authoritarian style of government is a little out of fashion but who is helping countries in the region economically and who is stepping forward to criticize U.S. foreign policy,” said Sonia de Camargo, an international relations professor at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro.
Since Chavez, 51, was first elected in 1998, the former paratroop lieutenant colonel has polarized his country with his brash manner and revolution of social programs and wealth redistribution. He’s highly popular with the country’s poor but resented by many in the upper classes.
He has raised oil royalty fees and ordered oil well contracts converted into government-controlled joint ventures. He wants to use the revenue to pay for homes, clinics and schools for the 58% of Venezuelan families who live on less than $200 a month.
Related Travel Information
During a visit to South Bronx (New York) with US Congressman Jose Serrano, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias has admitted making mistakes regarding relations with the USA.
The President made the remark after getting some advice from Reverend Jesse Jackson, who traveled from Chicago to be with Chavez Frias during the historic visit to a New York neighborhood. Jackson has warned the Venezuelan President not to be provoked by US State Department statements.
Serrano brought Fidel Castro back to Harlem in 2000 some 35 years after another historic visit where Castro met Malcolm X.
At St. Paul and St. Matthews Church
Bush’s vision for Latin America He calls for strong democracies in response to leftists
Brasilia, Brazil -- President Bush, in tough remarks aimed at Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chavez, called Sunday for Latin America to choose between competing futures -- an U.S.-supported "vision of hope" and another that "seeks to roll back the democratic progress of the past two decades."
Such a democratic retrenchment, the president said, would be "playing to fear, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and blaming others for their own failures to provide for their people."
Bush spoke before Brazilian business leaders, diplomats and students at the luxury Blue
South American leaders called on Friday for a continent-wide free-trade zone to fight poverty but struggled to agree how they would go about linking up the world's fourth-largest economic area.
Brazil, South America's biggest economy, is leading the push to build a single market of 350 million people from the Amazon jungle to Argentina's Tierra del Fuego to reduce dependence on the United States and Europe.
"We've advanced in the construction of a true free-trade area across South America," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told the first summit of the South American Community of Nations, a pan-regional grouping. "What's
Latin America in brief
The spiritual leader of 200 million-plus Orthodox Christians met with Mexican Roman Catholic bishops Wednesday in Mexico City, working to build stronger links with the Catholic world ahead of a possible meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in November.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew told reporters that he will probably meet with the pope at his headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, at the feast day of St. Andrew on Nov. 30.
Bartholomew's visit is the first ever made by an Orthodox Christian supreme leader to Mexico, the nation with the second-largest number of Roman Catholics in the world after Brazil.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
The American Bank of Oklahoma ASCS Sooner Region will wrap up the 2005 season at Mid-America Speedway in South Coffeyville, OK, on Saturday night, October 15.
With the addition of the Mid-America date, the 2005 slate for the American Sprint Car Series Sooner Region will now consist of 20 events following this Saturday night's event at Cowtown Speedway in Kennedale, TX.
With 18 nights of racing already in the books, Sean McClelland of Collinsville, OK, sits atop the point charts on the strength of five feature wins. Just 40 points off the lead pace however is 2002 Sooner Region champion
