Travelling in Chávez’s country

When I arrived in Venezuela the 8th of June, president Chávez was already in Cuba, to talk with his friends Fidel and Raúl Castro. He’s still there, I’m back in Colombia and wish to return to that strange country, that is Venezuela where many complain about political and economic paralysis and where the poor are glad with a president who gives them a job, free education and healthcare. Two floors of my 8 floor hotel in Caracas were crowded with flood victims. Measure of the government. Is that bad? There are many sides to the Chávez story.

Chávez and Uribe, much alike

Winds of war, as they say in Spanish, between Venezuela and Colombia and we don’t know where this is going to end. Never has the situation been so delicate. One spark of fire accross the border and it’s bingo. To me as an outsider from Holland the thing keeps being unreal, this fight between two Latin caudillos who are both so attached to power.

Brazil’s president Lula cries

Chávez is sexier than Uribe

While Colombia’s government is flipflopping to make president Uribe’s second reelection possible, Venezuela’s president Chávez is parading like a moviestar in Venice. Director Oliver Stone is fond of Chávez  and calls him a visionary. Chávez, glad that somebody supports him while his country is a mess, calls Stone a genious.

Out of burqa and into bikini

While the New York Times mentions the importance of women for development and the Spanish newspaper El País writes about the awful positon of women in Afghanistan, miss Venezuela wins the Miss Universe elections for the second time.

Chávez wants to de-Uribize dialogue with Colombia

The crisis between Colombia and Venezuela is getting almost funny. Colombia’s president Álvaro Uribe travels around almost the whole continent to convince its leaders that it is imporant that the USA can use Colombia’s military bases, the reason why Venezuela’s president Chávez had entered into rage. In the meantime all kinds of people, ex-president Ernesto Samper, the opposition, businessmen, travel to Caracas to soothe the crisis.

Hurray for Vargas Llosa

Interesting the debate Perú’s writer Mario Vargas Llosa is generating in Venezuela. Not only did he criticize president Chávez for choosing ‘the Cuban way’, also did he start a discussion about liberalism and its antisocial image.

Open veins of Latin America is bestseller

Since Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez gave as a present Eduardo Galeano’s The Open Veins of Latin America to Barack Obama, this book has become a beststeller in the United States. The book is already 36 years old and the question is if mr. Galeano would write it the same way if he had to do it now, in 2009.

Chávez gives Galeano’s ‘Open veins’ to Obama

The implicit message was clear when Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez gave the book The open Veins of Latin America, written by the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, to the United States president Barack Obama.  Latin America has been plundered by the rich countries and the United States are one of those.

Lula is going to meet Obama

Interesting the news today that Brasil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the first Latin American leader who is going to talk with Barack Obama, president of the Unitd States.