In 2006, the same year Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called then U.S. President George W. Bush “the devil” at the U.N., Chávez and his oil-rich, anti-U.S. revolution were looking for new ways to kick Washington in the …
Hugo Chavez
Not So Apocalypto: What the Mayan Calendar Tells Us About Latin America in 2012
According to scholars, the fact the Mayan calendar ends by the winter solstice of 2012 is not an omen of the apocalypse, but a rather savvy political move by an ancient monarch. To that end, Global Spin offers its predictions for …
Latin America’s CELAC Summit: A Definitive Rejection of the U.S.?
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez brands himself the standard bearer of all things revolutionary in Latin America – including the Community of Latin American & Caribbean States (CELAC), the new hemispheric organization that …
Why a Marathon Man Got Mocked: Venezuela’s Leftist Revolution Again Faces Anti-Semitism Questions
Few stories at this month’s New York City Marathon were as inspiring as Maickel Melamed’s. The 36-year-old Venezuelan man, born with a severe muscle-depleting condition that makes it difficult to move across a room let alone a 26-mile marathon course, finished the race in 15 hours and 22 minutes to “help people realize the things …
Wilson Ramos’ Rescue by National Guard Underscores Venezuela’s Overdue Police Reform
Venezuela has reason to celebrate this morning, Nov. 12, after last night’s rescue of kidnapped baseball star Wilson Ramos. The Washington Nationals catcher, who had come home to play in the winter league, was abducted by gunmen at his mother’s home Wednesday night in Valencia, southwest of Caracas, in the first known kidnapping …
The Wilson Ramos Kidnapping: Another Major League Reminder of Venezuela’s Crime Crisis
When I was a graduate student in Caracas in the 1980s, some of my best memories were hanging out at the Estadio Universitario during the winter baseball season, when Venezuela’s Major League Baseball stars would come home to play for teams like the Leones and the Tiburones. I used my expired Chicago Sun-Times intern press pass to …
Why Hugo Chávez Should Do the Right – and Smart – Thing and Let Leopoldo López Run
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights concluded this week what just about everyone in the western hemisphere already knew: leading Venezuelan opposition politician Leopoldo López was denied due process of law in 2008, when socialist President Hugo Chávez’s government barred him from running in elections for six years because …
The Real Cancer Behind the Ill Health of Two Dictators
Earlier this week, the German tabloid Bild published an exclusive: Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan, was said to be in convalescence following surgery in a hospital in Hamburg. Without disclosing its sources, the tabloid claimed Nazarbayev underwent a procedure to his prostate — what likely could be treatment for …
Venezuela’s Bicentennial: Should Chávez Re-Examine Bolívar – and His Revolution?
George Washington and Simón Bolívar are rightly remembered as the New World’s greatest independence heroes, but the anti-democratic flaws each possessed are too often forgotten. Washington was a slave-owner, a fact most Americans disregard during commemorations like this week’s July 4 fete. Likewise, the Caracas-born Bolívar …
Hugo Chávez Reveals His Battle With Cancer: Will It Affect His Re-election Battle?
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, whose health has been a subject of intense speculation since he underwent surgery for a pelvic abscess in Cuba on June 10, revealed during a televised address from Havana Thursday night, June 30, that he’s also battling cancer. Chávez insisted he was in the process of a “full recovery” …
Chavez’s Health Postpones a Summit: Will He Return For Venezuela’s Bicentennial?
It’s hard to imagine Hugo Chávez missing July 5. El cinco de julio was going to be a confluence of everything the socialist Venezuelan President lives for politically: It’s Venezuela’s bicentennial, a chance for Chávez to revel in the aura of his Bolivarian Revolution’s namesake, 19th-century South American independence …
With Hugo Chavez in Hospital, Venezuela Frets Over Its Future
No one ever got rich betting on the demise of Hugo Chávez. As a leftist Venezuelan paratrooper officer he led a failed coup in 1992, but he was let out of prison just two years later and started campaigning for the presidency, which he won in 1998. In 2002 Chávez himself was the target of a coup; it threw him out of power for a few …
Latin America’s Race to the Middle: Has Humala Renounced Chávez?
This was written by Tim Padgett with Girish Gupta in Caracas
For the past five years, Peru’s economy has had one of the most remarkable runs in Latin America. With the exception of recession-smothered 2009, the Andes nation has generated annual economic growth above 7% and as high as 10%. But even so, a third of Peruvians still live …