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Americas
The Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World.
In the English language, the Americas refers to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, whereas America, in current usage, usually refers to the United States of America.
The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 13.5% of the human population (about 900 million people).
The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the exact dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000–17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific Northwest coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age.
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Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda (
i/ænˈtiːɡə ænd bɑrˈbjuːdə/; Spanish for "ancient" and "bearded") is a twin-island nation lying between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of two major inhabited islands, Antigua and Barbuda, and a number of smaller islands (including Great Bird, Green, Guinea, Long, Maiden and York Islands and further south, the island of Redonda). The permanent population number approximately 81,800 (at the 2011 Census) and the capital and largest port and city is St. John's, on Antigua.
Separated by a few nautical miles, Antigua and Barbuda are in the middle of the Leeward Islands, part of the Lesser Antilles, roughly at 17 degrees north of the Equator. The country is nicknamed "Land of 365 Beaches" due to the many beaches surrounding the islands. Its governance, language, and culture have all been strongly influenced by the British Empire, of which the country was formerly a part.
Antigua was first settled by Archaic Age hunter-gatherer Amerindians, erroneously referred to as Siboney or Ciboney.Carbon-dating has established that the earliest settlements started around 3100 BC. They were succeeded by the Ceramic Age pre-Columbian Arawak-speaking Saladoid people who migrated from the lower Orinoco River.
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Anzoátegui
Anzoátegui State (Spanish: Estado Anzoátegui, IPA: [esˈtaðo ansoˈateɣi]), is one of the 23 component states of Venezuela, located in the northeastern region of the country. Anzoátegui is well known for its beautiful beaches that attract many visitors. Its coast consists of a single beach approximately 100 km long. Its capital is the city of Barcelona, and significant cities include Puerto la Cruz and El Tigre.
Named after the great hero of Venezuelan independence, José Antonio Anzoátegui (1789–1819), this state has its own history. The city of Barcelona, which is currently the state's capital, was founded in 1677. The present Anzoátegui State was included within the Cumaná Province, which was itself part of the Captaincy General of Venezuela, along with some other provinces (Guayana, Maracaibo, Caracas, Margarita and Trinidad). In 1810, it was separated from the province. It was in 1909 that it acquired the present political distribution.
Anzoátegui is located in the northeastern region of the country and is bordered by the states of Monagas and Sucre to the east, Bolivar to the south, Guarico to the west, Miranda to the northwest, and the Caribbean Sea to the north.
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Barcelona, Venezuela
Coordinates: 10°07′N 064°43′W / 10.117°N 64.717°W / 10.117; -64.717 Barcelona is the capital of Anzoátegui State, Venezuela and was founded in 1671. Together with Puerto La Cruz, Lecheria and Guanta, Barcelona forms one of the most important urban areas of Venezuela with a population of approximately 950,000.
Unlike Puerto La Cruz, which was mostly built in the 20th century, Barcelona has a mish-mash of historical and modern architecture from its several years of growth and development. The settlement of Nueva Barcelona del Cerro Santo (English: New Barcelona of the Holy Mountain), was originally established by the Spanish conquistador Joan Orpí (a native of Piera, Catalonia in Spain). It was later re-founded and populated by governor Sancho Fernández de Angulo two kilometres from the original settlement, and by a small community of Catalan colonists around 1671. Barcelona was one of the provinces under the governmental authority of the Neuva Andalucía (English: New Andalusia), and referred commonly as New Barcelona. One of the remaining buildings of this period is the Museo de Anzoátegui, considered the oldest building in the city.
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Barinas, Barinas
Barinas (Spanish pronunciation: [baˈɾinas]) is a city in west central Venezuela. According to an estimate in 2009, its population is 251,535. It is the capital of the Barinas Municipality and the State of Barinas. The city of Barinas is known as the capital of Los Llanos.
The original city was founded under the name Altamira de Caceres on June 30, 1577 by Captain Juan Andres Varela fulfilling orders of the governor of La Grita Francisco de Cáceres, who had founded this Andean city and established it governorate in 1576.
In 1786 Barinas state was established in the territories of the existing states of Barinas and Apure. The city became the capital of the state and an important bastion of the patriots during the War of Independence. Cristóbal Mendoza, the first President of Venezuela, lived and practiced his profession in Barinas.
The name of the city comes from an indigenous word which identifies a strong wind that occurs during the rainy season, from the valleys of Santo Domingo.
The city is located in the northwest part of the state, along the river Santo Domingo in the Andean foothills about 165 km from the city of Mérida and 525 km from Caracas. The city has about 270,000 inhabitants and is the most populous in the state of Barinas and one of the largest Venezuelan llanos cities alongside Calabozo, Acarigua-Araure, Guanare and San Fernando de Apure. The city is located about 188 meters above sea level.
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Bolivia
Coordinates: 16°42′43″S 64°39′58″W / 16.712°S 64.666°W / -16.712; -64.666 Bolivia (i/bəˈlɪviə/, Spanish: [boliˈβja]) officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia (Spanish: Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, Quechua: Bulivya Mamallaqta, Aymara: Wuliwya Suyu), is a landlocked country in central South America. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay and Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west.
Prior to European colonization, the Andean region of Bolivia was a part of the Inca Empire – the largest state in Pre-Columbian America. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century. During most of the Spanish colonial period, this territory was called Upper Peru and was under the administration of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which included most of Spain's South American colonies. After declaring independence in 1809, 16 years of war followed before the establishment of the Republic, named for Simón Bolívar, on 6 August 1825. Bolivia has struggled through periods of political instability, dictatorships and economic woes.
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Brazil
Brazili/brəˈzɪl/ (Portuguese: Brasil, IPA: [bɾaˈziw]), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil, 
listen (help·info)), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas and the largest lusophone country in the world.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km (4,655 mi). It is bordered on the north by Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and the French overseas region of French Guiana; on the northwest by Colombia; on the west by Bolivia and Peru; on the southwest by Argentina and Paraguay and on the south by Uruguay. Numerous archipelagos form part of Brazilian territory, such as Fernando de Noronha, Rocas Atoll, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and Trindade and Martim Vaz. It borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile.
Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815, when it was elevated to the rank of kingdom and the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was formed. The colonial bond was in fact broken in 1808, when the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, after Napoleon invaded Portugal.Independence was achieved in 1822 with the formation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system. The country became a presidential republic in 1889, when a military coup d'état proclaimed the Republic, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to the ratification of the first constitution in 1824. Its current Constitution, formulated in 1988, defines Brazil as a Federal Republic. The Federation is formed by the union of the Federal District, the 26 States, and the 5,564 Municipalities.
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Caracas
Caracas (Spanish pronunciation: [kaˈɾakas]), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English (Spanish: Caraqueños).
Caracas is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range (Cordillera de la Costa). Terrain suitable for building lies between 760 and 910 m (2,493.44 and 2,985.56 ft) above sea level. The valley is close to the Caribbean Sea, separated from the coast by a steep 2200 m (7400 ft) high mountain range, Cerro Ávila; to the south there are more hills and mountains.
El Distrito Metropolitano de Caracas (Metropolitan District of Caracas) includes the Distrito Capital (the capital city proper) and four other municipalities in Miranda State: Chacao, Baruta, Sucre, and El Hatillo. The Distrito Capital had a population of 2,097,350 as of 2009, while that of Distrito Metropolitano was estimated at 4,196,514 as of (2008).
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Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, (i/ˈkjuːbə/; Spanish: República de Cuba, pronounced: [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈkuβa] (
listen)) is an island country in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. To the north of Cuba lies the United States (140 km or 90 mi away) and the Bahamas, Mexico is to the west, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica are to the south, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are to the southeast.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on and claimed the island now occupied by Cuba, for the Kingdom of Spain. Cuba remained a territory of Spain until the Spanish–American War ended in 1898, and gained formal independence from the U.S. in 1902. A fragile democracy, increasingly dominated by radical politics eventually evolved, solidified by the Cuban Constitution of 1940, but was definitely quashed in 1952 by former president Fulgencio Batista, and an authoritarian regime was set up, intensifying and catalyzing already rampant corruption, political repression and crippling economic regulations.Batista was ousted in January 1959 by the July 26 movement, and a new administration under Fidel Castro established, which had by 1965 evolved into a single-party state under the revived Communist Party of Cuba, which holds power to date.
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Curaçao
Curaçao (Dutch: Curaçao;Papiamentu: Kòrsou) is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao (Dutch: Land Curaçao, Papiamentu: Pais Kòrsou), which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao ("Little Curaçao"), is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its capital is Willemstad.
Curaçao is the largest and most populous of the three ABC islands (for Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao) of the Lesser Antilles, specifically the Leeward Antilles. It has a land area of 444 square kilometres (171 square miles). As of 1 January 2009, it had a population of 141,766.
Prior to 10 October 2010, when the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved, Curaçao was administered as the Island Territory of Curaçao (Dutch: Eilandgebied Curaçao, Papiamentu: Teritorio Insular di Kòrsou), one of five island territories of the former Netherlands Antilles. The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code CUW and the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code CW has been assigned to Curaçao.
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Dominica
Dominica ( /ˌdɒmɪˈniːkə/ DOM-i-NEE-kə;French: Dominique; Kali‘na (Carib): Wai‘tu kubuli), officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean Sea, south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its size is 750 square kilometres (290 sq mi) and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of 1,447 metres (4,747 ft). The Commonwealth of Dominica had a population of 71,293 at the 2011 Census. The capital is Roseau.
Dominica has been nicknamed the "Nature Isle of the Caribbean" for its unspoiled natural beauty. It is the youngest island in the Lesser Antilles, still being formed by geothermal-volcanic activity, as evidenced by the world's second-largest hot spring, Boiling Lake. The island features lush mountainous rainforests, home of many rare plant, animal, and bird species. There are xeric areas in some of the western coastal regions, but heavy rainfall can be expected inland. The Sisserou Parrot (also known as the Imperial Amazon), the island's national bird, is featured on the national flag. Dominica's economy is heavily dependent on tourism, agriculture and heavy taxation.
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Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic (i/dəˌmɪnɨkən rɨˈpʌblɪk/; Spanish: República Dominicana [reˈpuβlika ðominiˈkana]) is a nation on the island of Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries. Both by area and population, the Dominican Republic is the second largest Caribbean nation (after Cuba), with 48,442 square kilometres (18,704 sq mi) and an estimated 10 million people.
Taínos inhabited what is now the Dominican Republic since the 7th century. Christopher Columbus landed on it in 1492, and it became the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, namely Santo Domingo, the country's capital and Spain's first capital in the New World. Santo Domingo can boast of many firsts in the Americas, including the first cathedral, and castle, both in the Ciudad Colonial area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Ecuador
Ecuador (i/ˈɛkwədɔr/ E-kwə-dawr), officially the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: República del Ecuador [reˈpuβlika ðel ekwaˈðor], which literally translates to the "Republic of the Equator") is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, (along with Chile), that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) west of the mainland.
The main spoken language in Ecuador is Spanish. Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 275,830 km2 (106,500 sq mi). Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic center in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic center of Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas. Ecuador is also home—despite its size—to a great variety of species, many of them endemic, like those of the Galápagos islands. This species diversity makes Ecuador one of the 17 megadiverse countries in the world. The new constitution of 2008 is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights.
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Guatemala
Guatemala (i/ˌɡwɑːtəˈmɑːlə/ GWAH-tə-MAH-lə), officially the Republic of Guatemala (Spanish: República de Guatemala [reˈpuβlika ðe ɣwateˈmala]), is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast. Its area is 108,890 km2 (42,043 mi2) with an estimated population of 13,276,517.
A representative democracy, its capital is Guatemala de la Asunción, also known as Guatemala City. Guatemala's abundance of biologically significant and unique ecosystems contributes to Mesoamerica's designation as a biodiversity hotspot. The former Mayan civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization, which continued throughout the Post-Classic period until the arrival of the Spanish. The Mayas live in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, the southern part of Mexico and northern parts of El Salvador.
Guatemala became independent from Spain in 1821, joining the Mexican Empire. After it became an independent country in its own right, it was ruled by a series of dictators, assisted by the United Fruit Company. The late 20th century saw Guatemala embroiled in a 36-year-long civil war. Following the war, Guatemala has witnessed both economic growth and successful democratic elections. In the most recent election, held in 2011, Otto Pérez Molina of the Patriotic Party, won the presidency.
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Haiti
Haitii/ˈheɪti/ (French: Haïti [aiti]; Haitian Creole Ayiti [ajiti]), officially the Republic of Haiti (République d'Haïti; Repiblik Ayiti), is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti (land of high mountains) was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island. The country's highest point is Pic la Selle, at 2,680 metres (8,793 ft). The total area of Haiti is 27,750 square kilometres (10,714 sq mi) and its capital is Port-au-Prince. Haitian Creole and French are the official languages.
Haiti's regional, historical, and ethno-linguistic position is unique for several reasons. It was the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean, the first black-led republic in the world, and the second republic in the Americas when it gained independence in 1804 as part of a successful slave revolution lasting nearly a decade. In 2012, Haiti announced its intention to seek associate membership status in the African Union. Haiti is the only predominantly Francophone independent nation in the Americas. It is one of only two independent nations in the Americas (along with Canada) to designate French as an official language; the other French-speaking areas are all overseas départements, or collectivités, of France.
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Havana
Havana (/həˈvænə/; Spanish: La Habana, [la aˈβana] ( listen)) is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of 726.75 km2 (280.60 sq mi) — making it the largest city by area, the most populous city, and the fourth largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean region. The city extends mostly westward and southward from the bay, which is entered through a narrow inlet and which divides into three main harbours: Marimelena, Guanabacoa and Atarés. The sluggish Almendares River traverses the city from south to north, entering the Straits of Florida a few miles west of the bay.
Havana was founded by the Spanish in the 16th century and due to its strategic location it served as a springboard for the Spanish conquest of the continent becoming a stopping point for the treasure laden Spanish Galleons on the crossing between the New World and the Old World. King Philip II of Spain granted Havana the title of City in 1592. Walls as well as forts were built to protect the old city. The sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana's harbor in 1898 was the immediate cause of the Spanish-American War.
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Indonesia
Indonesia (i/ˌɪndəˈniːʒə/ IN-də-NEE-zhə or /ˌɪndoʊˈniːziə/ IN-doh-NEE-zee-ə), officially the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesian: Republik Indonesia Indonesian pronunciation: [rɛpʊblɪk ɪndɔnɛsɪa]), is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 17,508 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an elected legislature and president. The nation's capital city is Jakarta. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Malaysia. Other neighboring countries include Singapore, Philippines, Australia, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Indonesia is a founding member of ASEAN and a member of the G-20 major economies. The Indonesian economy is the world's 17th largest economy by nominal GDP.
The Indonesian archipelago has been an important trade region since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, and Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms flourished. Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Muslim traders brought Islam, and European powers brought Christianity and fought one another to monopolize trade in the Spice Islands of Maluku during the Age of Discovery. Following three and a half centuries of Dutch colonialism, Indonesia secured its independence after World War II. Indonesia's history has since been turbulent, with challenges posed by natural disasters, corruption, separatism, a democratization process, and periods of rapid economic change.
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La Orchila
La Orchila is a military base off the coast of Venezuela, north of Caracas. It has numerous beaches, including one where the sand is markedly pink (Arena Rosada).
There is a presidential retreat on this island, and the residential complex reserved for the military houses consists mainly of elevated houses made of wooden logs. There is also a court for bolas criollas. All the facilities are connected by pathways, mostly unpaved but smooth and clean.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was imprisoned on the island during the April 2002 coup.
On March 14, 2009, Russian Air Force Major General Anatolii Zhikharev, head of the Russian Air Force’s Long-Range Aviation, reported that Venezuela has offered Russia the use of the Antonio Diaz Naval Air Station on the island to base its strategic bombers. Chavez however denied this, which Kremlin official Alexei Pavlov prompted to say that the military just spoke about 'technical possibilities'.
The Dutch considered Orchilla to belong to their nearby island territory of Curaçao. The author M.D. Teenstra still writes in 1836 (in his book "The Dutch West Indies): "The government of Curaçao also includes the uninhabited islets and rocks Little Curaçao, Aves, Roques and Orchilla." He goes on to say that "Orchilla, although we consider it to belong to Curaçao, is of too little importance to justify any dispute with Spain which claims this island as well. The Republic of Venezuela also considers it theirs and their coastal guard often chases away the fishermen from Curaçao who go there to collect shell fish, fire wood, grass and hay, turtles, and birds' eggs or burn lime."
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Miraflores Palace
Coordinates: 10°30′29″N 66°55′10″W / 10.50803°N 66.91938°W / 10.50803; -66.91938
The Palacio de Miraflores (Spanish for "Miraflores Palace") is the official workplace of the President of Venezuela. It is located on Urdaneta Avenue, Libertador Municipality in Caracas.
It was started on 27 April 1884 under the direction of Giuseppe Orsi and was intended as the family residence of Joaquin Crespo. Also participated: painter Julián Oñate, Juan Bautista Sales and his team of esculptors, decorators, wood cavers, constructors - who erected the European-style Miraflores Palace. To decorate it, furniture was imported from Barcelona, Spain; a bronze rosette was commissioned to the Marrera foundry and 24 bronze lamps were ordered to Requena brothers at San Juan de los Morros, Guárico state. In 1911, the national administration acquired the property from General Félix Galavis at a cost of five houndred thousand bolívares, and Miraflores Palace became the official presidential residence and office.
After many modifications, the current palace presents fountains encompassed by corridors and halls, such as the Peruvian Sun Hall, decorated with gold donated by the government of Peru; the Joaquín Crespo Hall, with its four gigantic rock-crystal mirrors; Vargas Swamp, which conmemorates the Battle of Boyacá, in Colombia; the Ambassador Hall, where diplomats are received and Ayacucho Hall, in honor of Marshall Antonio José de Sucre and the battle who starred.
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Netherlands Antilles
The Netherlands Antilles (Dutch: Nederlandse Antillen [ˈneːjərlɑntsə ˈɑntɪlə(n)] (
listen), Papiamentu: Antia Hulandes), also referred to informally as the Dutch Antilles, was an autonomous Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, consisting of two groups of islands in the Lesser Antilles: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (ABC islands), in the Leeward Antilles just off the Venezuelan coast; and Sint Maarten, Saba, and Sint Eustatius (SSS islands) in the Leeward Islands southeast of the Virgin Islands.
Aruba seceded in 1986 as a separate country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the rest of the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved on 10 October 2010, resulting in two new constituent countries, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, with the other islands joining the Netherlands as "special municipalities", officially public bodies.
The name 'Netherlands Antilles' is still sometimes used to indicate the Caribbean islands which are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Dutch Caribbean islands.
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New Statesman
New Statesman is a British left-wingpolitical and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s.
The longest serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–60). The current editor is Jason Cowley, who assumed the post at the end of September 2008. In the 29 May 2006 issue, then-editor John Kampfner stated that the New Statesman remained "true to its heritage of radical politics". The magazine is committed to "development, human rights and the environment, global issues the mainstream press often ignores".
Historically, the magazine was sometimes affectionately referred to as "The Staggers" because of crises in funding, ownership and circulation. The nickname is now used as the title of its rolling politics blog. Its current writers and columnists include Mehdi Hasan, Will Self, David Blanchflower, John Gray and Richard Mabey. The New Statesman had a certified average circulation of 23,909 in 2011, 17,471 of which were paid copies. Traffic to the magazine's relaunched website recently reached a record high. In the first quarter of 2012, monthly unique visitors to newstatesman.com exceeded 800,000, an increase of 231 per cent since the fourth quarter of 2009, when the site was previously relaunched.
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Nicaragua
Nicaragua (i/ˌnɪkəˈrɑːɡwə/ nik-ə-RAH-gwə), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (Spanish: República de Nicaragua [reˈpuβlika ðe nikaˈɾaɣwa] ( listen)), is the largest country in the Central American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean lies to the west, and the Caribbean Sea to the east. The country's physical geography divides it into three major zones: Pacific lowlands; wet, cooler central highlands; and the Caribbean lowlands. On the Pacific side of the country are the two largest fresh water lakes in Central America—Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua. Surrounding these lakes and extending to their northwest along the rift valley of the Gulf of Fonseca are fertile lowland plains, with soil highly enriched by ash from nearby volcanoes of the central highlands. Nicaragua's abundance of biologically significant and unique ecosystems contribute to Mesoamerica's designation as a biodiversity hotspot.
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Russian Federation
Russiai/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
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Sabaneta, Barinas
Sabaneta is a city in Venezuela's Barinas State. It is the birthplace of current[update]President Hugo Chávez. Sabaneta is the capital city of Alberto Arvelo Torrealba municipality in Barinas. The city was founded by Juan de Alhama in 1787. The principal industry is sugar production.
Coordinates: 7°58′00″N 71°16′00″W / 7.96666667667°N 71.2666666767°W / 7.96666667667; -71.2666666767
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South Korea
South Korea ( listen), officially the Republic of Korea (Hangul: 대한민국; Hanja: 大韓民國; Daehan Minguk listen), is a sovereign state in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The name "Korea" is derived from Goryeo, a dynasty which ruled in the Middle Ages (an initial "G" in Korean is pronounced like an English "K").
Its neighbors are China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the Korea Strait to the south. South Korea lies in the north temperate zone with a predominantly mountainous terrain. It covers a total area of 99,392 square kilometers and has a population of almost 50 million. The capital and largest city is Seoul, with a population of 9,794,304.
Archaeological findings show that the Korean Peninsula was occupied by the Lower Paleolithic period.Korean history begins with the founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BC by the legendary Dan-gun. Following the unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea under Silla 668 AD, Korea went through the Goryeo Dynasty and Joseon Dynasty as one nation until the end of the Korean Empire in 1910, when it was annexed by Japan. After liberation and occupation by Soviet and U.S. forces at the end of World War II, the nation was divided into North and South Korea. The latter was established in 1948 as a democracy, though political turmoil and times of military rule and martial law characterized much of the period until the foundation of the Sixth Republic in 1987.
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
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Venezuela
Venezuela (i/ˌvɛnɨˈzweɪlə/ VEN-ə-ZWAY-lə), officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela [repuˈβlika βoliβaˈɾjana ðe βeneˈswela]), is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Its northern coastline of roughly 2,800 kilometres (1,700 mi) includes numerous islands in the Caribbean Sea, and in the north east borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Bonaire, Aruba and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela's territory covers around 916,445 square kilometres (353,841 sq mi) with an estimated population of 29,105,632. Venezuela is considered a state with extremely high biodiversity, with habitats ranging from the Andes mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east.
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Yale University
Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university located in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.
Incorporated as the "Collegiate School," the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed "Yale College" to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. school to award the PhD. Yale became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. Yale College was transformed, beginning in the 1930s, through the establishment of residential colleges: 12 now exist and two more are planned. Yale employs over 1,100 faculty to teach and advise about 5,300 undergraduate and 6,100 graduate and professional students. Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.
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Zulia State
Zulia (Spanish: Estado Zulia, IPA: [esˈtaðo ˈsulja]) is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital is Maracaibo. In June 30, 2010, it had an estimated population of 3,821,068, giving it the largest population among Venezuela's states. It is located in the northwestern part of the country. It is also one of the few (if not the only one) states in Venezuela where voseo is widely used.
Zulia State is located northwest of Venezuela, around Maracaibo Lake. This lake is the largest water body of its kind in Latin America and its basin covers one of the largest oil and gas reserves in the Western hemisphere.
Zulia is a large border state, separating Venezuela from Colombia in the east of the country. It is bordered to the northwest by the Guajira Peninsula and the Perija Mountains, to east by the states of Falcon and Lara, and to the south by the Andean Venezuelan states of Táchira, Mérida, and Trujillo, with Lake Maracaibo as a territorial state border.
Zulia is a territory that has brought huge wealth to the country due to its oil and mineral exploitation, but it is also one of the major agricultural areas of Venezuela, highlighting the region's contribution in areas such as livestock, bananas, fruits, meat and milk, among others.
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Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Arabic pronunciation: [ʕaːbd lʕziz butfliqaː]; Arabic: عبد العزيز بوتفليقة) (born 2 March 1937) is an Algerian politician who has been the fifth President of Algeria since 1999. He presided over the end of the bloody Algerian Civil War in 2002, and he ended emergency rule in February 2011 amidst regional unrest.
He has also served as president of the United Nations General Assembly.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika was born on 2 March 1937 in Oujda, Morocco. He was the first child of his mother and the second child of his father (Fatima, his half-sister, preceded him). His father (Ahmed Bouteflika) and mother (Mansouria Ghezlaoui) originated from the region of Tlemcen. Bouteflika has three half-sisters (Fatima, Yamina, and Aïcha), as well as four brothers (Abdelghani, Mustapha, Abderahim and Saïd) and one sister (Latifa). Saïd serves as Abdelaziz Bouteflika's personal physician, and is said by some to be an important figure in Bouteflika's inner circle of advisers.
Bouteflika was raised in Oujda, where his father had emigrated as a youngster. He successively attended three schools there: "Sidi Ziane", "El Hoceinia" and the "Abdel Moumen" high-school, where he reportedly excelled academically. He was also affiliated with Kadiri Zaouia in Oujda.
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Adina Bastidas
Adina Mercedes Bastidas Castillo (born 1943) is a Venezuelan economist active in politics. She was appointed Vice President of Venezuela on December 24, 2000 by Hugo Chávez, and served in the post until January 13, 2002, the first woman to hold the job in the country's history. She was later appointed Production and Commerce Minister.
According to the BBC, Bastidas is considered a controversial left winger; she is also considered a prominent critic of Venezuela's private sector. Her appointment as Commerce Minister, coming after weeks of protests against President Chávez's economic policies, was seen as a further radicalization of Chávez's government, according to the BBC. President Chavez has called her "a first class revolutionary," and deemed her work "exceptional."
At the Latin American and Caribbean Encounter on the Dialogue of Civilizations, held in Caracas on November 8, 2001, Bastidas said:
Bastidas is currently Director for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, a post she also held from 1999 - 2010.
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Adán Chávez
Adán Chávez Frías (born April 11, 1953) is the governor of Barinas state in Venezuela, and was Minister of Education from 2007 to 2008. He is the elder brother of current Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Adán Chávez Frías was a student at the University of the Andes, and now collaborates in his electoral campaigns and also in the present Chávez administration. He is the brother of the current mayor of Sabaneta, Barinas, Anibal José Chávez Frías.
In August, 2006, following reported differences with Chávez during his recent international tour, Presidential Secretary Delcy Rodríguez was replaced by Adán Chávez. Adán Chávez had previously been the ambassador to Cuba. The Charlotte Observer reports that the author of several books on Chávez, Alberto Garrido, argues "A much more hard-line phase [of Chávez rule] is beginning and Chávez needs a reliable and radical team around him. Other intellectualls believe Chavez is only changing the oppressive regime that has inhabited Venezuela for over 100 years with a different vision that will benefit all Venezuelans of all classes, this is revolutionary." Adán is older than his brother and was involved with pro-guerrilla groups before Hugo. Adán Chávez was designated by his brother as Minister of Education in January 2007. In the United Socialist Party of Venezuela's primary election on June 1, 2008, he was chosen as the party's candidate to succeed his father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, as Governor of Barinas in the November 2008 election.
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Afro Venezuelans
Afro-Venezuelan are descendants of Africans in Venezuela. They are estimated to be at 5 million and tend to cluster in Barlovento in Miranda State, although they can be found all over the country. Afro-Venezuelans are hard to identify due to strong racial admixture in the population. The argument that there is no racism and everyone is equal is a common theme repeated in Venezuela but questionable. It falls flat when one observes most in the slums are of African descent and with the notion of whitening, of assimilating to white cultural norms and values, being presented as progress and advancement. Much work has been done studying the culture, tradition, folklore of Afro-Venezuelan, beginning with Miguel Acosta Saignes, in the 1960s.
Afro Venezuelans first arrived in Venezuela with the Spanish Conquistadors. They were referred to as ladinos, hispanicized slaves as oppose to bozales, slaves straight from Africa. Most were used as farm hands on subsistence farms. Afro-Venezuelans were used as divers for pearls, a job that run the risk of being attacked by sharks. Slaves came from Cape Verde and Guinea in Africa. Some slaves purchased their freedom from earnings in pearl mining. Gold was later discovered in the latter part of the 1500s. Numerous slaves perished in the gold mines which made it necessary to import more slaves. By the 1600s, Venezuela had 13,000 slaves.
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Andrés Bello
Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López (November 29, 1781 – October 15, 1865) was a Venezuelan humanist, poet, legislator, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture. Bello is featured on the old 2,000 Venezuelan bolívar and the 20,000 Chilean peso notes. There is also a decoration, the Venezuelan Order of Andrés Bello.
Bello, whose parents descended from people from the Canary Islands, studied Liberal Arts, Law and Medicine at the University of Caracas and graduated on May 9, 1800 with a degree of Bachelor of Arts. He later became known for his early writings and translations, edited the newspaper Gazeta de Caracas and held important offices in the government of the Captaincy General of Venezuela. He accompanied Alexander von Humboldt in a part of his Latin American expedition (1800) and was for a short time Simón Bolívar's teacher. His relationships with both men became a major factor in cultivating his ideas for his intellectual career.
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Andrés Narvarte
Andrés Narvarte (1781, in La Guaira – 31 March 1853, in Caracas) was President of Venezuela as interim caretaker (1836–1837).
Lawyer and politician, son of Joaquín Narvarte y Descarga and María Josefa Pimentel y de la Mota, was born in La Guaira, 1781. Vice-president of the Republic and President of Venezuela (1835, 1836 and 1842). Doctor in Civil Rights from the University of Caracas (9 December 1804), in 1810 he was part of the movement for the emancipation of Venezuela. Between 1813 and 1814, he was Governor of the Province of Trujillo. When the Second Republic was lost, he emigrated to Saint Thomas. The date of his return to Venezuela is unknown, but in March, 1819, he was in Juangriego, and in 1822 was Intendant of Venezuela. In 1830 he was designated Deputy of Caracas, in the Constituent Congress of Venezuela.
In 1830, on the occasion of the discussion in the Congress, about the decree in favor who participated in the attack against the life of the President of the Republic, Simón Bolivar, on 25 September 1828, Narvarte says, that he presented his intervention for the political moral, he proposed mercy for the people who had participated in these events, and the restitution of their citizens' rights, but the Congress did not have to approve a decree by means of which Venezuela resolved that the people who participated in the events, deserved praise. At the same time he pleaded in the Congress for the admission in Venezuela of all those who had been persecuted and expelled for their political opinions. In 1831 he was designated Rector of the Central University of Venezuela.
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Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet (Spanish pronunciation: [auˈɣusto pinoˈtʃet]), (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973. He was the commander-in-chief of the Chilean army from 1973 to 1998, president of the Government Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981 and President of the Republic from 1974 until transferring power to a democratically elected president in 1990.
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Bashar al-Assad
Bashar Hafez al-Assad (Arabic: بشار حافظ الأسد, Baššār al-ʾAsad, Arabic pronunciation: [bæʃˈʃɑːɾɪlˈʔæsæd]); born 11 September 1965) is the current President of Syria and Regional Secretary of the Syrian-led branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. His father Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria for 29 years until his death in 2000.
Al-Assad graduated from the medical school of the University of Damascus in 1988, and started to work as a doctor in the army. Four years later, he attended postgraduate studies at the Western Eye Hospital, in London, specializing in ophthalmology. In 1994, Al-Assad entered the military academy and in 1998, Al-Assad took charge of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. In December 2000, Assad married Asma Assad, née Akhras. Al-Assad was elected as President of Syria in 2000 and 2007, unopposed each time. During the Syrian uprising, activists and protesters have called for President al-Assad's resignation.
Bashar Hafez al-Assad was born in Damascus on 11 September 1965, the son of Aniseh (née Makhluf) and Hafez al-Assad. His father, Hafez al-Assad, born to a poor family of Alawite background, had risen through the Party ranks, to take control of the Syrian-led branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in the 1970 Corrective Revolution, thus installing himself as president. Hafez al-Assad purged the Party, and introduced effective Alawite rule of Syria.
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Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Many of his policies have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.
Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became both a student leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since 2009 and was a Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the National Governors Association.
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Carlos Andrés Pérez
Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (27 October 1922 – 25 December 2010), also known as CAP and often referred to as El Gocho (due to his Andean origins), was a Venezuelan politician, President of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and again from 1989 to 1993. His first presidency was known as the Saudi Venezuela due to its economic and social prosperity thanks to enormous income from petroleum exportation. However, his second period saw a continuation of the economic crisis of the 1980s, and saw a series of social crises, a popular revolt (denominated Caracazo) and two coup attempts in 1992. In May 1993 he became the first Venezuelan president to be forced out of the office by the Supreme Court, for the embezzlement of 250 million bolívars belonging to a presidential discretionary fund.
Carlos Andrés Pérez was born at the hacienda La Argentina, on the Venezuelan-Colombian border near the town of Rubio, Táchira state, the 11th of 12 children in a middle-class family. His father, Antonio Pérez Lemus, was a Colombian-born coffee planter and pharmacist of Spanish and Canary Islander ancestry who emigrated to Venezuela during the last years of the 19th century. His mother, Julia Rodríguez, was the daughter of a prominent landowner in the town of Rubio and the granddaughter of Venezuelan refugees who had fled to the Andes and Colombia in the wake of the civil war that ravaged Venezuela in the 1860s.
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Carlos Soublette
Carlos Soublette (15 December 1789 – 11 February 1870) was President of Venezuela 1837-1839 and 1843–1847, and a hero of the Venezuelan War of Independence.
Carlos Valentín José de la Soledad Antonio del Sacramento Soublette was born in La Guaira on 15 December 1789. He was the son of Antonio Soublette y Piar, a native of Tenerife, and Teresa Jeréz de Aristeguieta. On 18 May 1810 entered at the army in the squadron of Caracas, being soon promoted like Lieutenant, commanded by Francisco de Miranda at the campaign destinated to dominate an insurrection in Valencia, from this was promoted as captain.
On 12 February 1812 he married Ollala Buroz. Also during that year, as lieutenant colonel he commanded a squadron of the republican army against the royalists forces led by Juan Domingo de Monteverde. At the end of the First Republic, he was reduced to imprisonment at the San Felipe castle of Puerto Cabello. Released in 1813, he enlisted the Liberator Army, which concluded the Admirable Campaign. Under the command of José Félix Ribas he fought in the battle of Vigirima, as well as in La Victoria in 1814. Participates at the emigration of the Republican Army to the Venezuelan east (July, 1814). On 17 August, intervened at the battle of Aragua de Barcelona. At the end of the Second Republic, he emigrated to New Grenada (Colombia) along with Simón Bolívar, participating at military actions in Santa Fe de Bogotá (December, 1814), Magdalena and Cartagena (1815).
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Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa]; June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia within popular culture.
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was radically transformed by the endemic poverty and alienation he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of capitalism, monopolism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara's political ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.
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Cipriano Castro
José Cipriano Castro Ruiz (1858–1924) was a high ranking member of the Venezuelan military, politician and the President of Venezuela from 1899 to 1908. He was the first man from the Andes to rule the country, and was the first of five military strongmen from the Andean state of Táchira to rule the country over the next 46 years.
Cipriano Castro was the son of José Carmen Castro and Pelagia Ruiz. He was born on 12 October 1858 in Capacho, Táchira. Castro's father was a mid-level farmer and he received an education typical of the tachirense middle-class. His family had significant mercantile and family relations with Colombia, in particlular with Cúcuta and Puerto Santander. After studying in his native town and the city of San Cristóbal, he continued his studies at a seminary school in Pamplona, Colombia (1872–1873). He left those studies to return to San Cristóbal, where he began work as employee of a company called Van Dissel, Thies and Ci'a. He also worked as a cowboy in the Andean region.
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Cristóbal Mendoza
Cristóbal Hurtado de Mendoza (23 June 1772 – 8 February 1829) was a Venezuelan politician. Cristobal became the first President of Venezuela in 1811.
He was born in Trujillo, Venezuela, on 23 June 1772 and was educated by his father in a Franciscan Monastery under the tutelage of Friar Antonio de Pereira. At the age of 16, he was sent to Caracas to complete his education. In 1794 obtained his law degree. He went to Santo Domingo where he studied civil rights and returned to Venezuela in his late 20s.
In March 1811, the first Venezuelan constitutional congress established as the executive power a triumvirate in which three men shared executive power and rotated the presidency every week. At age 29, Mendoza became a member of the triumvirate that headed the First Republic of Venezuela and was unanimously elected by the other two as the first to go in rotation on 5 March 1811. As part of the triumvirate, Mendoza began the war for independence against the parts of Venezuela that still supported the Spanish Monarchy. He also was author of the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence, issued on 5 July 1811. While in office he formed part of the constitutional convention that designed and promulgated the first Constitution of the Republic of Venezuela in December 1811.
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Daniel Ortega
José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (Spanish pronunciation: [xo̞ˈse̞ ðaˈnje̞l o̞rˈte̞ɣa saˈβe̞ðɾa]; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguan politician. He is the current President of Nicaragua (since 2007), a position he has held previously between 1985 and 1990. A leader in the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN), his policies in government have seen the implementation of leftist reforms across Nicaragua.
Born into a working class family, from an early age Ortega developed a hatred of the ruling President Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who was widely seen as a dictator, and became involved in the underground movement to oppose Somoza's regime. Joining the Sandinistas, he also travelled to Cuba to receive training in guerilla warfare from Fidel Castro's Marxist-Leninist government. After the Nicaraguan Revolution resulted in the overthrow and exile of the Somoza's government in 1979, Ortega became a member of the ruling multipartisan Junta of National Reconstruction and was later elected president, serving from 1985 to 1990. At the time a Marxist-Leninist, his first period in office was characterized by a controversial program of land reform, wealth redistribution and literacy programs. Such leftist reforms damaged U.S. economic interests in the country, gaining hostility from the U.S.'s governing Reagan administration, who funded a right wing militia, the Contras, to overthrow Ortega's government.
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Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Vana Rousseff (Brazilian Portuguese: [ˈdʒiwmɐ χuˈsɛf] born 14 December 1947) is the 36th and current President of Brazil. She is the first woman to hold the office. Prior to that, in 2005, she was also the first woman to become Chief of Staff to the President of Brazil, appointed by then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The daughter of a Bulgarian entrepreneur, Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte. She became a socialist during her youth, and following the 1964 coup d'état joined various left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship. Rousseff was captured and jailed between 1970 and 1972 and reportedly tortured.
After her release, Rousseff rebuilt her life in Porto Alegre with Carlos Araújo, who would be her partner for 30 years. Both helped found the Democratic Labour Party (PDT) in Rio Grande do Sul, participating in several of the party's electoral campaigns. She became the Secretary of the Treasury of the city of Porto Alegre in the Alceu Collares administration, and later the Secretary of Energy of the State of Rio Grande do Sul under both Collares and Olívio Dutra administrations. In 2000, after an internal dispute in the Dutra cabinet, she left PDT and joined the Workers' Party (PT).
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Diosdado Cabello
Diosdado Cabello Rondón (born April 15, 1963) is a Venezuelan politician. A former member of the armed forces, he was involved in Hugo Chávez's February 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt. He became a leading member of Chavez's Movimiento V República (MVR), and remains a leading member of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela into which MVR was merged in 2007. Governor of Miranda from 2004 to 2008,he lost the 2008 election to Henrique Capriles Radonski, and was subsequently appointed Public Works & Housing Minister. In November 2009 he was additionally appointed head of the National Commission of Telecom, a position traditionally independent from Ministry of Public Works and Housing. In 2010, he was elected deputy of the National Assembly of Venezuela, the country's legislative branch.
Diosdado Cabello was born in El Furrial, Monagas State. His background is in engineering: he has an undergraduate degree in systems engineering from the Instituto Universitario Politécnico de las Fuerzas Armadas Nacionales and a graduate degree in engineering project management from the Andrés Bello Catholic University. A former member of the armed forces, he was involved in Chávez's abortive coup d'état of February 1992, for which he was jailed for two years.
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Donald Ramotar
Donald Ramotar (born 22 October 1950) is a Guyanese politician who has been President of Guyana since December 2011. He has been the General Secretary of the People's Progressive Party (PPP) since 1997.
Ramotar joined the PPP in 1967 and was first elected to the PPP Central Committee in 1979; he joined the PPP Executive Committee in 1983. He received a degree in economics from the University of Guyana. From 1988 to 1993, he was International Secretary of the Guyana Agricultural Workers' Union. In the 1992 election, in which the PPP under Cheddi Jagan won power for first time in decades, Ramotar was elected to the National Assembly of Guyana; he was continuously re-elected thereafter. He was designated as the PPP's Executive Secretary in 1993. Following Jagan's death in March 1997, Ramotar was unanimously elected to succeed him as the PPP's General Secretary on March 29, 1997.
At the PPP's 29th Congress, he was re-elected to its Central Committee on August 2, 2008, receiving the fourth-highest number of votes (637). Following the Congress, he was re-elected by the Central Committee as General Secretary on August 12, 2008, without opposition; he was also elected to the editorial board of the PPP paper Thunder on this occasion.
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Douglas Bravo
Douglas Bravo (born March 11, 1932) is a former guerrilla fighter and Venezuelan politician.
Bravo became a member of the Communist Party of Venezuela in 1946, only to be expelled from it in 1964.
By March 1966, he directed the Partido de la Revolución Venezolana (PRV) (Party of Venezuelan Revolution). He led the organization's militant wing, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN) in an insurgency within Venezuela that lasted into the mid-1970s. He was later exiled to France, but returned.
Bravo is a fervent anti-imperialist, has had contacts with Che Guevara, and was ideologically opposed to the policies of the Soviet Union.
As part of his plan to foment a successful revolution in Venezuela, Bravo recruited military officers sympathetic to his cause within the ranks of the Army. One officer was a young Hugo Chávez, whom Bravo met in 1980. Chávez would later become the President of Venezuela.
Bravo participated in the Venezuelan coup attempt of 1992, was arrested, and pardoned the following year.
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Dési Bouterse
Desiré Delano "Dési" Bouterse (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈbɑutərsə]) (born 13 October 1945) is a Surinamese politician who has been the ninth President of Suriname since 2010.
As an army officer, he was the de facto leader of Suriname through most of the 1980s, serving as Chairman of the National Military Council. Later, as leader of the National Democratic Party (Nationale Democratische Partij, NDP), Bouterse was elected as President of Suriname on 19 July 2010 and inaugurated on 12 August 2010.
Born in Paramaribo District, Bouterse grew up in Suriname. He attended the Middelbare Handelsschool and acquired the MULO diploma (roughly equivalent to junior secondary general education). He received his military education in the Netherlands.
Bouterse's name is closely bound with the military regime that controlled Suriname from the 1980 Surinamese coup d'état until the beginning of the 1990s. On 25 February 1980, the government of newly-independent Suriname underwent a military coup which declared the country to be a Socialist Republic and Bouterse became Chairman of the National Military Council. President Johan Ferrier was forced out of office by Bouterse pressure in August 1980, and several months after the coup d'état by Bouterse most of the political authority transferred to the military leadership. From then until 1988, the titular Presidents were essentially army-installed by Bouterse, who ruled as a de facto leader with few practical checks on his power.
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Edgar Sanabria
Edgar Sanabria Arcia (3 October 1911 – 24 April 1989) was a Venezuelan lawyer, diplomat, and politician. He belonged to the provisional Government Junta after the overthrow of Marcos Pérez Jiménez on 23 January 1958, and was interim President of Venezuela in 1959. He died in Caracas, after a stroke, on 24 April, 1989.
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Elias Jaua
Elías José Jaua Milano (born 1969) is a Venezuelan politician and former university professor who has been Vice-President of Venezuela since January 2010.
Jaua obtained a Sociology degree from the Central University of Venezuela. In 2000 he was part of the Comisión Legislativa Nacional and Minister of the Secretaría de la Presidencia from 2000 to 2001. He was nominated as Venezuelan Ambassador to Argentina in 2002; Jaua served as Minister of Agriculture in President Hugo Chávez's government before being appointed as Vice-President in January 2010, while remaining Minister of Agriculture.
On the 15th of December 2011, following a major reshuffle of the Venezuelan political leadership, President Chavez proposed Jaua to be the PSUV candidate for governor of the state of Miranda (reported in El Universal).
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Elías Jaua
Elías José Jaua Milano (born 1969) is a Venezuelan politician and former university professor who has been Vice-President of Venezuela since January 2010.
Jaua obtained a Sociology degree from the Central University of Venezuela. In 2000 he was part of the Comisión Legislativa Nacional and Minister of the Secretaría de la Presidencia from 2000 to 2001. He was nominated as Venezuelan Ambassador to Argentina in 2002; Jaua served as Minister of Agriculture in President Hugo Chávez's government before being appointed as Vice-President in January 2010, while remaining Minister of Agriculture.
On the 15th of December 2011, following a major reshuffle of the Venezuelan political leadership, President Chavez proposed Jaua to be the PSUV candidate for governor of the state of Miranda (reported in El Universal).
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Evo Morales
Juan Evo Morales Ayma (born October 26, 1959), popularly known as Evo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈeβo]), is a Bolivian politician and activist, serving as the 80th President of Bolivia, a position that he has held since 2006. He is also the leader of both the Movement for Socialism party (MAS) and the cocalero trade union. Politically a socialist, his presidency has seen a focus on implementing leftist policies in the country, introducing a new constitution, land reforms, nationalising various key industries, opposing United States and corporate involvement in the country's politics, and poverty reduction measures.
Born into a working class Aymara family in Isallawi, Orinoca Canton, Evo grew up aiding his parents as a subsistence farmer. After studying for a degree, Morales undertook national service until 1978, when he returned to the family profession of farming, moving with them to Chapare Province. He eventually settled into growing coca, the plant from which cocaine is made. His activism led him into the political arena, and he eventually became the leader of the MAS, through which he got involved in social protests like the gas conflict and the Cochabamba protests of 2000. The MAS claimed that its aims were giving more power to the country's indigenous and poor communities by means of land reforms and redistribution of gas wealth, and gradually increased its electoral support.
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Ezequiel Zamora
Ezequiel Zamora (Spanish pronunciation: [eθeˈkjel θaˈmoɾa]; 1 February 1817 - 10 January 1860) was a Venezuelan soldier and leader of the Federalists in the Federal War (Guerra Federal) of 1859-1863. His life was marked by the romanticism that characterized liberals of the time.
Zamora was born in Cúa, Miranda State. His parents were Alejandro Zamora and Paula Correa, modest landowners belonging to the white social class. During the early years of his childhood, he received basic education, typical of a rural area still disrupted by the struggles for independence from Spain.
Later, Zamora moved to Caracas, where he continued his primary school studies, the only formal education he received. However, thanks to the influence of his brother-in-law John Caspers, he received informal political training, influenced by the revolutionary movements in Europe. Zamora completed his education thanks to his friendly relationship with the lawyer José Manuel García. Zamora learned modern philosophy and the foundations of Roman law, and soon advocated the "principles of equality" and the need for their implementation in Venezuela.
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Fernando Lugo
Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez (Spanish pronunciation: [ferˈnando arˈmindo ˈluɣo ˈmendeθ]; born 30 May 1951) is the President of Paraguay, and a former Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of San Pedro.
Lugo's family was not particularly religious; by his own account, he never saw his father set foot in a church.[citation needed] However, the influences during his upbringing were distinctly political. His maternal uncle, Epifanio Méndes Fleitas, was a Colorado Party dissident and was persecuted and exiled by General Stroessner's regime. Lugo's father was imprisoned twenty times, and some of his elder siblings were sent into exile. He received his basic education at a religious school in Encarnación, all the while he worked selling snacks on the streets.[citation needed]
Aged 17 or 18, against his father's wishes for him to become a lawyer, Lugo entered a normal school, and began teaching at a rural community. He was well accepted within this people, who were very religious, but they had no priest. He recalls that he was touched by that experience, discovering his vocation to the Roman Catholic priesthood, and he decided to enter a seminary operated by the Society of the Divine Word at age 19. Lugo was ordained a priest on 15 August 1977. That year he was sent to Ecuador, where he served as a missionary for five years. In Ecuador he had the opportunity to learn about the controversial liberation theology, a movement later criticized in large measure by the Vatican.
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Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (Spanish: [fiˈðel ˈkastro]; born August 13, 1926) is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011. Politically a Marxist-Leninist, under his administration the Republic of Cuba was converted into a one-party socialist state, with industry and business being nationalized under state ownership and socialist reforms implemented in all areas of society. On the international stage, he also served as the Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983 and 2006 to 2008.
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George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. The eldest son of Barbara Bush and George H. W. Bush, he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush worked in oil businesses. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. In a close and controversial election, Bush was elected President in 2000 as the Republican candidate, defeating Vice President Al Gore in the Electoral College. Bush is the second American president to have been the son of a former president. He is also the brother of Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida.
Terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bush's first term as president on September 11, 2001. In response, Bush announced the War on Terror, an international military campaign which included the war in Afghanistan launched in 2001 and the war in Iraq launched in 2003. In addition to national security issues, Bush promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, and social security reform. He signed into law broad tax cuts, the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors. His tenure saw national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, and enhanced interrogation techniques. His administration also withdrew the U.S. from a some international treaty processes, including the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
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Goodluck Jonathan
Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, GCFR, BNER, GCON (born 20 November 1957) is the 14th Head of State and current President of Nigeria. Prior to his role as President, he served as Governor of Bayela State and Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP).
Jonathan was born in what is now Bayelsa State to a family of canoe makers. Jonathan holds a B.S. degree in Zoology in which he attained Second Class Honours. He also holds an M.Sc. degree in Hydrobiology and Fisheries biology, and a Ph.D. degree in Zoology from the University of Port Harcourt. After earning his degree, he worked as an education inspector, lecturer, and environmental-protection officer, until he decided to enter politics in 1998.
Jonathan and his wife, Patience, have two children. He is a Christian and comes from the Ijaw ethnic group.
Former President Umaru Yar'Adua died on 5 May 2010. Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as Yar'Adua's successor on the following day, becoming Nigeria's 14th Head of State, to serve until the next election, in 2011, at which time he could elect to run again, which he has done. Upon taking office, he cited anti-corruption, power and electoral reform as focuses of his administration. He stated that he came to office under "very sad and unusual circumstances".
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Greg Palast
Gregory Allyn Palast (born June 26, 1952) is a New York Times-bestselling author and a freelance journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation as well as the British newspaper The Observer. His work frequently focuses on corporate malfeasance but has also been known to work with labor unions and consumer advocacy groups. Notably, he has claimed to have uncovered evidence that Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and Florida Elections Unit Chief Clay Roberts, along with the ChoicePoint corporation, rigged the ballots during the US Presidential Election of 2000 and again in 2004 when, he argued, the problems and machinations from 2000 continued, and that challenger John Kerry actually would have won if not for disproportional "spoilage" of Democratic votes.
Palast spoke at a Think Twice conference held at Cambridge University and lectured at the University of São Paulo. He lives in New York City. Palast is originally from Los Angeles, and was educated at the University of Chicago, and eventually earned an MBA.
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Hannibal
Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca (247 – 183/182 BC) was a Punic Carthaginian military commander and tactician, generally considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. His father, Hamilcar Barca, was the leading Carthaginian commander during the First Punic War, his younger brothers were Mago and Hasdrubal, and he was brother-in-law to Hasdrubal the Fair.
Hannibal lived during a period of great tension in the Mediterranean, when the Roman Republic established its supremacy over other great powers such as Carthage, the Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedon, Syracuse, and the Seleucid empire. One of his most famous achievements was at the outbreak of the Second Punic War, when he marched an army, which included war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into northern Italy. In his first few years in Italy, he won three dramatic victories—Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae—and won over many allies of Rome. Hannibal occupied much of Italy for 15 years, but a Roman counter-invasion of North Africa forced him to return to Carthage, where he was decisively defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama. Scipio had studied Hannibal's tactics and brilliantly devised some of his own, and finally defeated Rome's nemesis at Zama, having previously driven Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother, out of the Iberian Peninsula.
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Henrique Salas Römer
Henrique Salas Römer (17 April 1936 - ) is a Venezuelan capitalist economist (a graduate of Yale University), politically active in Venezuela since 1983.
He was the governor of Carabobo (1990–1996), being succeeded by his son, Henrique Salas Feo. He was a candidate in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1998 as the candidate of Project Venezuela, a national party developing out of Salas Römer's regional Project Carabobo party. Four days before the election, the two main political parties in Venezuela at the time, COPEI and Democratic Action, switched their support to Salas Römer. Despite this Salas Römer came in second to Hugo Chávez, with 39% of the vote to Chávez' 57%.
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Herma Marksman
Herma Marksman is a Venezuelan historian.
Marksman was born of a peasant woman and a German immigrant who worked as an ironworker union organizer. When she was in her 30s she met the future Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who was then married and in his twenties. She became his mistress. They both were students of socialism and idealistic and she helped him in his academic studies. After the failed 1992 coup attempt Chavez left both his first wife and mistress.
Marksman now repudiates him, and describes his government as imposing a "fascist dictatorship". She has also written several essays and a book titled "El otro Chávez," describing her relationship with Chavez.
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Hermógenes López
Hermógenes López (Naguanagua, Carabobo, 19 April 1830 – Valencia, Carabobo, 17 December 1898) was a Venezuelan soldier, farmer and acting president of his country between 1887 and 1888, after the resignation of General Antonio Guzmán Blanco as cause of his voluntary exile in Paris.
There is no such information about his childhood, only that was limited to elementary education and farm work. From the arrival of José Tadeo Monagas and José Gregorio Monagas to the presidency (1848–1858), enters to the military activity, being part of the revolutions and battles of this decades, after that returned to his life as farmer. López became military leader of Nirgua in 1858, and participated in the 1862 campaign of Carabobo, that overthrew its head of government, General Marcos López.
López, was the head of Carabobo state after an electoral fight against General Gregorio Cedeño (May 1881). Also served as president (governor) of Yaracuy state. Assumed the presidency of Venezuela on 8 August 1887, because of the retirement of Guzmán Blanco, presiding a transition period, which concluded on 2 July 1888, when Juan Pablo Rojas Paul assumed the presidency.
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Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( /ˈhɪləri daɪˈæn ˈrɒdəm ˈklɪntən/; born October 26, 1947) is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. In the 2008 election, Clinton was a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A native of Illinois, Hillary Rodham first attracted national attention in 1969 for her remarks as the first student commencement speaker at Wellesley College. She embarked on a career in law after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973. Following a stint as a Congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas in 1974 and married Bill Clinton in 1975. Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977 and became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978. Named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979, she was twice listed as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 with husband Bill as Governor, she successfully led a task force to reform Arkansas's education system. She sat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Stores and several other corporations.
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Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (Arabic: محمد حسني السيد مبارك, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mæˈħæmːæd ˈħosni ˈsæjjed moˈbɑːɾˤɑk], Muḥammad Ḥusnī Sayyid Mubārak; born 4 May 1928) is a former Egyptian politician and military commander. He served as the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011.
Mubarak was appointed Vice President of Egypt in 1975, and assumed the presidency on 14 October 1981, following the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat. His almost thirty-year presidency made him Egypt's longest-serving ruler since Muhammad Ali Pasha. Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in the Egyptian Air Force, serving as its commander from 1972 to 1975 and rising to the rank of air chief marshal.
Mubarak was ousted after 18 days of demonstrations during the 2011 Egyptian revolution when, on 11 February, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned as president and transferred authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. On 13 April, a prosecutor[which?] ordered Mubarak and both his sons to be detained for 15 days of questioning about allegations of corruption and abuse of power. He was then ordered to stand trial on charges of premeditated murder of peaceful protestors during the revolution. These trials officially began on 3 August 2011. Egypt’s military prosecutors then also proclaimed that they are investigating Mubarak's role in the assassination of his predecessor Anwar Sadat.
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Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as]; born 28 July 1954) is the current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Following his own political ideology of Bolivarianism and "Socialism for the 21st Century", he has focused on implementing socialist reforms in the country as a part of a social project known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has seen the implementation of a new constitution, participatory democratic councils and the nationalisation of several key industries.
Born into a working class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system, he founded the secretive Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s to work towards overthrowing it. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez government in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Getting out of prison after two years, he founded a social democratic political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He subsequently introduced a new constitution which increased rights for marginalised groups and altered the structure of Venezuelan government, and was re-elected in 2000. During his second presidential term, he introduced a system of Bolivarian Missions, Communal Councils and worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform, whilst also nationalising various key industries.
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Ignacio Andrade
Ignacio Andrade Troconis (31 July 1839 – 17 February 1925), was a military and politician, member of the Liberal yellow party, President of Venezuela 1898–1899, his election was declaredly clouded by fraud.
Ignacio Andrade Troconis, presumably born in Mérida State, Venezuela, on 31 July 1839, was the son of General José Escolástico Andrade Pirela and Juana Troconis; he died in Macuto, Vargas Department, Venezuela, on 17 February 1925. In spite of his great education and long political career, Andrade was not able to reach the leadership and political prominence of many of his contemporaries, like Joaquín Crespo, or José Manuel "Mocho" Hernández. This is, perhaps, best demonstrated by the many conspiracies and other attacks against him as President of Venezuela (1898–1899). His presidential term was short-lived; Cipriano Castro and Juan Vicente Gomez (both from Tachira State), having amassed a great army, launched the Revolucion Liberal Restauradora (Liberal and Restoration Revolution) against Andrade. They marched into Caracas on 19 October 1899, where Cipriano Castro took over as President, with Gomez as Vice-President.
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Irene Sáez
Irene Lailin Sáez Conde (born 13 December 1961 in Caracas, Venezuela) is a Venezuelan politician and a former Miss Universe. She has been a model, was the mayor of Chacao (a municipality of Caracas), Governor of the state of Nueva Esparta and a former presidential candidate.
Sáez was crowned Miss Venezuela 1981 and later, crowned Miss Universe 1981 at the 30th annual pageant in New York City at the age of 19. She was also Queen of Club Campestre Los Cortijos for three years in a row. In 1997, she was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award at the Miss Universe Pageant, a recently created prize of the Miss Universe Organization. She made her acceptance speech in both English and Spanish. Sáez was received in the International Airport Simón Bolívar by former president of Venezuela, Luis Herrera Campins and he gave her a chain of gold for her victory in Miss Universe.
After spending a year travelling the world as Miss Universe, Sáez had studied political science at the Central University of Venezuela, and then served a year as Venezuela's cultural representative to the United Nations. In the early 1990s Sáez turned to electoral politics, and a week after the November 1992 coup attempt was elected mayor of Chacao Municipality, the wealthiest of the five municipalities of Caracas.
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Jaime Lusinchi
Jaime Ramón Lusinchi (born 27 May 1924) is a Venezuelan politician who was the President of Venezuela from 1984 to 1989. His term was characterized by an economic crisis, growth of the external debt, populist policies, currency depreciation, inflation and corruption that exacerbated the crisis of the political system established in 1958.
Accused of corruption after leaving office, Lusinchi was popular during his presidency, and was succeeded by a member of his party, Carlos Andrés Pérez.
Jaime Lusinchi was born in Clarines, Anzoátegui, on 27 May 1924. His mother María Angelica Lusinchi, from an Italian-Corsican descent, gave him her family name, growing up without the presence of a father (who probably was an Italian immigrant). Lusinchi attended elementary school in his native Clarines and Puerto Píritu, and high school at the Federa School of Barcelona, Anzoátegui. In 1941 started to study Medicine at the University of the Andes in Mérida, but soon moved to Caracas continuing his career at the Central University of Venezuela graduating in 1947. He married Gladys Castillo in 1941.
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Jalal Talabani
Jalal Talabani (Sorani: جەلال تاڵەبانی Celal Tallebanî, Arabic: جلال طالباني Jalāl Ṭālabānī; born November 12, 1933) is the sixth and current President of Iraq, a leading Kurdish politician. He is the first non-Arab president of Iraq, although Abdul Kareem Qasim was of partial Kurdish heritage.
Talabani is the founder and secretary general of one of the main Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). He was a prominent member of the Interim Iraq Governing Council, which was established following the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime by the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Talabani has been an advocate for Kurdish rights and democracy in Iraq for more than 50 years.
Talabani was born in 1933 in Talaban Village and descends from the Talabani tribe that has produced many leading social figures[citation needed]. He received his elementary and intermediate school education in Koya (Koysanjak) and his high school education in Erbil and Kirkuk. In the late 1950s Mustafa Barzani sent him to Syria to study law. He is fluent in Kurdish and Arabic and has working knowledge in Persian with Kurdish accent and English. His youngest son, Qubad, is the representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government in the United States. Talabani is a member of the Socialist International.
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Jesus Christ
Jesus ( /ˈdʒiːzəs/; Greek: Ἰησοῦς; 7–2 BC/BCE to 30–36 AD/CE), also referred to as Jesus Christ or simply Christ, is the central figure of Christianity and most Christian denominations venerate him as God the Son incarnated. In Islam, Jesus (in Arabic: عيسى in Islamic usage, commonly transliterated as Isa) is considered one of God's important prophets.
Most modern historians agree that Jesus existed and was a Jewish teacher from Galilee in Roman Judaea, who was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. Scholars have offered competing descriptions and portraits of Jesus, which at times share a number of overlapping attributes, such as a rabbi, a charismatic healer, the leader of an apocalyptic movement, a self-described Messiah, a sage and philosopher, or a social reformer who preached of the "Kingdom of God" as a means for personal and egalitarian social transformation. Scholars have correlated the New Testament accounts with non-Christian historical records to arrive at an estimated chronology of Jesus' life.
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Jiang Zemin
Jiang Zemin (born 17 August 1926) is a former Chinese politician, who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1989 to 2002, as President of the People's Republic of China from 1993 to 2003, and as Chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1989 to 2005. His long career and political prominence have led to him being described as the "core of the third generation" of Communist Party leaders.
Jiang Zemin came to power following Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, replacing Zhao Ziyang as CPC General Secretary. With the waning influence of Deng Xiaoping and the other members of Eight Elders due to old age,and with the help of old and powerful party and state leaders, former President Li Xiannian and Chen Yun Jiang effectively became the "Paramount Leader" in the 1990s. Under his leadership, China experienced substantial developmental growth with reforms, saw the peaceful return of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom and Macau from Portugal, and improved its relations with the outside world while the Communist Party maintained its tight control over the government. Jiang has been criticized for being too concerned about his personal image at home, and too conciliatory towards Russia and the United States abroad.
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Joaquín Crespo
Joaquín Sinforiano de Jesús Crespo Torres (Spanish pronunciation: [xoaˈkin simfoˈɾjano ðe xeˈsus ˈkɾespo ˈtores]; 22 August 1841 – 16 April 1898) was a politician, soldier, a member of the Great Liberal Party of Venezuela and President of Venezuela from 1884 to 1886 and again from 1892 to 1898. During the second Joaquín Crespo regime, the Venezuela Crisis of 1895 saw Venezuela's longstanding dispute with Great Britain about the territory of Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory, come to a head. An international arbitral panel ultimately awarded most of the territory to Britain.
Son of Leandro Crespo and María Aquilina Torres, Joaquín Crespo was born in San Francisco de Cara, lived his youth in Parapara, town of Guarico state, where he learned to read and write. His career in the military began in March, 1858 as a soldier under the command of Colonels José de Jesus, Donato Rodríguez and Zoilo Medrano. He rose to brigadier general on 17 March 1864. On 18 September 1864, he was married (in Parapara) to Jacinta Parejo, the widow of Ramón Silva. Crespo began in politics as deputy to the Legislative Assembly of Guarico in the same year, being the principal deputy of the state at the National Congress (1865–1868). After completing his term, he joined José Tadeo Monagas (being one of main supporters of Antonio Guzmán Blanco in combat against the Revolución Azul) (Blue Revolution) (1868–1870).
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Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala (January 23, 1903 – April 9, 1948) was a politician, a leader of a populist movement in Colombia, a former Education Minister (1940) and Labor Minister (1943–1944), mayor of Bogotá (1936) and one of the most charismatic leaders of the Liberal Party.
He was assassinated during his second presidential campaign in 1948, setting off the Bogotazo and leading to a violent period of political unrest in Colombian history known as La Violencia (approx. 1948 to 1958).
Gaitán's family was from a poor background and their son entered formal education when he was eleven years old. He later had to face social tensions in the Colegio Simón Araújo school, considered as an institution for wealthier members of the Colombian Liberal Party. Gaitán ended his primary studies at the Colegio Martín Restrepo Mejía in 1920.
He attained a degree in law (1924) and later became a professor in the National University of Colombia. In 1926 he completed a doctorate in jurisprudence in Italy at the Royal University of Rome. While attending, the chair of his department, Professor Enrico Ferri, appreciated the innovative ideas of Gaitán and incorporated some of his work into a volume on Criminology.
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Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, ForMemRS, FBA, (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has been a University Professor since 2003. He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is an honorary doctor of Durham Business School, an honorary doctor at the Charles University, an honorary professor at Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management and a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC) of CERGE-EI in Prague. Stiglitz is one of the most frequently cited economists in the world.
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José Antonio Páez
José Antonio Páez Herrera (13 June 1790 – 6 May 1873) was General in Chief of the army fighting Spain during the Venezuelan Wars of Independence, in addition to becoming the President of Venezuela once it was independent of the Gran Colombia (1830–1835; 1839–1843; 1861–1863). He is considered a prime example of a 19th century South American caudillo.
Páez was born in Curpa, Portuguesa State in Venezuela. His paternal grandmother, Luisa Antonia de Mendoza and Mota, was daughter of Luís Rodríguez de Mendoza, a native of Icod de los Vinos, Tenerife (Canary Island). He was of humble origins, his father being a low level employee of the colonial government. As a boy he was forced to work like a slave. By the age of 20, his father already died, Páez was married and earning a living by trading cattle.
Late in 1810, he joined a cavalry squadron, led by a former employer, set up with the purpose of fighting the colonial government. In 1813, he asked for leave from his squadron with the intent of setting and leading his own, which he did, joining the Western Republican Army with the rank of sergeant. Páez had an ingratiating personality which made him very much liked amongst those who knew him. He was also looked up to for his skills as a horseman and for his physical capabilities.
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José Gil Fortoul
José Gil Fortoul (Barquisimeto, Lara, 25 November 1861 – Caracas, 15 June 1943) was a writer, historian, politician and member of Venezuelan positivism, appointed as Provisional President in 1913. Along with César Zumeta, Pedro Manuel Arcaya, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz, Victorino Márquez Bustillos, among others, was one of the defenders of the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez.
Gil Fortoul was born in Barquisimeto, were his parents José Espíritu Santo Gil (known as Pelón Gil) and Adelaida Fortoul Sánchez. Newborn was carried to El Tocuyo, where spent his childhood and adolescence. In this town studied at La Concordia institute, under the direction of Egidio Montesinos. At this school, obtained on 2 July 1880, the bachelor's degree in philosophy. After that, travels to Caracas for the study of law at the Central University of Venezuela, in which graduates as Doctor in Political Sciences in 1885. During this period, also attended to natural history classes, dictated by Adolf Ernst. In that time also collaborates with La Opinion newspaper, in whose columns argued ideological controversies with some religious authorities, especially with priest Juan Bautista Castro. From that, was identified as one of the key people of Venezuelan positivism.
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José Gregorio Valera
José Gregorio Valera was President of Venezuela in 1878.
Military and politician, in 1868 defended Turmero from the attack of Los azules (Blue Revolution) led by José Tadeo Monagas, also fought at the battle of San Casimiro. In 1877, exerted the presidency of the Guzmán Blanco state (which no longer exists).
In 1878, rebels against the revolution commanded by José Ignacio Pulido. That year, is designated like Defense Minister, and first delegate of the Republic. On 11 December 1878, organized the Constitutional Convention that summoned president Francisco Linares Alcántara to carry out a reform of the Constitution. After the dead of Linares Alcántara, is named President by the congress (1878–1879), being overthrown by the Revolución Reivindicadora that exploded in Valencia, on 28 December 1878.
In 1879, fights La Victoria against the army of the Revolución Reivindicadora. That year an agreement at the Congress, and signed by its president Jacinto Lara took place, which asked for the judgment of Valera of the crime of having killed General Rafael María Gualdrón outside of his legal public functions. The trial was carried out, but was acquitted in 1880.
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José María Carreño
Jose Maria Carreño Blanco (March 19, 1792 in Cúa — May 18, 1849 in Caracas) was a Venezuelan politician and military, Vice-president in the government of José María Vargas, and provisional President of Venezuela as interim caretaker in 1837. Jose Maria Carreño was the one who lent his shirt to Simón Bolívar, right after his death. This hero has been little recognised and, inexplicably, there is not much information about him.
On 20 January 1837, in agreement with the constitution, concluded the period of Andrés Narvarte, being designated as president of Venezuela. Jose Maria Carreño, in his position of vice-president of the Government Council, exerted his functions with the collaboration of Felipe Fermín Paul, the Minister of the Interior, José Felix Blanco in the War and Navy Ministry, and Manuel Maria Echeandía in Outer Relations.
On 11 March 1837, Carlos Soublette was designated vice-president of Venezuela, and on 10 April, of that year, assumed the presidency of the Republic, a position that Soublette carried out until concluding the constitutional period that Vargas initiated in 1835.
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José María Vargas
José María Vargas (10 March 1786 in La Guaira - 13 July 1854 in New York City) was the President of Venezuela from 1835–1836.
He graduated with a degree in philosophy from the Seminario Tridentino, and obtained in 1809 his medical degree from the Real y Pontificia Universidad de Caracas. He resigned from his presidency in 1836.
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José Mujica
José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano (Spanish pronunciation: [xoˈse muˈxika]; born May 20, 1935) is an Uruguayan politician who has been President of Uruguay since 2010. A former guerrilla fighter and a member of the Broad Front (left-wing coalition), Mujica was Minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008 and a Senator afterwards. As the candidate of the Broad Front, he won the 2009 presidential election and took office as President on 1 March 2010.
Mujica was born on 20 May 1935 to Demetrio Mujica, of Basque ancestry and Lucy Cordano of Italian descent. As a youth, Mujica was active in the National Party, where he became close to Enrique Erro.
In the early 1960s, he joined the newly formed Tupamaros movement, an armed political group inspired by the Cuban revolution. He participated in the 1969 brief takeover of Pando, a town close to Montevideo, and was later convicted by a military tribunal under the government of Jorge Pacheco Areco, who had suspended certain constitutional guarantees. Mujica was captured by the authorities on four occasions, and he was among those political prisoners who escaped Punta Carretas Prison in 1971. He was eventually re-apprehended in 1972, and was shot by the police six times. After the military coup in 1973, he was transferred to a military prison where he served 14 years. During the 1970s, this included being confined to the bottom of a well for more than two years. During his time in prison, he remained in contact with other leaders of the Tupamaros, including Frente Amplio Senator Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro and the founder and leader of the Tupamaros, Raúl Sendic.
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José Ruperto Monagas
José Ruperto Monagas (1831 – 12 June 1880) was President of Venezuela between 1869-1870. He was also a son of José Tadeo Monagas.
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José Tadeo Monagas
José Tadeo Monagas Burgos (28 October 1784 - 18 November 1868) was President of Venezuela 1847–1851 and 1855–1858, and a hero of the Venezuelan War of Independence. Monagas was one of the most unpopular presidents in Venezuelan history, distinguished by his nepotist and favoritism-bound policies, his disregard for laws passed by Congress when he disagreed with them, and the amount of power he attributed to the Executive branch. During his second term, he arranged for a new Constitution (passed in 1858) which would grant him further powers. The administration he set up would eventually lead to a constitutional (and armed) crisis.
As a member of the Liberal Party, he abolished capital punishment for political crimes. José Tadeo Monagas also supported his brother José Gregorio for the presidency.
José Tadeo Monagas and his brother José Gregorio Monagas combined rule 1847-1858 is commonly referred to as the Monagas Dynasty or "Monagato". It ended with the overthrow of José Tadeo at the hands of Julián Castro and his allies during José Tadeo's second term.
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José Vicente Rangel
José Vicente Rangel Vale (born 10 July 1929 in Caracas) is a Venezuelan leftist politician. He ran for President three times in the 1970s and 1980s and later supported Hugo Chávez, successively becoming Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, and Vice President in Chávez's government.
His political activism began with his active opposition of the military coup d'état that overthrew President Rómulo Gallegos in 1948. He was arrested by the military authorities and expelled from Venezuela. He took refuge in Chile, where he met and married the sculptor Ana Ávalos.
He returned to Venezuela following the downfall of the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958 and ran for, and was elected to, Congress that same year, representing the Democratic Republican Union (Unión Republicana Democrática, URD). In addition to his political activities, he worked as a lawyer and journalist. He also made presidential bids on three occasions: in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1973 and Venezuelan presidential election, 1978 as candidate of MAS - Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism), and in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1983 as candidate of MEP - Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo.
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Juan Bautista Pérez
Juan Bautista Pérez (20 December 1869 - 7 May 1952), was a Venezuelan lawyer, magistrate, and politician who served as President of Venezuela between 1929 until 1931. Afterwards he served as Ambassador to Spain until 1933.
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Juan Vicente Gómez
Juan Vicente Gómez Chacón (24 July 1857 – 17 December 1935) was a military general and de facto ruler of Venezuela from 1908 until his death in 1935. He was president on three occasions during this time, and ruled as an unelected military strongman for the rest of the era.
Gómez was a barely literate cattle herder and a nearly full-blooded Native American. In 1899, he joined the private army of Cipriano Castro, with whom he had been friends since Castro's exile in Colombia. This army swept down on Caracas in 1899 and seized control of the country. He became Castro's vice president and, in 1902, head of the military, responsible for suppressing several major revolts against the government. Gómez seized power from Castro on 19 December 1908, while Castro was in Europe for medical treatment.
As president, Gómez managed to deflate Venezuela's staggering debt by granting concessions to foreign oil companies after the discovery of petroleum in Lake Maracaibo in 1918. This, in turn, won him the support of the United States and Europe and economic stability. Though he used the money to launch an extensive public works program, he also received generous kickbacks, increasing his personal fortune enormously. Because of his contributions to the country's development, the Congress bestowed the title of El Benemérito (the Meritorious One) on him. In contrast, his opponents, who disdained his brutal tactics at home, referred to him as El Bagre (the Catfish), a snide reference to his bushy moustache and outward appearance. They also called him "the Tyrant of the Andes" - a reference to his roots in the mountain state of Táchira.
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Julián Castro
Julián Castro Contreras (c. 1810 – 12 June 1875) was a Venezuelan military officer and President of Venezuela between 1858 and 1859.
He was presumably born in Petare circa 1810, although this date is not certain. His parents were Juan Manuel Castro and Margarita Contreras. He had a brother, Inocente Castro. He joined the Army and in 1830 he held the rank of Alférez (Second Lieutenant in modern military hierarchy). In 1835, as Captain, he took part in the Revolution of Reforms which withdrew President José María Vargas from power. Defeated the coup, he was imprisoned, but released some years later. Then he and his brother moved to Bejuma (Carabobo State). He married María Nieves Briceño, natural daughter of José Laurencio Silva, a hero of the Venezuelan War of Independence, and had four sons: Julián, Inocente, Ramón and Francisco de Paula.
From the rise of José Tadeo Monagas to the Presidency in 1847, Castro began to promote in the military system: in 1849 he was promoted to Commander (now Major). In 1849 was commissioned to fight against José Antonio Páez, who led an insurrection against Monagas, and gained some reputation of courageous. After several promotions, he arose the rank of General de Brigada (Brigadier General) in 1853; the next year, he was appointed Military Commander (Comandante de Armas) of Valencia. In April, 1856, Monagas appointed Castro as Governor of Carabobo and promoted him to General de División (Major General).
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Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement. He published various books during his lifetime, with the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867–1894); some of his works were co-written with his friend and fellow German revolutionary socialist, Friedrich Engels.
Born into a wealthy middle class family in Trier, formerly in Prussian Rhineland now called Rhineland-Palatinate, Marx studied at both the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin, where he became interested in the philosophical ideas of the Young Hegelians. In 1836, he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, marrying her in 1843. After his studies, he wrote for a radical newspaper in Cologne, and began to work out his theory of dialectical materialism. Moving to Paris in 1843, he began writing for other radical newspapers. He met Engels in Paris, and the two men worked together on a series of books. Exiled to Brussels, he became a leading figure of the Communist League, before moving back to Cologne, where he founded his own newspaper. In 1849 he was exiled again and moved to London together with his wife and children. In London, where the family was reduced to poverty, Marx continued writing and formulating his theories about the nature of society and how he believed it could be improved, and also campaigned for socialism—he became a significant figure in the International Workingmen's Association.
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Ken Livingstone
Kenneth Robert "Ken" Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is a British Labour Party politician who has twice held the leading political role in London local government, first as the Leader of the Greater London Council from 1981 until the Council was abolished in 1986, and then as the first elected Mayor of London from the creation of the office in 2000 until 2008. He also served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent East from 1987 to 2001. He stood unsuccessfully as the Labour Party candidate in the London mayoral elections of 2008 and 2012.
Born into a working class family in Lambeth, he first joined the Labour Party in 1968 and was elected to represent Norwood at the Greater London Council in 1973, before moving to represent Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1977, and then to Paddington in 1981, the same year he also became the Leader of the Council itself. In 1999, Livingstone sought the Labour nomination to be the first elected Mayor of London, although his candidacy was opposed by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. Despite losing the Labour candidacy to Frank Dobson, Livingstone contested the 2000 election successfully as an independent candidate regardless, which led to his expulsion from the Labour Party.
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Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky (Russian: Лев Троцкий, pronounced [ˈlʲef ˈtrot͡skʲɪj] ( listen); 7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.
Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the 1917 October Revolution, and eventually became a leader within the Party. During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army as People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs. He was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–20). He was also among the first members of the Politburo.
After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was successively removed from power, expelled from the Communist Party, deported from the Soviet Union and assassinated on Stalin's orders. An early advocate of Red Army intervention against European fascism, Trotsky also opposed Stalin's non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s.
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Luis Britto García
Luis Britto García (born in Caracas, 9 October 1940), is a Venezuelan writer, playwright and essayist. His fiction has been recognised twice with the Casa de Las Américas Prize, for his works Rajatabla (1970) and Abrapalabra (1979). In 2002 he was winner of Venezuela's National Prize for Literature, given as a lifetime achievement award. In 2005 he was recognized with the Ezequiel Martínez Estrada honorary award of Casa de Las Américas. In April 2012 he received Venezuela's Order of Juan Francisco de León. In May 2012 he was appointed by President Hugo Chavez to the Venezuelan Council of State, "the highest circle of advisers to the president" provided for in the Venezuelan Constitution.
Britto García graduated as a lawyer from the Central University of Venezuela in 1962 and obtained a doctorate in law from the same university in 1969. He obtained a diploma in Latin American studies at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris in 1982. He taught at the faculty of economics and social sciences of the Central University of Venezuela from 1966, becoming a full professor in 1988. His non-fiction work includes several historical studies of Caribbean pirates in the early Spanish Empire, including Demonios del mar: corsarios y piratas en Venezuela 1528-1727 ("Demons of the Sea: Corsairs and Pirates in Venezuela 1528-1727").
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Luis Herrera Campins
Luis Antonio Herrera Campins (May 4, 1925 – November 9, 2007) was President of Venezuela from 1979 to 1984. He was elected to one five-year term in 1978. He was a member of the COPEI party.
Luis Herrera was born in Acarigua, Portuguesa. He was 21 years old when the Social Christian Party Copei was created, being one of its founders in Acarigua, Portuguesa. At La Salle school of Barquisimeto, completed his high school degree in 1942. During that time, at the age of fifteen, started to work at politics and journalism, working for the newspapers El impulso, Surcos and the weekly magazine of the Student National Union. His law studies from the Central University of Venezuela were suspended in 1952 and he was imprisoned for four months in the Cárcel Modelo (Model Prison) by the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Shortly after, he continued pursuing his college degree, graduating as lawyer in 1955, at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.
Luis Herrera started parliamentary work in 1947, then was elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly of Portuguesa. From 1959 to 1979, in four constitutional periods, was deputy or senator representing Lara and Portuguesa at the National Congress. On March 12, 1979, became the President of Venezuela after his election on December 3, 1978.
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Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Portuguese: [luˈiz iˈnasju ˈlulɐ dɐ ˈsiwvɐ] ( listen); born 27 October 1945, known popularly as Lula, served as the 35th President of Brazil, from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2010.
A founding member of the Workers' Party (PT – Partido dos Trabalhadores), he ran for President three times unsuccessfully, first in the 1989 election, then again in 1994 and again in 1998. Lula achieved victory in the 2002 election, and was inaugurated as President on 1 January 2003. In the 2006 election he was re-elected for a second term as President, which ended on 31 December 2010. He was succeeded by his former Chief of Staff, Dilma Rousseff.
He is often regarded as the most popular politician in the history of Brazil and, at the time of his mandate, one of the most popular in the world. Social programs like Bolsa Família and Fome Zero are hallmarks of his time in office. Lula played a prominent role in recent international relations developments, including the Nuclear program of Iran and global warming, and was described as "a man with audacious ambitions to alter the balance of power among nations." He was featured in Time's The 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2010, and has been called "the most successful politician of his time." In October 2011, Lula—who was a smoker for 40 years—was diagnosed with throat cancer and has already started his chemotherapy treatment. Since the cancer was found he has successfully recovered and has since announced a return to politics.
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Persian: محمود احمدینژاد, Mahmūd Ahmadinezhād [mæhˈmuːd(-e) æhmædiːneˈʒɒːd] ( listen),English: /ɑːkməˈdɪnɨʒɒd/; born 28 October 1956) is the sixth and current President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the main political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, a coalition of conservative political groups in the country. An engineer and teacher from a poor background, Ahmadinejad joined the Office for Strengthening Unity after the Islamic Revolution. Appointed a provincial governor, he was removed after the election of President Mohammad Khatami and returned to teaching. Tehran's council elected him mayor in 2003. He took a religious hard line, reversing reforms of previous moderate mayors. His 2005 presidential campaign, supported by the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, garnered 62% of the runoff election votes, and he became President on 3 August 2005. His second presidency term ends on August 3, 2013. He is not eligible to run for another term under the current Iranian constitution.
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Manuel Rosales
Manuel Antonio Rosales Guerrero (b. December 12, 1952, in Santa Bárbara del Zulia) is a Venezuelan educator and politician and was the most prominent opposition candidate in the 2006 presidential election, losing to incumbent Hugo Chávez. He served as a congressman, mayor, and governor, but in April 2009, stepped down as Mayor of Maracaibo when he was charged with corruption in Venezuela and fled to Peru. Rosales denies the charges, and was granted political asylum in Peru.
Rosales began his political career as a youth leader of the political party, Acción Democrática (AD), described by the BBC as "one of the two parties that dominated Venezuelan politics for most of the second half of the 20th Century". In 2000 he founded "his own centre-left party which he called Un Nuevo Tiempo" (A New Era); he describes "himself as a social democrat".
Rosales served as a congressman in the Zulia Legislative Assembly (1983–1994), Mayor of Maracaibo (1996–2000)—Venezuela's second-largest city, in Zulia, Venezuela's wealthiest state—and Governor of Zulia for two terms (2000–2004 and 2004–2008).
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Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung listen (help·info), and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution. He was the architect and founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949, and held authoritarian control over the nation until his death in 1976. His theoretical contribution to Marxism–Leninism, along with his military strategies and brand of policies, are collectively known as Maoism.
Mao rose to power by commanding the Long March, forming a Second United Front with Kuomintang (KMT) during the Second Sino-Japanese War to repel a Japanese invasion, and leading the Communist Party of China (CPC) to victory against Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War. After solidifying the reunification of China through his Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, Mao enacted sweeping land reform, by using violence and terror to overthrow the feudal landlords before seizing their large estates and dividing the land into people's communes. During the years when Mao was China’s 'Great Helmsman', a range of positive changes came to China. These included promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, doubling the school population, providing universal housing, abolishing unemployment and inflation, increasing health care access, and dramatically raising life expectancy. In addition, China's population almost doubled during the period of Mao's leadership (from around 550 to over 900 million). As a result, Mao is still officially held in high regard by many in China as a great political strategist, military mastermind, and savior of the nation. Maoists further promote his role as a theorist, statesman, poet, and visionary, while anti-revisionists continue to defend most of his policies.
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Marcos Pérez Jiménez
Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez (Michelena, Táchira, April 25, 1914 – Alcobendas, Spain, September 20, 2001) was a Venezuelan military and general officer of the Army of Venezuela, engineer and politician.
His period in charge of the country is characterized by a marked improvement and development, with the rise of oil prices due to conflicts like the Korean War, its ambitious policy of public works and building could be executed to perfection. Also achieved an imminent development of industries such as hydropower, mining, steel, real estate sector and of course the building itself, all these bases, the high level of economic prosperity that is lived in the country.
Not go unnoticed, the progress in the military, which included the final professionalization of the armed forces, and increased sophistication of equipment, raising the level of armaments, and in general, the modernized undertaken in the area, while in with regard to domestic policy, the country experienced a state of order, high safety standards, but the negative side, said highly repressive character, with the National Security (Seguridad Nacional, secret police), as the spearhead and the almost complete concentration of power in his hands, turning his presidency into a dictatorial regime.
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Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot is an American economist, columnist and co-director, with Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C. As a commentator, he contributes to publications such as New York Times, the UK's The Guardian, and Brazil's largest newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo.
As an economist, Weisbrot has opposed privatization of the United States Social Security system and has been critical of globalization and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He has supported efforts by South American governments to create a Bank of the South, in order to make them more independent of the IMF. Weisbrot's work on Latin American countries (including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela) has attracted national and international attention, and in 2008 was cited by Brazilian Foreign Secretary Celso Amorim. In early 2010 Weisbrot's work on Latvia's economic crisis attracted national and international attention.
Weisbrot has several times contributed testimony to Congressional hearings, in 2002 to a House of Representatives committee, on Argentina's 1999 - 2002 economic crisis and in 2004 to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the state of democracy in Venezuela, and on media representation of Hugo Chávez and of Chávez's Venezuela.
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Michael Shifter
Michael Shifter is President of the Inter-American Dialogue. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Latin American Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the Council's journal Foreign Affairs.. Shifter is also a contributing editor to Current History.
Shifter has served on the Board of Directors of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch in the Americas Division, and the Advisory Board of the Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies at Columbia University.
Shifter studied at Oberlin College, Ohio, and then completed a Masters in sociology at Harvard University.
Shifter directed the Ford Foundation's governance and human rights program in the Andean region and Southern Cone. Subsequently he directed the Latin American and Caribbean program at the National Endowment for Democracy, before joining the Inter-American Dialogue.
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Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (Arabic: معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي) (June 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi /ˈmoʊ.əmɑr ɡəˈdɑːfi/ (Arabic: مُعَمَّر القَذَّافِي Muʿammar al-Qaḏḏāfī audio (help·info)) or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. Gaddafi seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1969 and served as the country's head of state until 1977, when he stepped down from his official executive role as Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of Libya, and claimed subsequently to be merely a symbolic figurehead. He styled himself as "Leader of the Revolution"; in 2008 a meeting of traditional African rulers bestowed on him the title "King of Kings". A leading advocate for a United States of Africa, he served as Chairperson of the African Union (AU) from 2 February 2009 to 31 January 2010.
Gaddafi replaced the Libyan Constitution of 1951 with laws based on the political ideology he had formulated, which he called the Third International Theory and published in The Green Book. After establishing the Jamahiriya (جماهيرية, "state of the masses") system in 1977, he officially stepped down from power and after that time held a largely symbolic role within the country's official governance structure. Rising oil prices and extraction in Libya led to increasing revenues. By exporting as much oil per capita as Saudi Arabia and through various welfare programs, Libya achieved the highest living standards in Africa; Libya remained debt-free.
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Mustafa Abdul Jalil
Mustafa Abdul Jalil or Abdul-Jalil (Arabic: مصطفى عبد الجليل, also transcribed Abdul-Jelil, Abd-al-Jalil,Abdel-Jalil, Abdeljalil or Abdu Al Jeleil) (born 1952) is the Chairman of the National Transitional Council of Libya, and as such serves as head of state in Libya's caretaker government which was formed as a result of the 2011 Libyan civil war. He is also a spokesman for the city of Bayda.
From 2007 to 2011, Abdul Jalil was Minister of Justice (officially, the Secretary of the General People's Committee of Justice) under Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. He has been noted in some news media for his stance against various human rights violations in Libya, although others express a different view and accuse him, for example, of intransigence during the appeal by the Bulgarian nurses (that sentence was later converted to life imprisonment and the nurses were eventually released). During the civil war, Abdul Jalil was identified as the Chairman of the National Transitional Council based in Benghazi, although this position was contested by others in the uprising due to his past direct participation in Gaddafi's government as Minister of Justice for four years until 2011.}
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Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte (French: Napoléon Bonaparte [napoleɔ̃ bɔnɑpaʁt]) (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the latter stages of the French Revolution. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815. His legal reform, the Napoleonic Code, has been a major influence on many civil law jurisdictions worldwide, but he is best remembered for his role in the wars led against France by a series of coalitions, the so-called Napoleonic Wars. He established hegemony over most of continental Europe and sought to spread the ideals of the French Revolution, while consolidating an imperial monarchy which restored aspects of the deposed Ancien Régime. Due to his success in these wars, often against numerically superior enemies, he is generally regarded as one of the greatest military commanders of all time and his campaigns are studied at military academies throughout much of the world.
Napoleon was born in Corsica to parents of noble Genoese ancestry, and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France. He rose to prominence under the French First Republic and led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. In 1799, he staged a coup d'état and installed himself as First Consul; five years later the French Senate proclaimed him emperor. In the first decade of the 19th century, the French Empire under Napoleon engaged in a series of conflicts—the Napoleonic Wars—involving every major European power.
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Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.
Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.
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Néstor Kirchner
Néstor Carlos Kirchner Ostoić (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈnestor ˈkarlos ˈkirʃner]; 25 February 1950 – 27 October 2010) was an Argentine politician who served as President of Argentina from 25 May 2003 until 10 December 2007. Previously, he was Governor of Santa Cruz Province since 10 December 1991. He briefly served as Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and as a National Deputy of Argentina for Buenos Aires Province. Kirchner's four-year presidency was notable for presiding over a dramatic fall in poverty and unemployment, following the economic crisis of 2001, together with an extension of social security coverage, a major expansion in housing and infrastructure, higher spending on scientific research and education, and substantial increases in real wage levels.
A Justicialist, Kirchner was little-known internationally and even domestically before his election to the Presidency, which he won by default with only 22.2 percent of the vote in the first round, when former President Carlos Menem (24.4%) withdrew from the ballotage. Soon after taking office in May 2003, Kirchner surprised some Argentinians by standing down powerful military and police officials. Stressing the need to increase accountability and transparency in government, Kirchner overturned amnesty laws for military officers accused of torture and assassinations during the 1976–1983 "Dirty War" under military rule.
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Octavio Lepage
Octavio Lepage Barreto, (born 24 November 1923 in Santa Rosa, Anzoátegui) was Acting President of Venezuela from 21 May 1993 to 5 June 1993.
Lepage was a member of the student movement of the political party Acción Democrática (AD) at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), being designated in 1945 as Secretary in the Executive Committee of AD in Caracas. He graduated from UCV with a degree in law in 1947, and in 1948 he was elected as the deputy for Anzoátegui to the National Congress. In November of that year, he was elected Secretary General of AD, but did not take the position due to the suppression of political parties following the overthrow of Rómulo Gallegos.
Lepage was the First Secretary of Acción Democrática while it operated clandestinely from January to September 1949, when he was succeeded by Leonardo Ruiz Pineda. Lepage also was part of the Secretariat of Organization of the party. In July 1950, he was arrested by the Seguridad Nacional (National Security) and imprisoned in San Juan de los Morros. Upon being released in July 1954, he was expelled from the country, and in exile was a member of the coordinating foreign committee.
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Ollanta Humala
Ollanta Moisés Humala Tasso (Spanish pronunciation: [oˈʎanta mojˈses uˈmala ˈtaso]) (born June 27, 1962) is a Peruvian politician and the President of Peru. Humala, who previously served as an army officer, lost the presidential election in 2006 but won the 2011 presidential election in a run-off vote. He was elected as President of Peru in the second round, defeating Keiko Fujimori.
The son of Isaac Humala, a labour lawyer, Humala entered the Peruvian Army in 1982. In the military he achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel; in 1992 he fought in the internal conflict against the Shining Path and three years later he participated in the Cenepa War against Ecuador. In October 2000, Humala led an unsuccessful military revolt by 39 soldiers in the southern city of Tacna against President Alberto Fujimori; he was pardoned by the Peruvian Congress after the downfall of the Fujimori regime.
In 2005 he founded the Peruvian Nationalist Party and registered to run in the 2006 presidential election. The nomination was made under the Union for Peru ticket as the Nationalist party did not achieve its electoral inscription on time. He passed the first round of the elections, held on April 9, 2006, with 30.62% of the valid votes. A runoff was held on June 4 between Humala and Alan García of the Peruvian Aprista Party. Humala lost this round with 47.47% of the valid votes versus 52.62% for García. After his defeat, Humala remained as an important figure within Peruvian politics.
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Omar Torrijos
Omar Efraín Torrijos Herrera (February 13, 1929 – July 31, 1981) was the Commander of the Panamanian and National Guard and the de facto leader of Panama from 1968 to 1981. Torrijos was never officially the president of Panama, but instead held titles including "Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution" and "Supreme Chief of Government." Although he was considered a leftist dictator, he simultaneously had the support of the United States as he opposed communism. His politics were based instead on progressivism.
Torrijos is best known for negotiating the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties that eventually gave Panama full sovereignty over the Panama Canal, at noon on December 31, 1999. His son Martín Torrijos was elected president and served from 2004 to 2009.
Torrijos was born in Santiago in the province of Veraguas, the sixth of twelve children. His father, José Maria Torrijos, was originally from Colombia, and was employed as a teacher. He was educated at the local Juan Demóstenes Arosemena School and won a scholarship to the military academy in San Salvador. He graduated with a commission as a second lieutenant. He joined the Panamanian army, the National Guard (Guardia Nacional), in 1952. He was promoted to captain in 1956 and took a cadet course at the School of the Americas in 1965.
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Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden ( /oʊˈsɑːmə bɪn moʊˈhɑːmɨd bɪn əˈwɑːd bɪn ˈlɑːdən/; Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن, ʾUsāmah bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin; March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011), was the founder of Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.
Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, with a US$25 million bounty by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives in a covert operation ordered by United States President Barack Obama.
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Pedro Gual Escandón
Pedro José Ramón Gual Escandón (Caracas, Venezuela, 17 January 1783 – Guayaquil, Ecuador, 6 May 1862), was a Venezuelan lawyer, politician, journalist and diplomat. Creator of the foreign policy of Venezuela and the Greater Colombia, President of Venezuela in three opportunities and member of the Conservative Centralist party.
Being born in Caracas, son of José Ignacio Gual and Josefa Mónica Escandón, was nephew of Manuel Gual, who in 1797, along with José María España, organized a revolutionary movement against Spanish domination in Venezuela, known as the Conspiracy of Gual and España; As consequence of that, his family was subject of persecution by the authorities.
Gual Escandón, completed his studies at the Royal and Pontifical University of Caracas, where obtained the degrees of Licentiate in 1806, Doctor of Theology in 1807 and lawyer in 1808. Having as teacher Juan Germán Roscio, future Foreign Secretary of the Supreme Junta of Caracas. Began his career as a lawyer at the legal desk of Felipe Fermín Paúl, between 1809 and early 1810, strong rumors against the Spanish regime circulates in Caracas. Authorities suspect that Gual is one of those who illegally spread news favorable to the cause of the Independence of Latin America, that promotes Francisco de Miranda from London.
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President of Iran
The President of Iran is the highest popularly elected official in, and the head of government of the Islamic Republic of Iran; although subordinate to the Supreme Leader of Iran, who functions as the country's head of state. According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran the president is responsible for the "functions of the executive", such as signing treaties, agreements etc. with other countries and international organizations; the national planning and budget and state employment affairs; appointing ministers, governors, and ambassadors subject to the approval of the parliament.
Unlike some other countries, for example the United States, in Iran the office of president does not bestow full control over foreign policy, the armed forces, or the nuclear policy of the Iranian state, which are ultimately under the control of the Supreme Leader.
The President of Iran is elected for a four-year term by the direct vote of the people and may not serve for more than two consecutive terms.
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Rafael Caldera
Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez (Spanish pronunciation: [rafaˈel anˈtonjo kalˈdeɾa roˈðɾiɣes]; 24 January 1916 – 24 December 2009) was President of Venezuela from 1969 to 1974 and again from 1994 to 1999.
Caldera taught sociology and law at various universities before entering politics. He was a founding member of COPEI, Venezuela's Christian Democratic party. He first ran for president unsuccessfully in 1947 and tried again every time it was possible until finally succeeding in 1968, winning by a relatively scant 33,000 votes against a recently divided Acción Democrática party. When he was sworn into office in 1969, it marked the first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another in Venezuela's history. During his first presidency, Caldera was able to pacify the country by granting an amnesty that allowed guerrilla fighters, who had been operating clandestinely for almost a decade, to reincorporate into society and participate in politics.
In 1993, Caldera split from COPEI, the party he had founded, to form a new political party, Convergence, which, supported by a coalition of many small leftist parties: (MAS, MEP, PCV) as well as some centre-right parties (URD, MIN), raised Caldera to the presidency in December 1993. This was a fatal blow to the traditional parties which, leaderless and demoralized, garnered few votes in the election. He won a very narrow victory in that year's presidential election. During his second presidential period, he pardoned Hugo Chávez, who eventually went on to succeed him in 1999.
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Rafael Correa
Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado (6 April 1963) is the President of the Republic of Ecuador and was the president pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations. An economist educated in Ecuador, Belgium and the United States, he was elected President in late 2006 and took office in January 2007. In December 2008, he declared Ecuador's national debt illegitimate, based on the argument that it was odious debt contracted by corrupt and despotic prior regimes. He then pledged to fight creditors in international courts, and succeeded in reducing the price of the debt letters and continued paying all the debt. He brought Ecuador into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas in June 2009. To date, Correa’s administration has succeeded in reducing the high levels of poverty, indigence, and unemployment in Ecuador.
Correa's first term in office had been due to end on 15 January 2011, but the new approved constitution written by the new National Assembly mandated general elections for 26 April 2009. In that election, Rafael Correa won in the first round with 51.9% of votes counted. It was the first time since 1979 in which a representative was elected without having to face a second round. Consequently, Correa began a new term in office due to end on 10 August 2013, which could be extended by reelection until 2017.
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Ralph Gonsalves
Ralph Everard Gonsalves (born 8 August 1946), also known as "Comrade Ralph", is the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and leader of the Unity Labour Party (ULP). Gonsalves became Prime Minister after his party won a majority government in the 2001 general election. He is the first Prime Minister from the newly constructed ULP, following a merger of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Labour Party and the Movement for National Unity.
Gonsalves has been Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of North Central Windward since 1994.[citation needed] In 1994, upon the formation of the Unity Labour Party he became deputy leader, and became leader of the party in 1998.
Gonsalves' ULP won another majority government in 2005 general election, winning 12 seats.
On 13 December 2010, Gonsalves' ULP was re-elected, showing a decrease in the popular vote and winning 8 seats.
Gonsalves was born in Colonarie, Saint Vincent, British Windward Islands to Theresa (née Francis) and Alban Gonsalves. He attended Colonarie Roman Catholic School, and later the St Vincent Grammar School. Gonsalves then enrolled at the University of the West Indies, where he completed a bachelor's degree in economics. He later returned there to earn a master's degree in government, which he completed in 1971. In 1974 he completed a PhD in government at the University of Manchester. Gonsalves was called to the degree of utter barrister at Gray’s Inn in London in 1981.
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Ramón Carrizales
Ramón Alonso Carrizales Rengifo (born 8 November 1952 in Zaraza) is a Venezuelan politician who was Vice President of Venezuela from January 2008 to January 2010. Carrizales was a Colonel of the Venezuelan Armed Forces (retired in 1994) and was educated at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences, where he graduated in 1974.
He was appointed Vice President by President Hugo Chávez in January 2008 after previously serving as chair of the Fondo Nacional de Transporte Urbano (Fontur) from 2000 to 2004, Infrastructure Minister 2004 to 2006, and Housing Minister from 2007 to 2008. In 2009, Chavez appointed Carrizales to also serve as the Minister of Defense.
On 25 January 2010 Carrizalez resigned as both Defense Minister and Vice President for personal reasons.
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Ramón José Velásquez
Ramón José Velásquez Mujica (born 28 November 1916) is a Venezuelan political figure. He served as Acting president of Venezuela between 1993 and 1994. He is known as a historian, journalist, lawyer, politician and entertainer of companies for his knowledge of the "national life".
Shortly after 23 January 1958, when the democratic process began in Venezuela, he founded the vespertine El Mundo. Velásquez has also been the president of El Nacional during two occasions (1964-1968/1979-1981). His interest in the media projected into the university atmosphere and this was reflected in the creation of a particular class on the history of the mass media in Venezuela at the Andrés Bello Catholic University. Velásquez was also founder a class on historical processes in Venezuela at the Metropolitan University of Caracas. As well as another class at the Institute of Historical Investigations and one on the Venezuelan Media at the Central University of Venezuela. He is a member of the International Council of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.
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Raúl Castro
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz (born 3 June 1931) is a Cuban politician and revolutionary who has been President of the Council of State of Cuba and the President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba since 2008; he previously exercised presidential powers in an acting capacity from 2006 to 2008. Raúl Castro was a rebel commander during the 1950s; after his older brother, Fidel Castro, took power, Raúl Castro was one of the most important figures in the new regime, serving as Minister of the Armed Forces from 1959 to 2008. As President, he is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces (Army, Navy, and Air Force) and has also been First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) since 2011.
On 31 July 2006, Raúl Castro was designated as the President of the Council of State in a temporary transfer of power due to Fidel Castro's illness. According to the Cuban Constitution of 1976, Article 94, the First Vice President of the Council of State assumes presidential duties upon the illness or death of the president.
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Raúl Leoni
Raúl Leoni Otero (26 April 1905 – 5 July 1972) was President of Venezuela from 1964 until 1969. He was a member of the Generation of 1928 and a charter member of the Acción Democrática party, and the first Labor minister of Venezuela (during El Trienio Adeco, 1945-48).
Leoni was born in El Manteco, Bolívar State, son of a mason born in Corsica. He graduated at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas as a lawyer. He was a member of the Generation of 1928, and the first Labor minister of Venezuela (during El Trienio Adeco, 1945-48).
Leoni took control of the presidency on 13 March 1964, succeeding Rómulo Betancourt; both were members of the Acción Democrática.
One of the pillars of a political consolidation in Venezuela, the Pacto de Punto Fijo, was underestimated by Leoni, since in his opinion it reduced the "coherence and organization of the regime". Strictly, the pact mandated that the composition of the executive cabinet be limited to representatives of three of the more important political parties: Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD). Leoni initially formed a cabinet with a few members of his party and a good number of independents. Later, in November 1964, Leoni initiated conversations with leaders of the involved parties to rescue the spirit of the pact. A new cabinet was formed, but it lasted for only 16 months.
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Roosevelt Skerrit
Roosevelt Skerrit (born 8 June 1972) is a Dominican politician who has been Prime Minister of Dominica since 2004; he has also been the Member of Parliament for the Vieille Case constituency since 2000. Regionally, he has served as the Chairman of the OECS and most recently as Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) since January 2010.
Roosevelt Skerrit became Prime Minister after the death of Pierre Charles in January 2004. At the time of Pierre Charles’ death, Roosevelt Skerrit was a member of parliament for the Vieille Case constituency, a position he had held since his election in February 2000. In addition to being the Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit also serves as Minister for Finance, Minister for Foreign Affairs and as the political leader of the Dominica Labor Party.
Upon taking office Skerrit became the world's youngest head of government, surpassing Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With his party's May 2005 election victory, Skerrit became the world's first democratically elected national leader born in the 1970s. As of December 2010 Skerrit remains the youngest head of government in the Western Hemisphere and the third youngest in the world, surpassed only by Madagascar's Andry Rajoelina and Montenegro's Igor Lukšić.
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Rómulo Betancourt
Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (22 February 1908 – 28 September 1981), known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was President of Venezuela from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of Accion Democratica, Venezuela's dominant political party in the 20th century. He survived an assassination attempt ordered by Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. Betancourt, one of Venezuela's most important political figures, led a tumultuous and highly controversial career in Latin American politics. Periods of exile brought Betancourt in contact with various Latin American countries as well as the United States, securing his legacy as one of the few real international leaders to emerge from 20th-century Latin America. Scholars credit Betancourt as the Founding Father of modern democratic Venezuela.
Rómulo Betancourt was born in Guatire, a town near Caracas, son of Luis Betancourt Bello (from Canary origins) and Venezuelan Virginia Bello Milano, being the middle brother between his older sister Teresa and younger sister Helena. Living along with his maternal grandmother Maria Milano Bello and his uncle Luis Bello Milano.
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Rómulo Gallegos
Rómulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire (2 August 1884 – 7 April 1969) was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of some nine months during 1948, he was the first cleanly elected president in his country's history.
Rómulo Gallegos was born in Caracas to Rómulo Gallegos Osío and Rita Freire Guruceaga, into a family of humble origin. He began his work as a schoolteacher, writer, and journalist in 1903. His novel Doña Bárbara was first published 1929, and it was because of the book's criticisms of the regime of longtime dictator Juan Vicente Gómez that he was forced to flee the country. He took refuge in Spain, where he continued to write: his acclaimed novels Cantaclaro (1934) and Canaima (1935) date from this period. He returned to Venezuela in 1936 and was appointed Minister of Public Education.
In 1937 he was elected to Congress and, in 1940–41, served as councillor of Caracas. In 1945, was involved in the coup d'état that brought Rómulo Betancourt and the "Revolutionary Government Junta" to power, in the period known as El Trienio Adeco. In the 1947 general election he ran for the presidency of the republic as the Acción Democrática candidate and won in what is generally believed to be the country's first honest election. He took office in February 1948, but officers Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez, threw him out of office in November in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état. He took refuge first in Cuba and then in Mexico. From 1960 to 1963, he was Commissioner of the newly created Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (created on 18 August 1959), and he was also its first President (1960).
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Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens (Spanish pronunciation: [salβaˈðoɾ aˈʝende ˈɣosens]; 26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America.
Allende's involvement in Chilean political life spanned a period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he was a senator, deputy and cabinet minister. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections. In 1970, he won the presidency in a close three-way race, formally elected by Congress as no candidate had gained a majority.
Allende adopted the policy of nationalization of industries and collectivization. On 11 September 1973 the military, citing a call by the Chilean Congress to end his presidency, staged a coup against Allende. As the armed forces surrounded La Moneda Palace, Allende gave his last speech vowing not to resign, and committed suicide thereafter. After Allende's ouster, Chile was led by a military junta, and then as a dictatorship by General Augusto Pinochet.
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Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco (July 24, 1783 – December 17, 1830), commonly known as Simón Bolívar (Spanish pronunciation: [siˈmom boˈliβar]), was a Venezuelan military and political leader. Together with José de San Martín, he played a key role in Hispanic-Spanish America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, and is today considered one of the most influential politicians in American history.
Following the triumph over the Spanish Monarchy, Bolívar participated in the foundation of the first union of independent nations in Hispanic-America, a republic, which was named Gran Colombia, of which he was president from 1819 to 1830. Bolívar remains regarded in Hispanic-America as a hero, visionary, revolutionary, and liberator. During his lifetime, he led Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia to independence, and helped lay the foundations for democratic ideology in much of Latin America.
The surname Bolívar derives from the Bolívar aristocrats who came from a small village in the Basque Country, Spain, called La Puebla de Bolívar. His father came from the male line of the de Ardanza family. His maternal grandmother, however, was descended from some families from the Canary Islands that settled in the country.
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Simón Rodríguez
Simón Rodríguez (Caracas, Venezuela, October 28, 1769 – Amotape, Perú, February 28, 1854), known during his exile from Spanish America as Samuel Robinson, was a South American philosopher and educator, notably Simón Bolívar's tutor and mentor.
His mother, Rosalia Rodriguez, was the daughter of an owner of farms and livestock; her father was originally from the Canary Islands. In May 1791, the Caracas Council (Cabildo) gave him a position as teacher in the "Reading and Writing School for Children". In 1794, he presented his critical writing Reflection on the flaws vitiating the Reading and Writing School for Children in Caracas and Means of Achieving its Reform and a New Establishment to the council. It's an original approach to a modern school system.
His role in the failed Gual and España conspiracy against the Spanish crown in 1797 forced him to leave Venezuela.
In Kingston, Jamaica he changed his name to Samuel Robinson, and after staying some years in the United States he traveled to France (1801). There, in 1804, he met his former tutee, Simón Bolivar; together they made a long journey across Europe. They witnessed the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte in Milan, as King of Italy and in Rome, witnessed how Bolívar took his famous oath that he would liberate all of America from the Spanish Crown, and registered it for history: "I swear before you; I swear on my parent’s God; I swear on them; I swear on my honor; and I swear on my Motherland; that I won’t give rest to my arm, nor repose to my soul, until I have broken the chains that oppress us by will of the Spanish power"
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Tabaré Vázquez
Tabaré Ramón Vázquez Rosas (Spanish pronunciation: [taβaˈɾe raˈmon ˈbaθkeð ˈrosas]; born January 17, 1940) is a Uruguayan politician who was President of Uruguay from 2005 to 2010. A physician (oncologist) by training, he is a member of the leftist Frente Amplio coalition (Broad Front in English). Vázquez was elected president on October 31, 2004, took office on March 1, 2005, and relinquished the office on March 1, 2010. As president, Vázquez presided over considerable improvements in education and working conditions, a significant expansion of the welfare system, and a dramatic reduction in poverty, with the percentage of Uruguayans living in poverty falling from 32% to 20% of the population from 2004 to 2009.
Born in the Montevideo neighbourhood of La Teja, Tabaré Vázquez studied medicine at the Universidad de la República Medical School, graduating as an oncology specialist in 1972. In 1976, he received a grant from the French government, allowing him to obtain additional training at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Paris.
wn.com/Tabaré_Vázquez -
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی), (born 21 October 1943), is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.
He is the author of several books, including Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970), Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007), The Duel (2008) and The Obama Syndrome (2010).
Ali was born and raised in Lahore. The city was part of British India at the time of his birth in 1943, but became part of the newly independent nation of Pakistan four years later. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab from 1937–1942).
wn.com/Tariq_Ali -
Time 100
Time 100 is an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, as assembled by Time. First published in 1999 as a result of a debate among several academics, the list has become an annual event.
The list was started with a debate at a symposium in Washington, D.C., on February 1, 1998, with panel participants CBS news anchor Dan Rather, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, then–political science professor Condoleezza Rice, neoconservative publisher Irving Kristol and Time managing editor Walter Isaacson.
The list was first published in 1999, when Time magazine named the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Based on the popularity of the installment, in 2004 Time magazine decided to make it an annual issue, listing the 100 people most influencing the world. Making the list is frequently mistaken as an honor; however, Time makes it very clear that people are recognized for changing the world, for better or for worse. Those recognized fall in one of five categories: Leaders & Revolutionaries, Builders & Titans, Artists & Entertainers, Scientists & Thinkers, and Heroes & Icons. Within each category, the 20 most influential people (sometimes pairs or small groups) are selected, for a grand total of 100 each year.
wn.com/Time_100 -
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian: Владимир Ильич Ленин; IPA: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr ɪlʲˈjitɕ ˈlʲenʲɪn] ( listen); 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, intellectual and politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years (1917–1924), as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a socialist economic system.
As a politician, Lenin was a persuasive and charismatic orator. As an intellectual his extensive theoretic and philosophical developments of Marxism produced Marxism–Leninism, a pragmatic Russian application of Marxism that emphasized the critical role played by a committed and disciplined political vanguard in the revolutionary process, while defending the possibility of a socialist revolution in less advanced capitalist countries through an alliance of the proletarians with the rural peasantry.
Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Russian: Владимир Ильич Ульянов) on 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 in the town of Simbirsk in the Russian Empire. Simbirsk, a rural town on the River Volga nearly 1,500 miles from the capital Saint Petersburg, would be renamed upon Ulyanov's death fifty-four years later as "Ulyanovsk" in his honour. That same year, Saint Petersburg itself would be renamed Leningrad after Ulyanov's better-known cadre name.
wn.com/Vladimir_Lenin -
Wolfgang Larrazábal
Wolfgang Enrique Larrazábal Ugueto (5 March 1911 – 27 February 2003), commander of the Venezuelan Navy, became President of Venezuela following the overthrow of Marcos Pérez Jiménez on 23 January 1958.
Larrazábal was born in Carúpano, Sucre state, son of Fabio Larrazábal and Jerónima Ugueto. Attended college at the Pestalozzi Institute of Maracaibo. From 1928 to 1932 study at the Naval school of Venezuela. Between 1942 and 1945, Larrazábal was captain of the Venezuelan Navy's ships: General Urdaneta, Leandro and Soublette, later becoming commander of the Naval Base of Puerto Cabello. In July 1947 was named commander of the Military of Venezuela, and, in 1949, naval attaché of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC. Larrazábal also served as director of the National Institute of Sports (1952–1955), director of the Armed Forces Circle (1957–1958), and in early 1958, commander of the Venezuelan Navy.
After the overthrow of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, Larrazábal was appointed as interim president of the Government Junta on 23 January 1958. His term was characterized by an Emergency Plan, designed to ameliorate adverse economic conditions during the return to democracy. Fairly popular, resigned later that year in order to run in the 1958 presidential elections for Unión Republicana Democrática (Edgar Sanabria was appointed as provisional president). Larrazábal obtained 903,479 votes, finishing second to AD's Rómulo Betancourt.
wn.com/Wolfgang_Larrazábal
Famous quotes by Hugo Chavez:
"I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet."
"This is something that is historic for us. We are going to work very hard,"
"consumerism on an irrational capitalist model."
"The world will have to get used to a barrel of oil priced above 50 dollars, ... It will be difficult to increase production."
"This has been a great victory for the Venezuelan people."
"Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today, ethics, moral."
"Well we can try to measure democracy, just as you measure temperature with a thermometer, or pressure with a barometer."
"I have said it already, I am convinced that the way to build a new and better world is not capitalism. Capitalism leads us straight to hell."
"No part of the human community can live entirely on its own planet, with its own laws of motion and cut off from the rest of humanity."
"We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world."
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Return of ailing Venezuelan leader unclear
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:33
- Updated: 25 Dec 2012
The Venezuelan Government says President Hugo Chavez is stabilising after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba. Opponents insist he should forfeit the presidency if he doesn't return in time to be sworn in for another term next month. Al Jazeera's Lucia Newman reports from Caracas.
http://wn.com/Return_of_ailing_Venezuelan_leader_unclear
The Venezuelan Government says President Hugo Chavez is stabilising after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba. Opponents insist he should forfeit the presidency if he doesn't return in time to be sworn in for another term next month. Al Jazeera's Lucia Newman reports from Caracas.
Trailer: Hugo Chavez, Go on Commander! We shall overcome! Latin America and the World Salutes You!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:55
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
Watch the Fuld Length Video - click on: www.youtube.com Cuban Ambassador to Denmark Yamira Cueto Milián with Dr. Roger Corbacho, Venezuelan Ambassador Go on Commander! We shall overcome! Watch the Whole Meet on YouTube: "Go on Commander! We shall overcome!" ------------------------------------------------------------ Watch the Fuld Length Video - click on: www.youtube.com with the following subjects: Solidarity Meeting for Hugo Chavez and the New Venezuela Unity, struggle and victory is the message at an emergency solidarity meeting in Copenhagen for Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan people and the revolution. Troels Schmidt, camera/edit/voice over, US Army Anti War Veteran At the Embassy of The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Copenhagen Representative from International Forum Meet Svend-Erik Simonsen, who was a Danish electoral witness in Venezuela, a journalist from the Danish Daily Arbejderen = The Worker Chargé d'Affaires, Dr. Roger Corbacho, Venezuelan Ambassador in Copenhagen International Solidarity with Hugo Chavez and the Venezuela Revolution Svend-Erik Simonsen, electoral witness in Venezuela, journalist for the Danish Daily, Arbejderen (The Worker), former chairperson for The Danish Cuban Association. Go on Commander! We shall overcome! Cuban Ambassador to Denmark Yamira Cueto Milián with Dr. Roger Corbacho, Venezuelan Ambassador Great friend from the Argentinian Embassy Cuban Ambassador to Denmark Yamira Cueto Milián TVG Editor, Troels Schmidt, from the Homeless ...
http://wn.com/Trailer_Hugo_Chavez,_Go_on_Commander!_We_shall_overcome!_Latin_America_and_the_World_Salutes_You!
Watch the Fuld Length Video - click on: www.youtube.com Cuban Ambassador to Denmark Yamira Cueto Milián with Dr. Roger Corbacho, Venezuelan Ambassador Go on Commander! We shall overcome! Watch the Whole Meet on YouTube: "Go on Commander! We shall overcome!" ------------------------------------------------------------ Watch the Fuld Length Video - click on: www.youtube.com with the following subjects: Solidarity Meeting for Hugo Chavez and the New Venezuela Unity, struggle and victory is the message at an emergency solidarity meeting in Copenhagen for Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan people and the revolution. Troels Schmidt, camera/edit/voice over, US Army Anti War Veteran At the Embassy of The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Copenhagen Representative from International Forum Meet Svend-Erik Simonsen, who was a Danish electoral witness in Venezuela, a journalist from the Danish Daily Arbejderen = The Worker Chargé d'Affaires, Dr. Roger Corbacho, Venezuelan Ambassador in Copenhagen International Solidarity with Hugo Chavez and the Venezuela Revolution Svend-Erik Simonsen, electoral witness in Venezuela, journalist for the Danish Daily, Arbejderen (The Worker), former chairperson for The Danish Cuban Association. Go on Commander! We shall overcome! Cuban Ambassador to Denmark Yamira Cueto Milián with Dr. Roger Corbacho, Venezuelan Ambassador Great friend from the Argentinian Embassy Cuban Ambassador to Denmark Yamira Cueto Milián TVG Editor, Troels Schmidt, from the Homeless ...
- published: 18 Dec 2012
- views: 67
- author: TVG2011
George Galloway on Gay Rights and Hugo Chavez | Oxford Union
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:56
- Updated: 24 Dec 2012
George Galloway shows his stance on Gay Rights and Hugo Chavez in response to a student who refers to him as a 'homophobe'. •Oxford Union on Facebook: www.facebook.com •Oxford Union on Twitter: @OxfordUnion •Website: www.oxford-union.org Filmed on October 15th 2012. George Galloway's Full Address: www.youtube.com ABOUT GEORGE GALLOWAY: Few contemporary politicians have attracted as much controversy as George Galloway. A Labour MP from 1987 to 2003, he was an outspoken critic of the policies of Tony Blair and New Labour, in particular the decision to invade Iraq. Fiery comments such as "the best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders" saw Galloway expelled from the Labour Party. But Galloway returned to the political fray by founding the Respect Party and winning Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 General Election. Mr Galloway re-entered Parliament in this March as MP for Bradford West and has recently provoked controversy and criticism with his comments on the rape charges against Wikileaks' Julian Assange. ABOUT THE OXFORD UNION SOCIETY: The Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.
http://wn.com/George_Galloway_on_Gay_Rights_and_Hugo_Chavez_|_Oxford_Union
George Galloway shows his stance on Gay Rights and Hugo Chavez in response to a student who refers to him as a 'homophobe'. •Oxford Union on Facebook: www.facebook.com •Oxford Union on Twitter: @OxfordUnion •Website: www.oxford-union.org Filmed on October 15th 2012. George Galloway's Full Address: www.youtube.com ABOUT GEORGE GALLOWAY: Few contemporary politicians have attracted as much controversy as George Galloway. A Labour MP from 1987 to 2003, he was an outspoken critic of the policies of Tony Blair and New Labour, in particular the decision to invade Iraq. Fiery comments such as "the best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders" saw Galloway expelled from the Labour Party. But Galloway returned to the political fray by founding the Respect Party and winning Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 General Election. Mr Galloway re-entered Parliament in this March as MP for Bradford West and has recently provoked controversy and criticism with his comments on the rape charges against Wikileaks' Julian Assange. ABOUT THE OXFORD UNION SOCIETY: The Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.
- published: 29 Oct 2012
- views: 77573
- author: OxfordUnion
ABC television interview with Hugo Chavez
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:45
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
Barbara Walters from ABC interviews president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Aired Fri, Mar 16th, 2007.
http://wn.com/ABC_television_interview_with_Hugo_Chavez
Barbara Walters from ABC interviews president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Aired Fri, Mar 16th, 2007.
- published: 17 Mar 2007
- views: 479261
- author: GiggaDigga
Hugo Chavez: "The Stupid People From Fox News"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:50
- Updated: 23 Dec 2012
At the United Nations, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez - along with his translator - tell a Fox News producer how "stupid" his network is. "The stupid people from Fox News -- not you, of course," he says.
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chavez_The_Stupid_People_From_Fox_News
At the United Nations, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez - along with his translator - tell a Fox News producer how "stupid" his network is. "The stupid people from Fox News -- not you, of course," he says.
- published: 25 Sep 2009
- views: 297749
- author: PoliticsNewsPolitics
NATO Destroyed Libya - Hugo Chavez
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:19
- Updated: 23 Dec 2012
This is a video of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez telling the truth about what NATO has done in Libya Follow me on Twitter here: twitter.com
http://wn.com/NATO_Destroyed_Libya_Hugo_Chavez
This is a video of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez telling the truth about what NATO has done in Libya Follow me on Twitter here: twitter.com
- published: 25 Aug 2011
- views: 39850
- author: CommunistWarrior1917
Chavez calls Bush 'the devil' in his speech at the UN GA
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:03
- Updated: 23 Dec 2012
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez calls George W Bush "the devil" in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
http://wn.com/Chavez_calls_Bush_'the_devil'_in_his_speech_at_the_UN_GA
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez calls George W Bush "the devil" in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
- published: 22 Sep 2006
- views: 343683
- author: kento5
Obama Congratulates Hugo Chavez for Big Election Win
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:32
- Updated: 22 Dec 2012
The White House congratulated Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for his big election win in Venezuela. Here about all the big election news, plus the latest on the SpaceX rocket launch and outer space skydiving, on this PJ News Break with Scott Ott.
http://wn.com/Obama_Congratulates_Hugo_Chavez_for_Big_Election_Win
The White House congratulated Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for his big election win in Venezuela. Here about all the big election news, plus the latest on the SpaceX rocket launch and outer space skydiving, on this PJ News Break with Scott Ott.
- published: 08 Oct 2012
- views: 6618
- author: Pajamasmedia
Hugo Chavez's health mystery
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:44
- Updated: 24 Dec 2012
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez undergoes another surgery for cancer treatment, as CNN's Patrick Oppmann reports.
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chavez's_health_mystery
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez undergoes another surgery for cancer treatment, as CNN's Patrick Oppmann reports.
- published: 12 Dec 2012
- views: 14727
- author: CNN
Hugo Chavez Faces Serious Challenger in Venezuelan Elections
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:31
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
For more coverage: to.pbs.org For 14 years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez maintained power battling military coups, presidential term limit amendments, even cancer. But for the upcoming elections, a typically fractured opposition is united behind challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski, threatening Chavez's stronghold over the presidency. Ray Suarez reports.
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chavez_Faces_Serious_Challenger_in_Venezuelan_Elections
For more coverage: to.pbs.org For 14 years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez maintained power battling military coups, presidential term limit amendments, even cancer. But for the upcoming elections, a typically fractured opposition is united behind challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski, threatening Chavez's stronghold over the presidency. Ray Suarez reports.
- published: 06 Oct 2012
- views: 6399
- author: PBSNewsHour
Hugo Chavez Says He Needs Cancer Surgery Again
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:47
- Updated: 12 Dec 2012
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez named his vice president as his chosen successor and was heading back to Cuba on Sunday for more surgery for cancer after announcing that the illness returned. (Dec. 9)
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chavez_Says_He_Needs_Cancer_Surgery_Again
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez named his vice president as his chosen successor and was heading back to Cuba on Sunday for more surgery for cancer after announcing that the illness returned. (Dec. 9)
- published: 09 Dec 2012
- views: 4503
- author: AssociatedPress
HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS DECLARA A NICOLÁS MADURO COMO SU HEREDERO POLÍTICO (8 DIC. 2012)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:22
- Updated: 24 Dec 2012
[3/3] DECLARACIONES DEL PRESIDENTE HUGO CHÁVEZ EL 8 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2012 Declaraciones del Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS, desde el "Despacho Uno de la Presidencia" en el Palacio de Miraflores (Caracas) el sábado 8 de diciembre de 2012, en las que anuncia que se ha visto «obligado por las circunstancias» a una nueva intervención quirúrgica para combatir el cáncer en La Habana (Cuba) Transmisión en VIVO y en DIRECTO por la cadena de noticias teleSUR
http://wn.com/HUGO_CHÁVEZ_FRÍAS_DECLARA_A_NICOLÁS_MADURO_COMO_SU_HEREDERO_POLÍTICO_8_DIC_2012
[3/3] DECLARACIONES DEL PRESIDENTE HUGO CHÁVEZ EL 8 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2012 Declaraciones del Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS, desde el "Despacho Uno de la Presidencia" en el Palacio de Miraflores (Caracas) el sábado 8 de diciembre de 2012, en las que anuncia que se ha visto «obligado por las circunstancias» a una nueva intervención quirúrgica para combatir el cáncer en La Habana (Cuba) Transmisión en VIVO y en DIRECTO por la cadena de noticias teleSUR
- published: 09 Dec 2012
- views: 53345
- author: kakico1978
HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS ANUNCIA QUE NECESITA OTRA CIRUGIA PARA COMBATIR DE NUEVO EL CÁNCER
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:15
- Updated: 21 Dec 2012
[2/3] DECLARACIONES DEL PRESIDENTE HUGO CHÁVEZ EL 8 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2012: Declaraciones del Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS, desde el "Despacho Uno de la Presidencia" en el Palacio de Miraflores (Caracas) el sábado 8 de diciembre de 2012, en las que anuncia que se ha visto «obligado por las circunstancias» a una nueva intervención quirúrgica para combatir el cáncer en La Habana (Cuba) Transmisión en VIVO y en DIRECTO por la cadena de noticias teleSUR
http://wn.com/HUGO_CHÁVEZ_FRÍAS_ANUNCIA_QUE_NECESITA_OTRA_CIRUGIA_PARA_COMBATIR_DE_NUEVO_EL_CÁNCER
[2/3] DECLARACIONES DEL PRESIDENTE HUGO CHÁVEZ EL 8 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2012: Declaraciones del Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS, desde el "Despacho Uno de la Presidencia" en el Palacio de Miraflores (Caracas) el sábado 8 de diciembre de 2012, en las que anuncia que se ha visto «obligado por las circunstancias» a una nueva intervención quirúrgica para combatir el cáncer en La Habana (Cuba) Transmisión en VIVO y en DIRECTO por la cadena de noticias teleSUR
- published: 09 Dec 2012
- views: 33275
- author: kakico1978
Hugo Chávez. Entrevista al candidato Presidente. Elecciones Venezuela 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 108:00
- Updated: 24 Dec 2012
041012 VOTO 2012 - EL PUEBLO DECIDE Chávez: "Aquí vamos a continuar construyendo la Patria de todos y de todas" Caracas, 05 Oct. AVN.- El candidato socialista Hugo Chávez expresó este jueves en una entrevista televisiva que su triunfo en las elecciones del domingo 7 de octubre significaría una victoria para todo el país, porque cada voto por su candidatura "es por un proyecto, es por el país, es por la Patria". "Aquí vamos a continuar construyendo la patria de todos y de todas", enfatizó Chávez, tras recordar a sus seguidores que deben actuar con firmeza y cuidar todos los detalles, en particular la organización para ese día. Envió un mensaje a los opositores: "Vota por quien tú quieras, por las razones que tú tengas, sólo que prepárate porque tu opción va a fracasar, tu opción va perder, pero tú no vas a perder, tú vas a ganar aunque no lo aceptes, aunque no lo entiendas muy bien. Tú vas a ganar paz, tú vas a ganar futuro, tus hijos van a ganar", y añadió "aquí estás también en mi corazón". En sus palabras insistió en pedir a los militantes de la oposición que no se dejen manipular y que acepten los resultados que emita el Consejo Nacional Electoral, y convocó a todos los electores a votar. En la entrevista realizada en el Palacio de Miraflores, sede de Gobierno en Caracas, Chávez abordó temas como la campaña electoral, su gestión, el programa de gobierno para el próximo período, la seguridad ciudadana, el diálogo, la construcción del socialismo, la política petrolera y ...
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chávez_Entrevista_al_candidato_Presidente_Elecciones_Venezuela_2012
041012 VOTO 2012 - EL PUEBLO DECIDE Chávez: "Aquí vamos a continuar construyendo la Patria de todos y de todas" Caracas, 05 Oct. AVN.- El candidato socialista Hugo Chávez expresó este jueves en una entrevista televisiva que su triunfo en las elecciones del domingo 7 de octubre significaría una victoria para todo el país, porque cada voto por su candidatura "es por un proyecto, es por el país, es por la Patria". "Aquí vamos a continuar construyendo la patria de todos y de todas", enfatizó Chávez, tras recordar a sus seguidores que deben actuar con firmeza y cuidar todos los detalles, en particular la organización para ese día. Envió un mensaje a los opositores: "Vota por quien tú quieras, por las razones que tú tengas, sólo que prepárate porque tu opción va a fracasar, tu opción va perder, pero tú no vas a perder, tú vas a ganar aunque no lo aceptes, aunque no lo entiendas muy bien. Tú vas a ganar paz, tú vas a ganar futuro, tus hijos van a ganar", y añadió "aquí estás también en mi corazón". En sus palabras insistió en pedir a los militantes de la oposición que no se dejen manipular y que acepten los resultados que emita el Consejo Nacional Electoral, y convocó a todos los electores a votar. En la entrevista realizada en el Palacio de Miraflores, sede de Gobierno en Caracas, Chávez abordó temas como la campaña electoral, su gestión, el programa de gobierno para el próximo período, la seguridad ciudadana, el diálogo, la construcción del socialismo, la política petrolera y ...
- published: 05 Oct 2012
- views: 11065
- author: sucreranda
REPORTAGES - Sur Hugo Chavez Le Grand Mensonge
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 52:36
- Updated: 22 Dec 2012
Tribun populiste et charismatique, icône de l'extrême gauche ou dictateur selon les points de vue, Hugo Chavez est l'une des figures les plus étonnantes et les plus controversées de la scène internationale. Depuis des années, le président vénézuélien défie les Etats-Unis et soutient l'Iran. A l'intérieur de son pays, l'or noir a permis de financer une «révolution bolivarienne», censée lutter contre la misère du peuple. Mais ses adversaires l'accusent d'avoir fait main basse sur de nombreuses richesses, par l'intermédiaire de sa famille et de son clan. Sous la présidence de Chavez, le Venezuela est devenu le pays le plus violent d'Amérique latine. Caroline du Saint a enquêté sur place. Un Petit Merci et J'aime + S'abonner Pour M'aider a Mettre D'autre Vidéos Merci.
http://wn.com/REPORTAGES_Sur_Hugo_Chavez_Le_Grand_Mensonge
Tribun populiste et charismatique, icône de l'extrême gauche ou dictateur selon les points de vue, Hugo Chavez est l'une des figures les plus étonnantes et les plus controversées de la scène internationale. Depuis des années, le président vénézuélien défie les Etats-Unis et soutient l'Iran. A l'intérieur de son pays, l'or noir a permis de financer une «révolution bolivarienne», censée lutter contre la misère du peuple. Mais ses adversaires l'accusent d'avoir fait main basse sur de nombreuses richesses, par l'intermédiaire de sa famille et de son clan. Sous la présidence de Chavez, le Venezuela est devenu le pays le plus violent d'Amérique latine. Caroline du Saint a enquêté sur place. Un Petit Merci et J'aime + S'abonner Pour M'aider a Mettre D'autre Vidéos Merci.
- published: 29 Nov 2012
- views: 397
- author: Specialreportage
Strongman - Hugo Chavez and His Legacy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:17
- Updated: 23 Dec 2012
In this WSJ documentary, reporter David Luhnow looks at Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez. Now undergoing treatment for cancer, Chavez has named a possible successor, raising the question of whether his "21st century socialism" can outlive its founder. Photo: AP
http://wn.com/Strongman_Hugo_Chavez_and_His_Legacy
In this WSJ documentary, reporter David Luhnow looks at Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez. Now undergoing treatment for cancer, Chavez has named a possible successor, raising the question of whether his "21st century socialism" can outlive its founder. Photo: AP
- published: 23 Dec 2012
- views: 196
- author: WSJDigitalNetwork
Hugo Chávez recibió a Vicente Fernández en Miraflores
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 15:46
- Updated: 23 Dec 2012
El presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, entregó hoy la Orden Libertadores y Libertadoras de Venezuela al cantautor mexicano Vicente Fernández, al recibirlo en el capitalino Palacio de Miraflores. teleSUR multimedia.telesurtv.net
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chávez_recibió_a_Vicente_Fernández_en_Miraflores
El presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, entregó hoy la Orden Libertadores y Libertadoras de Venezuela al cantautor mexicano Vicente Fernández, al recibirlo en el capitalino Palacio de Miraflores. teleSUR multimedia.telesurtv.net
- published: 13 Sep 2012
- views: 21222
- author: telesurtv
Hugo Chávez, rueda de prensa del Presidente reelecto de Venezuela
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 81:11
- Updated: 16 Dec 2012
081012
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chávez,_rueda_de_prensa_del_Presidente_reelecto_de_Venezuela
Entrevista al presidente Hugo Chávez 041012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 108:00
- Updated: 15 Dec 2012
En el día del cierre de campaña por su reelección al período 2013 - 2019.
http://wn.com/Entrevista_al_presidente_Hugo_Chávez_041012
En el día del cierre de campaña por su reelección al período 2013 - 2019.
- published: 05 Oct 2012
- views: 5999
- author: aporrealos
Hugo Chávez Cadena completa Operación Cuba nuevas células cáncer Reacciones VTV Diosdado Cabello
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 119:59
- Updated: 24 Dec 2012
081212 Patriotas de Venezuela: Rodilla en tierra www.avn.info.ve ¡¡ VIVA CHÁVEZ NO JODAAA !! Cadena nacional completa, Zurda Konducta y el Programa Especial con Diosdado Cabello. Todos contra la ultradeercha mediática internacional!!!! El Presidente de la República, Hugo Chávez, informó hoy que será sometido a una nueva operación quirúrgica luego de que se detectaran en su cuerpo algunas células malignas en la misma zona donde le fuera diagnosticado un tumor en 2011. El Jefe de Estado, acompañado por el Vicepresidente Nicolás Maduro y algunos ministros, informó en desde el Palacio de Miraflores que partirá a La Habana, Cuba, este lunes para ser sometido a un nuevo tratamiento quirúrgico, y expresó que continua como siempre aferrado a Cristo para superar esta nueva etapa que le ha signado la vida. Durante sus palabras transmitidas en cadena nacional de radio y televisión, el Presidente de Venezuela subrayó que la Revolución Bolivariana no depende de un hombre, porque ya es de un colectivo, y que así lo ha asumido el pueblo venezolano. "Hemos pasado etapas, afortundamente esta Revolución no depende de un sólo hombre, se ha desatado un liderazgo colectivo", agregó. También llamó a fortalecer la unidad popular y de todas las fuerzas revolucionarias. "Digo esto porque los adversarios no descansarán en la intriga, sobre todo, en circunstancias como éstas. La unidad, la unidad. Hoy tenemos patria más viva que nunca. ¡Viva la patria!", agregó. Con evidente emotividad, Chávez hizo ...
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chávez_Cadena_completa_Operación_Cuba_nuevas_células_cáncer_Reacciones_VTV_Diosdado_Cabello
081212 Patriotas de Venezuela: Rodilla en tierra www.avn.info.ve ¡¡ VIVA CHÁVEZ NO JODAAA !! Cadena nacional completa, Zurda Konducta y el Programa Especial con Diosdado Cabello. Todos contra la ultradeercha mediática internacional!!!! El Presidente de la República, Hugo Chávez, informó hoy que será sometido a una nueva operación quirúrgica luego de que se detectaran en su cuerpo algunas células malignas en la misma zona donde le fuera diagnosticado un tumor en 2011. El Jefe de Estado, acompañado por el Vicepresidente Nicolás Maduro y algunos ministros, informó en desde el Palacio de Miraflores que partirá a La Habana, Cuba, este lunes para ser sometido a un nuevo tratamiento quirúrgico, y expresó que continua como siempre aferrado a Cristo para superar esta nueva etapa que le ha signado la vida. Durante sus palabras transmitidas en cadena nacional de radio y televisión, el Presidente de Venezuela subrayó que la Revolución Bolivariana no depende de un hombre, porque ya es de un colectivo, y que así lo ha asumido el pueblo venezolano. "Hemos pasado etapas, afortundamente esta Revolución no depende de un sólo hombre, se ha desatado un liderazgo colectivo", agregó. También llamó a fortalecer la unidad popular y de todas las fuerzas revolucionarias. "Digo esto porque los adversarios no descansarán en la intriga, sobre todo, en circunstancias como éstas. La unidad, la unidad. Hoy tenemos patria más viva que nunca. ¡Viva la patria!", agregó. Con evidente emotividad, Chávez hizo ...
- published: 09 Dec 2012
- views: 16093
- author: sucreranda
Hugo Chávez celebra victoria desde el Balcón del pueblo
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:56
- Updated: 22 Dec 2012
El presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, felicitó a la oposición ya su candidato en las elecciones presidenciales de hoy, Henrique Capriles, por reconocer "la verdad" de su victoria e hizo una invitación a sus adversarios al diálogo. "Felicitar a la dirigencia opositora porque han reconocido la verdad, han reconocido la victoria del pueblo", dijo Chávez, en el Balcón del Pueblo del Palacio de Miraflores, al proclamar su invitación a la oposición "al dialogo, al debate y al trabajo conjunto". teleSUR multimedia.telesurtv.net
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chávez_celebra_victoria_desde_el_Balcón_del_pueblo
El presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, felicitó a la oposición ya su candidato en las elecciones presidenciales de hoy, Henrique Capriles, por reconocer "la verdad" de su victoria e hizo una invitación a sus adversarios al diálogo. "Felicitar a la dirigencia opositora porque han reconocido la verdad, han reconocido la victoria del pueblo", dijo Chávez, en el Balcón del Pueblo del Palacio de Miraflores, al proclamar su invitación a la oposición "al dialogo, al debate y al trabajo conjunto". teleSUR multimedia.telesurtv.net
- published: 08 Oct 2012
- views: 20741
- author: telesurtv
Hugo Chávez seguro de su triunfo el 7 de octubre, por Jaime Bayly
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 23:19
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
Análisis de las elecciones de Venezuela por Jaime Bayly. Aceptará Hugo Chávez el triunfo de Henrique Capriles Radonski, ya que las encuestas alientan el posible triunfo de Radonski.
http://wn.com/Hugo_Chávez_seguro_de_su_triunfo_el_7_de_octubre,_por_Jaime_Bayly
Análisis de las elecciones de Venezuela por Jaime Bayly. Aceptará Hugo Chávez el triunfo de Henrique Capriles Radonski, ya que las encuestas alientan el posible triunfo de Radonski.
- published: 02 Oct 2012
- views: 22254
- author: lamusicadotcom
Das Racist - Hugo Chavez // Live @ 350 Broadway
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:45
- Updated: 23 Dec 2012
Das Racist performing "Hugo Chavez" Live at 350 Broadway on November 18th 2010. mishkanyc.com dasracist.net Video by: Matthew Caron yrfriendmatthew.com Director of Photography: Mike De Leon tropicalstufff.com
http://wn.com/Das_Racist_Hugo_Chavez_Live_@_350_Broadway
Das Racist performing "Hugo Chavez" Live at 350 Broadway on November 18th 2010. mishkanyc.com dasracist.net Video by: Matthew Caron yrfriendmatthew.com Director of Photography: Mike De Leon tropicalstufff.com
- published: 31 Oct 2012
- views: 44
- author: Mishka Nyc
photo: AP / Aijaz Rahi
22 Dec 2012
Tweet. 0 Email. Report. Photo 1 of 18. In 2009, ELLE Magazine named Mrs Assad the most stylish woman in world politics. She is an icon of fashion in her country. Credit. Aimee Kligman. In 2009, ELLE Magazine named Mrs Assad the most stylish woman in world politics. She is an icon of fashion in her country.In 2009, ELLE Magazine named Mrs Assad the most stylish woman in world politics ... Syrians detained by the Assad regime. 13 Photos ... 10 Photos ... ....(size: 6.3Kb)
photo: AP / Virginie Nguyen Huang
23 Dec 2012
Tweet. Moscow, Dec 23 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Chemical weapons in Syria are under the control of the government, which has consolidated them in one or two locations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. "As of right now, the (Syrian) government is doing all it can to safeguard those weapons," he said. "We are following all leads concerning chemical weapons," Lavrov said ... "My answer is very simple. Why use us as a postman ... pm/ ... ) .. ). ... . ....(size: 3.2Kb)
photo: Creative Commons / Giorgione
24 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. A deadly silence immediately followed after a bullet penetrated the calf's skull. Against my wishes, Vic had decided against either amputating its leg or contacting a veterinarian-something he reasoned would have been too expensive. The unfortunate calf had slid down into a ravine where its hind leg, which was mangled and torn, became wrapped in barbed wire ... But it was more than a bellow ... 9....(size: 6.3Kb)
photo: AP / Altaf Qadri
23 Dec 2012
A commission will be set up to probe the gang-rape and torture of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi and measures to ensure such crimes do not recur while laws will be amended to enhance punishment for rape, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said . He also appealed the thousands of protesters on the capital’s streets, demanding justice for the victim, to withdraw ... “The government is serious on the issue. ... . . ....(size: 2.4Kb)
photo: AP / Musadeq Sadeq
24 Dec 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan policewoman shot and killed an American adviser outside the police headquarters in Kabul on Monday, the latest in a rising tide of insider attacks by Afghans against their foreign allies, senior Afghan officials said. The woman, identified as Afghan police Sgt ... The woman was taken into Afghan custody shortly after the attack ... As many Afghans, the policewoman uses only one name ... Air Force Lt. Col ... Gen ... ....(size: 4.6Kb)
The Himalayan
25 Dec 2012
A supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds a picture of him, as she attends a mass to pray for Chavez's health in Caracas December 24, 2012 ... Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's condition has "improved slightly" after a cancer operation in Cuba, the information minister said on Monday, amid doubts over whether the former soldier is in good enough health to continue governing....(size: 6.0Kb)
The Associated Press
25 Dec 2012
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro says he has spoken by phone with President Hugo Chavez and that the leader is ......(size: 0.7Kb)
Seattle Post
25 Dec 2012
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro says he has spoken by phone with President Hugo Chavez and that the ......(size: 0.7Kb)
The Star
25 Dec 2012
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez could be sworn in before the Supreme Court even if his cancer treatment keeps him out of the country beyond his January 10 inauguration date, his vice president said Monday. Nicolas Maduro said the constitution will be applied, without indicating whether Chavez would be sworn in from Venezuela or from Cuba, where he is recovering from his fourth cancer operation since June 2011....(size: 3.5Kb)
The New York Times
25 Dec 2012
CARACAS, Venezuela — Aides to President Hugo Chávez, who is recuperating from cancer surgery in Cuba, say they will postpone Mr. Chavez’s inauguration, now set for Jan. 10, if he is too ill to return to Venezuela to begin his new term ... “Jan ... Chavez, Hugo Venezuela Capriles Radonski, Henrique Maduro, Nicolas ... www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/world/americas/hugo-chavez-aides-want-to-postpone-swearing-in.html, targetedPage....(size: 8.8Kb)
The Guardian
25 Dec 2012
Associated Press= HAVANA (AP) — Bolivian President Evo Morales made a lightning trip this weekend to Havana where ally Hugo Chavez is convalescing after cancer surgery, but was mostly silent Monday on the details of his trip or even whether he met with the ailing Venezuelan leader ... "It's more for the Chavez movement than the country in general," Leon said....(size: 12.4Kb)
Al Jazeera
25 Dec 2012
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez could be sworn in before the Supreme Court even if his cancer treatment keeps him out of the country beyond his January 10 inauguration date, his vice president has said. Nicolas Maduro said on Monday the constitution would be applied, without indicating whether Chavez would be sworn in from Venezuela or from Cuba, where he is recovering from his fourth cancer operation since June 2011....(size: 18.4Kb)
Al Jazeera
25 Dec 2012
A spokesman for George H.W. Bush has said that the former US president will spend Christmas in a Texas hospital after developing a fever and weakness following a monthlong bronchitis-like cough ... "He's had a few setbacks ... "Doctors still say they are cautiously optimistic, but every time they get over one thing, another thing pops up." ... Share ... 'Slight improvement' for Chavez after surgery ... 'Slight improvement' for Chavez after surgery ... ....(size: 17.4Kb)
Xinhua
25 Dec 2012
The News & Observer
25 Dec 2012
Email Print Order Reprint Share This. Text. tool name. tool goes here. By HUGO MARTIN - Los Angeles Times. By HUGO MARTIN Los Angeles Times. LOS ANGELES -- Spear guns, inert grenades, stun guns and loaded 9mm handguns. The holidays bring no letup in the number of real and replica weapons that Transportation Security Administration officers uncover at airport checkpoints ... Email Print Order Reprint Share This. Text. tool name. tool goes here ... Zip....(size: 12.2Kb)
BBC News
25 Dec 2012
She stands in effortless command of the small island where medieval Paris was re-founded. Centuries of history have flowed past Notre Dame with the grey waters of the River Seine. The mighty cathedral is neither the tallest, oldest nor biggest in the world, but it can rightly claim to be the best-known ... Holy wars. The first stone was laid in 1163 ... In his book The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo encapsulated that power ... ....(size: 5.0Kb)
The Tribune San Luis Obispo
25 Dec 2012
Morales mum on Cuba trip after Chavez surgery. 2 hours ago. Text of pope's homily at Christmas Eve Mass. 3 hours ago. Mexico City offers exchange of cash, toys for guns. AP Interview. Egypt liberal objects to charter. 3 hours ago. Israel rejects US gun lobby claims on its security. Deals!. View All. . . . . . . . . Search for Deals ... Powered by. Photos & Videos ... IQMS ... ....(size: 13.2Kb)
The Miami Herald
25 Dec 2012
On weekends, when the sun begins to set and the skies dim, voices and musical instruments are heard in South Florida’s churches and temples glorifying and worshiping the eternal God ... “Music has always been part of the church since the early times ... Author Victor Hugo said, ‘Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to remain silent.’ ”. ....(size: 4.7Kb)
This name uses Spanish naming customs; the first or paternal family name is Chávez and the second or maternal family name is Frías.
 |
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (November 2011) |
| Hugo Chávez | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| President of Venezuela | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2 February 1999 |
|
| Vice President | Isaías Rodríguez Adina Bastidas Diosdado Cabello José Vicente Rangel Jorge Rodríguez Ramón Carrizales Elias Jaua |
| Preceded by | Rafael Caldera |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (1954-07-28) 28 July 1954 (age 57) Sabaneta, Venezuela |
| Nationality | Venezuelan |
| Political party | United Socialist Party (2008–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
Fifth Republic Movement (1997–2008) |
| Spouse(s) | Nancy Colmenares (Div.) Marisabel Rodríguez (Div.) |
| Relations | Adán Chávez, Aníbal José Chávez Frías (brothers) |
| Occupation | Military officer (to 1992) and politician |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Venezuela |
| Service/branch | Army |
| Years of service | 1971–1992 |
| Rank | Lieutenant Colonel |
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as]; born 28 July 1954) is the current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Following his own political ideology of Bolivarianism and "Socialism for the 21st Century", he has focused on implementing socialist reforms in the country as a part of a social project known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has seen the implementation of a new constitution, participatory democratic councils and the nationalisation of several key industries.
Born into a working class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system, he founded the secretive Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s to work towards overthrowing it. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez government in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Getting out of prison after two years, he founded a social democratic political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He subsequently introduced a new constitution which increased rights for marginalised groups and altered the structure of Venezuelan government, and was re-elected in 2000. During his second presidential term, he introduced a system of Bolivarian Missions, Communal Councils and worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform, whilst also nationalising various key industries.
Chavez describes his policies as basically anti-imperialist[1] and he is a vocal critic of neoliberalism and capitalism more generally, Chávez has been a prominent adversary of the United States' foreign policy.[2] Allying himself strongly with the Communist governments of Fidel and then Raúl Castro in Cuba, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, his presidency is seen as a part of the socialist "pink tide" sweeping Latin America. He has supported Latin American and Caribbean cooperation and was instrumental in setting up the pan-regional Union of South American Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South, and the regional television network TeleSur. Chavez is a highly controversial and divisive figure both at home and abroad.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Childhood: 1954–1970[link]
Further information: Early life of Hugo Chávez
Hugo Chávez was born on 28 July 1954 in his paternal grandmother Rosa Inéz Chávez's home, a modest three-room house located in the rural village Sabaneta, Barinas State. The Chávez family were of Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, and Spanish descent.[3] His parents, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez and Elena Frías de Chávez, were working-lower middle class schoolteachers who lived in the small village of Los Rastrojos. Hugo was born the second of seven children, including their eldest, Adán Chávez.[4][5] The couple lived in poverty, leading them to send Hugo and Adán to live with their grandmother Rosa,[6] whom Hugo would later describe as being "a pure human being... pure love, pure kindness."[7] She was a devout Roman Catholic, and Hugo was an altar boy at a local church.[8] Hugo described his childhood as "poor...very happy", and experienced "humility, poverty, pain, sometimes not having anything to eat", and "the injustices of this world."[9]
Attending the Julián Pino Elementary School, Chávez's hobbies included drawing, painting, baseball and history. He was particularly interested in the 19th-century federalist general Ezequiel Zamora, in whose army his own great-great-grandfather had served.[10][11] In the mid-1960s, Hugo, his brother and their grandmother moved to the city of Barinas so that the boys could attend what was then the only high school in the rural state, the Daniel O'Leary High School.[12]
Military Academy: 1971–1975[link]
Aged seventeen, Chávez decided to study at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in Caracas. At the Academy, he was a member of the first class that was following a restructured curriculum known as the Andrés Bello Plan. This plan had been instituted by a group of progressive, nationalistic military officers who believed that change was needed within the military. This new curriculum encouraged students to learn not only military routines and tactics but also a wide variety of other topics, and to do so civilian professors were brought in from other universities to give lectures to the military cadets.[13][14][15] Living in Caracas, he saw more of the endemic poverty faced by working class Venezuelans, something that echoed the poverty he had experienced growing up, and he has maintained that this experience only made him further committed to achieving social justice.[16][17] He also began to get involved in local activities outside of the military school, playing both baseball and softball with the Criollitos de Venezuela team, progressing with them to the Venezuelan National Baseball Championships. Other hobbies that he undertook at the time included writing numerous poems, stories and theatrical pieces, painting[18] and researching the life and political thought of 19th-century South American revolutionary Simón Bolívar.[19] He also became interested in the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (1928–1967) after reading his memoir The Diary of Che Guevara, although also read books by a wide variety of other figures, from Karl Marx to Hannibal and Napoleon Bonaparte.[20]
In 1974 he was selected to be a representative in the commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho in Peru, the conflict in which Simon Bolívar's lieutenant, Antonio José de Sucre, defeated royalist forces during the Peruvian War of Independence. It was in Peru that Chávez heard the leftist president, General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1910–1977), speak, and inspired by Velasco's ideas that the military should act in the interests of the working classes when the ruling classes were perceived as corrupt,[21] he "drank up the books [Velasco had written], even memorising some speeches almost completely."[22] Befriending the son of Panamanian President Omar Torrijos (1929–1981), another leftist military general, Chávez subsequently visited Panama, where he met with Torrijos, and was impressed with his land reform program that was designed to benefit the peasants. Being heavily influenced by both Torrijos and Velasco, he saw the potential for military generals to seize control of a government when the civilian authorities were perceived as only serving the interests of the wealthy elites.[21][23] In contrast to military presidents like Torrijos and Velasco however, Chávez became highly critical of Augusto Pinochet, the right-wing general who had recently seized control in Chile with the aid of the American CIA.[24] Chávez would later relate that "With Torrijos, I became a Torrijist. With Velasco I became a Velasquist. And with Pinochet, I became an anti-Pinochetist."[25] In 1975, Chávez graduated from the military academy, being rated one of the top graduates of the year (eight out of seventy five).[26][27][28]
Early military career: 1976–1981[link]
Further information: Military career of Hugo Chávez
I think that from the time I left the academy I was oriented toward a revolutionary movement... The Hugo Chávez who entered there was a kid from the hills, a Ilanero with aspirations of playing professional baseball. Four years later, a second-lieutenant came out who had taken the revolutionary path. Someone who didn’t have obligations to anyone, who didn't belong to any movement, who was not enrolled in any party, but who knew very well where I was headed.
Hugo Chávez.[29]
Following his graduation, Chávez was stationed as a communications officer at a counterinsurgency unit in Barinas,[30] although the Marxist-Leninist insurgency which the army was sent to combat had already been eradicated from that state, leaving the unit with much spare time. Chávez himself played in a local baseball team, wrote a column for the local newspaper, organized bingo games and judged at beauty pageants.[31] At one point he found a stash of Marxist literature that was in an abandoned car riddled with bullet holes. Apparently having belonged to insurgents many years before, he went on to read these books, which included titles by such theoreticians as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, but his favourite was a work entitled The Times of Ezequiel Zamora, written about the 19th-century federalist general whom Chávez had admired as a child.[32] These books further convinced Chávez of the need for a leftist government in Venezuela, later remarking that "By the time I was 21 or 22, I made myself a man of the left."[33]
In 1977, Chávez's unit was transferred to Anzoátegui, where they were involved in battling the Red Flag Party, a Marxist-Hoxhaist insurgency group.[34] After intervening to prevent the beating of an alleged insurgent by other soldiers,[35] Chávez began to have his doubts about the army and their methods in using torture.[33] At the same time, he was becoming increasingly critical of the corruption in both the army and in the civilian government, coming to believe that despite the wealth being produced by the country's oil reserves, Venezuela's poor masses were not receiving their share, something he felt to be inherently un-democratic. In doing so, he began to sympathise with the Red Flag Party and their cause, if not their violent methods.[36]
In 1977, he founded a revolutionary movement within the armed forces, in the hope that he could one day introduce a leftist government to Venezuela: the Venezuelan People's Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación del Pueblo de Venezuela, or ELPV), was a secretive cell within the military that consisted of him and a handful of his fellow soldiers. Although they knew that they wanted a middle way between the right wing policies of the government and the far left position of the Red Flag, they did not have any plans of action for the time being.[35][37][38] Nevertheless, hoping to gain an alliance with civilian leftist groups in Venezuela, Chávez then set about clandestinely meeting various prominent Marxists, including Alfredo Maneiro (the founder of the Radical Cause) and Douglas Bravo, despite having numerous political differences with them.[39][40] At this time, Chávez married a working class woman named Nancy Colmenares, with whom he would go on to have three children, Rosa Virginia (born September 1978), Maria Gabriela (born March 1980) and Hugo Rafael (born October 1983).[41]
Revolutionary activity[link]
Later military career and the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200: 1982–1991[link]
Five years after his creation of the ELPV, Chávez went on to form a new secretive cell within the military, the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army-200 (EBR-200), later redesignated the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200).[13][42][43] Taking inspiration from three Venezuelans whom Chávez deeply admired, Ezequiel Zamora (1817–1860), Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) and Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), these historical figures became known as the "three roots of the tree" of the MBR-200.[44][45] Later describing the group's foundation, Chávez would state that "the Bolivarian movement that was being born did not propose political objectives... Its goals were imminently internal. Its efforts were directed in the first place to studying the military history of Venezuela as a source of a military doctrine of our own, which up to then didn't exist."[46] However, he always hoped that the Bolivarian Movement would become politically dominant, and on his political ideas at the time, remarked that "This tree [of Bolívar, Zamora and Rodríguez] has to be a circumference, it has to accept all kinds of ideas, from the right, from the left, from the ideological ruins of those old capitalist and communist systems."[47] Indeed, Irish political analyst Barry Cannon noted that the early Bolivarian ideology was explicitly capitalist, but that it "was a doctrine in construction, a heterogeneous amalgam of thoughts and ideologies, from universal thought, capitalism, Marxism, but rejecting the neoliberal models currently being imposed in Latin America and the discredited socialist and communist models of the old Soviet Bloc."[48]
In 1981, Chávez, by now a captain, was assigned to teach at the military academy where he had formerly trained. Here he indoctrinated new students in his so-called "Bolivarian" ideals, and recruited those whom he felt would make good members of the MBR-200, as well as organizing sporting and theatrical events for the students. In his recruiting attempts he was relatively successful, for by the time they had graduated, at least thirty out of 133 cadets had joined it.[49] In 1984 he met a Venezuelan woman of German ancestry named Herma Marksman who was a recently divorced history teacher. Sharing many interests in common, she eventually got involved in Chávez's movement and the two fell in love, having an affair that would last several years.[50][51] Another figure to get involved with the movement was Francisco Arias Cárdenas, a soldier particularly interested in liberation theology.[52] Cárdenas rose to a significant position within the group, although came into ideological conflict with Chávez, who believed that they should begin direct military action in order to overthrow the government, something Cárdenas thought was reckless.[53]
However, some senior military officers became suspicious of Chávez after hearing rumours about the MBR-200. Unable to legally dismiss him without proof, they re-assigned him so that he would not be able to gain any more fresh new recruits from the academy. He was sent to take command of the remote barracks at Elorza in Apure State,[54] where he got involved in the local community by organizing social events, and contacted the local indigenous tribal peoples, the Cuiva and Yaruro. Although distrustful due to their mistreatment at the hands of the Venezuelan army in previous decades, Chávez gained their trust by joining the expeditions of an anthropologist to meet with them. His experiences with them would later lead him to introduce laws protecting the rights of indigenous tribal peoples when he gained power many years later.[55] While on holiday, he retraced on foot the route taken by his great-grandfather, the revolutionary Pedro Pérez Delgado (known as Maisanta), to understand his family history; on that trip, he met a woman who told Chávez how Maisanta had become a local hero by rescuing an abducted girl.[56] In 1988, after being promoted to the rank of major, the high ranking General Rodríguez Ochoa took a liking to Chávez and employed him to be his assistant at his office in Caracas.[57]
Operation Zamora: 1992[link]
In 1989, Carlos Andrés Pérez (1922–2010), the candidate of the centrist Democratic Action Party, was elected President after promising to oppose the United States government's Washington Consensus and financial policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nevertheless, he did neither once he got into office, following instead the neoliberal economic policies supported by the United States and the IMF. He dramatically cut spending, put prominent men in governmental posts. Pérez's policies angered some of the public..[58][59][60] In an attempt to stop the widespread protests and looting that followed his social spending cuts, Pérez ordered the violent repression and massacre of protesters known as El Caracazo, which "according to official figures ... left a balance of 276 dead, numerous injured, several disappeared and heavy material losses. However, this list was invalidated by the subsequent appearance of mass graves", indicating that the official death count was inadequate.[61][62][63] Pérez had used both the DISIP political police and the army to orchestrate El Caracazo. Chávez did not participate in the repression because he was then hospitalized with chicken pox, and later condemned the event as "genocide".[64][65]
Disturbed by the Caracazo, rampant government corruption, the domination of politics by the Venezuelan oligarchy through the Punto Fijo Pact, and what he called "the dictatorship of the IMF", Chávez began preparing for a military coup d'état,[63][66] known as Operation Zamora.[67] Initially planned for December, Chávez delayed the MBR-200 coup until the early twilight hours of 4 February 1992. On that date, five army units under Chávez's command moved into urban Caracas with the mission of overwhelming key military and communications installations, including the Miraflores presidential palace, the defense ministry, La Carlota military airport and the Military Museum. Chávez's immediate goal was to intercept and take custody of Pérez, who was returning to Miraflores from an overseas trip. Despite years of planning, the coup quickly encountered trouble. At the time of the coup, Chávez had the loyalty of less than 10% of Venezuela's military forces,[68] and, because of numerous betrayals, defections, errors, and other unforeseen circumstances, Chávez and a small group of rebels found themselves hiding in the Military Museum, without any means of conveying orders to their network of spies and collaborators spread throughout Venezuela.[69] Furthermore, Chávez's allies were unable to broadcast their prerecorded tapes on the national airwaves, during which Chávez planned to issue a general call for a mass civilian uprising against the Pérez government. Finally, Chávez's forces were unable to capture Pérez, who managed to escape from them. Fourteen soldiers were killed, and fifty soldiers and some eighty civilians injured during the ensuing violence.[70][71][72]
Realising that the coup had failed, Chávez gave himself up to the government. On the condition that he called upon the remaining active coup members to cease hostilities, he was allowed to appear on national television, something that he insisted on doing in his military uniform. During this address, he invoked the name of national hero Simón Bolívar and declared to the Venezuelan people that "Comrades: unfortunately, for now, the objectives we had set for ourselves were not achieved in the capital city. That is, those of us here in Caracas did not seize power. Where you are, you have performed very well, but now is the time for a reflect. New opportunities will arise and the country has to head definitively toward a better future."[73] Many viewers noted that Chávez had remarked that he had only failed "por ahora" (for now),[13][74][75][76][77] and he was immediately catapulted into the national spotlight, with many Venezuelans, particularly those from the poorer sections of society, seeing him as a figure who had stood up against government corruption and kleptocracy.[78][79][80]
Chávez was arrested and imprisoned at the San Carlos military stockade, where he remained wracked with guilt, feeling responsible for the coup's failure.[81][82] Indeed, pro-Chávez demonstrations that took place outside of San Carlos led to him being transferred to Yare prison soon after.[83] The government meanwhile began a temporary crackdown on media supportive of Chávez and the coup.[84] A further attempted coup against the government occurred in November, which was once more defeated,[66][85] although Pérez himself was impeached a year later for malfeasance and misappropriation of funds for illegal activities.[86][87]
Political rise: 1992–1998[link]
Whilst Chávez and the other senior members of the MBR-200 were in prison, his relationship with Herma Marksman broke up in July 1993.[88] She would subsequently become "a bitter critic of Chávez, whose supporters wondered how much of her anger was stoked by their failed romance."[89] In 1994, Rafael Caldera (1916–2009) of the centrist National Convergence Party was elected to the presidency, and soon after taking power, freed Chávez and the other imprisoned MBR-200 members as per his pre-election pledge. Caldera had however imposed upon them the condition that they would not return to the military, where they could potentially organise another coup.[90][91] After being mobbed by adoring crowds following his release, Chávez went on a 100 day tour of the country, promoting his Bolivarian cause of social revolution.[92] Now living off a small military pension as well as the donations of his supporters, he continued to financially support his three children and their mother despite divorcing Nancy Colmenares around this period. On his tours around the country, he would meet Marisabel Rodríguez, who would give birth to their daughter shortly before becoming his second wife in 1997.[93][94]
Travelling around Latin America in search of foreign support for his Bolivarian movement, he visited Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, and finally Cuba, where the Communist leader Fidel Castro (1926–) arranged to meet him. After spending several days in one another's company, Chávez and Castro became friends with the former describing the Cuban leader as being like a father to him.[95] Returning to Venezuela, Chávez failed to gain mainstream media attention for his political cause. Instead, he gained publicity from small, local-based newspapers and media outlets.[96] As a part of his condemnation of the ruling class, Chávez became critical of President Caldera, whose neoliberal economic policies had caused inflation and who had both suspended constitutional guarantees and arrested a number of Chávez's supporters.[97] According to the United Nations, by 1997 the per capita income for Venezuelan citizens had fallen to US$ 2,858 from US$ 5,192 in 1990, whilst poverty levels had increased by 17.65% since 1980 and homicide and other crime rates had more than doubled since 1986, particularly in Caracas.[98] Coupled with this drop in the standard of living, widespread dissatisfaction with the representative democratic system in Venezuela had "led to gaps emerging between rulers and ruled which favoured the emergence of a populist leader".[99]
A debate soon developed in the Bolivarian movement as to whether it should try to take power in elections or whether it should instead continue to believe that military action was the only effective way of bringing about political change. Chávez was a keen proponent of the latter view, believing that the oligarchy would never allow he and his supporters to win an election,[100] whilst Francisco Arias Cárdenas instead insisted that they take part in the representative democratic process. Cárdenas himself proved his point when, after joining the Radical Cause socialist party, he won the December 1995 election to become governor of the oil-rich Zulia State.[101] Subsequently changing his opinion on the issue, Chávez and his supporters in the Bolivarian movement decided to found their own political party, the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR—Movimiento Quinta República) in July 1997 in order to support Chávez's candidature in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1998.[70][102][103][104]
The election of a leftist president in Venezuela in 1998 foreshadowed what would, in the following seven years, become a wave of successes for left-leaning presidential candidates in Latin America... Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva in Brazil in October 2002, then Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador in January 2003, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina in May 2003, Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay in October 2004, Evo Morales in Bolivia in December 2005, Rafael Correa in Ecuador in November 2006, and then Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, also in November 2006. While some of these moderated [towards the centre or centre-right] significantly shortly after taking office, such as Gutiérrez and da Silva, they represent a wave of left-of-center leaders whose election came as a bit of a surprise given the... disorientation within the left around the world.
Gregory Wilpert, German-American political analyst (2007).[105]
1998 election[link]
At the start of the election run-up, most polls gave Irene Sáez, then-mayor of Caracas' richest district, Chacao, the lead. Although an independent candidate, she had the backing of one of Venezuela's two primary political parties, Copei.[106] In opposition to her right wing and pro-establishment views, Chávez and his followers described their aim as "laying the foundations of a new republic" to replace the existing one, which they cast as "party-dominated"; the current constitution, they argued, was no more than the "legal-political embodiment of puntofijismo", the country's traditional two-party patronage system.[107] This revolutionary rhetoric gained Chávez and the MVR support from a number of other leftist parties, including the Patria Para Todos (Motherland for All), the Partido Comunist Venezolano (Venezeuelan Communist Party) and the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism), which together fashioned a political union supporting his candidacy called the Polo Patriotic (Patriotic Pole).[104][108]
Chávez's promises of widespread social and economic reforms won the trust and favor of a primarily poor and working class following. By May 1998, Chávez's support had risen to 30% in polls, and by August he was registering 39%.[109] Much of his support came from his 'strong man' populist image and charismatic appeal.[110] This rise in popularity worried Chávez's opponents, with the oligarchy-owned mainstream media proceeding to attack him with a series of allegations, which included the claim – which he dismissed as ridiculous – that he was a cannibal who ate children.[111] With his support increasing, and Sáez's decreasing, both the main two political parties, Copei and Democratic Action, put their support behind Henrique Salas Römer, a Yale University-educated economist who representated the Project Venezuela party.[112]
Chávez won the election with 56.20% of the vote. Salas Römer came second, with 39.97%, whilst the other candidates, including Irene Sáez and Alfaro Ucero, only gained tiny proportions of the vote.[87][113] Academic analysis of the election showed that Chávez's support had come primarily from the country's poor and the "disenchanted middle class", whose standard of living had decreased rapidly in the previous decade,[114] although at the same time much of the middle and upper class vote had instead gone to Salas Römer.[115] Following the announcement of his victory, Chávez gave a speech in which he declared that "The resurrection of Venezuela has begun, and nothing and no one can stop it."[113]
Presidency[link]
Further information: Presidency of Hugo Chávez
First Presidential Term: 1999–2000[link]
Chávez's presidential inauguration took place on 2 February 1999, and during the usual presidential oath he deviated from the prescribed words to proclaim that "I swear before my people that upon this moribund constitution I will drive forth the necessary democratic transformations so that the new republic will have a Magna Carta befitting these new times."[116][117] He subsequently set about appointing new figures to a number of government posts, including promoting various leftist allies to key positions; he for instance gave one of the founders of MBR, Jesús Urdaneta, the position in charge of the secret police, and made one of the 1992 coup leaders, Hernán Grüber Ódreman, governor of the Federal District of Caracas.[118] Chávez also appointed some conservative, centrist and centre-right figures to government positions as well, reappointing Caldera's economy minister Maritza Izaquirre to that same position and also appointing the businessman Roberto Mandini to be president of the state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela.[119] His critics referred to this group of government officials as the "Boliburguesía" or "Bolivarian bourgeoisie",[120][121] and highlighted the fact that it "included few people with experience in public administration."[116] He also made several alterations to his presidential privileges, scrapping the presidential limousine, giving away his entire presidential wage of $1,200 a month to a scholarship fund,[122] and selling off many of the government-owned airplanes, although alternately many of his critics accused him of excessive personal expenses for himself, his family and friends.[123] The involvement of a number of his immediate family members in Venezuelan politics has also led to accusations of nepotism, something Chávez denies.[124] Meanwhile, in June 2000 he separated from his wife Marisabel, and their divorce was finalised in January 2004.[125]
Although he publicly used strong revolutionary rhetoric from the beginning of his presidency, the Chávez government's initial policies were moderate, capitalist and centre-left, having much in common with those of contemporary Latin American leftists like Brazil's president Lula da Silva.[126][127] Chávez initially believed that capitalism was still a valid economic model for Venezuela, but that it would have to be Rhenish capitalism or the Third Way that would be followed rather than the neoliberalism which had been implemented under former governments with the encouragement of the United States.[128] He followed the economic guidelines recommended by the International Monetary Fund and continued to encourage foreign corporations to invest in Venezuela,[129] even visiting the New York Stock Exchange in the United States in an attempt to convince wealthy investors to do so.[130][131] To increase his visibility abroad, Chávez spent fifty-two days of his first year as president outside of Venezuela, travelling the world meeting various national leaders, such as American President Bill Clinton, Governor of Texas George W. Bush and Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin.[132]
Whilst he was remaining fiscally conservative, he introduced measures in an attempt to alleviate the poverty of the Venezuelan working class. Chávez immediately set into motion a social welfare program called Plan Bolívar 2000, which he organised to begin on 27 February 1999, the tenth anniversary of the Caracazo massacre. Costing $113,000,000, Plan Bolívar 2000 involved 70,000 army officers going out into the streets of Venezuela where they would repair roads and hospitals, offer free medical care and vaccinations, and sell food at cheap prices.[133][134][135] Chávez himself described the Plan by saying that "Ten years ago we came to massacre the people. Now we are going to fill them with love. Go and comb the land, search out and destroy poverty and death. We are going to fill them with love instead of lead."[136] In order to explain his latest thoughts and plans to the Venezuelan people, in May he also launched his own Sunday morning radio show, Aló Presidente (Hello, President), on the state radio network, as well as a Thursday night television show, De Frente con el Presidente (Face to Face with the President). He followed this with his own newspaper, El Correo del Presidente (The President's Post), founded in July, for which he acted as editor-in-chief, but which was later shut amidst accusations of corruption in its management.[137] In his television and radio shows, he answered calls from citizens, discussed his latest policies, sung songs and told jokes, making it unique not only in Latin America but the entire world.[138]
Constitutional reform[link]
Chávez then called for a public referendum – something virtually unknown in Venezuela at the time – which he hoped would support his plans to form a constitutional assembly, composed of representatives from across Venezuela, as well as from indigenous tribal groups, which would be able to rewrite the nation's constitution. The referendum went ahead on 25 April 1999, and was an overwhelming success for Chávez, with 88% of voters supporting the proposal.[139][140]
Following this, Chávez called for an election to take place on 25 July, in which the members of the constitutional assembly would be voted into power.[141] Of the 1,171 candidates standing for election to the assembly, over 900 of them were opponents of Chávez, but despite this, his supporters won another overwhelming electoral victory, taking 125 seats (95% of the total), including all of those belonging to indigenous tribal groups, whereas the opposition were voted into only 6 seats.[139][142][143] On 12 August 1999, the new constitutional assembly voted to give themselves the power to abolish government institutions and to dismiss officials who were perceived as being corrupt or operating only in their own interests. Whilst supporters of the move believed that it could force reforms that had been blocked by corrupt politicians and judicial authorities for years, many opponents of the Chávez regime argued that it gave Chávez and the Bolivarians too much power at the expense of their political opponents, and was therefore dictatorial.[144][145]
The elected members of the constituent assembly put together a new constitution, and a referendum on the issue of whether to adopt it was held in December 1999; the referendum saw an abstention vote of over 50%, although amongst those voting, 72% approved the new constitution's adoption.[143][146][147] The new constitution included increased protections for indigenous peoples and women, and established the rights of the public to education, housing, healthcare and food. It added new environmental protections, and increased requirements for government transparency. It increased the presidential term from five to six years, allowed people to recall presidents by referendum, and added a new presidential two-term limit. It converted the bicameral legislature, a Congress with both a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, into a unicameral one comprising only a National Assembly.[148][149][150][151] The constitution gave greater powers to the president, not only by extending their term but also by giving them the power to legislate on citizen rights as well as the economic and financial matters that they were formerly able to do.[152] It also gave the military a role in the government by providing them with the mandated role of ensuring public order and aiding national development, something they had been expressely forbidden from doing under the former constitution.[152] As a part of the new constitution, the country, which was then officially known as the Republic of Venezuela, was renamed the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (República Bolivariana de Venezuela) at Chávez's request, thereby reflecting the government's ideology of Bolivarianism and the influence of Simón Bolívar on the nation as a whole.[142][143]
Second Presidential Term: 2000–2006[link]
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This section requires expansion with: Information on the land reform program and workers' councils. |
Under the new constitution, it was legally required that new elections be held in order to relegimatize the government and president. This presidential election in July 2000 would be a part of a greater "megaelection", the first time in the country's history that the president, governors, national and regional congressmen, mayors and councilmen would be voted for on the same day.[153][154][155] For the position of president, Chávez's closest challenger proved to be his former friend and co-conspirator in the 1992 coup, Francisco Arias Cárdenas, who since becoming governor of Zulia state had turned towards the political centre and begun to denounce Chávez as autocratic.[156] Although some of his supporters feared that he had alienated those in the middle class and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy who had formerly supported him, Chávez was re-elected with 59.76% of the vote (the equivalent of 3,757,000 people), a larger majority than his 1998 electoral victory,[157][158] again primarily receiving his support from the poorer sectors of Venezuelan society.[159]
That year, Chávez helped to further cement his geopolitical and ideological ties with the Cuban government of Fidel Castro by signing an agreement under which Venezuela would supply Cuba with 53,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates, in return receiving 20,000 trained Cuban medics and educators. In the ensuing decade, this would be increased to 90,000 barrels a day (in exchange for 40,000 Cuban medics and teachers), dramatically aiding the Caribbean island's economy and standard of living after its "Special Period" of the 1990s.[160] However, Venezuela's growing alliance with Cuba came at the same time as a deteriorating relationship with the United States: in late 2001, just after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in retaliation for the 11 September attacks against the U.S. by Islamist militants, Chávez showed pictures of Afghan children killed in a bomb attack on his television show. He commented that "They are not to blame for the terrorism of Osama Bin Laden or anyone else", and called on the American government to end "the massacre of the innocents. Terrorism cannot be fought with terrorism." The U.S. government responded negatively to the comments, which were picked up by the media worldwide.[161]
Meanwhile, the 2000 elections had led to Chávez's supporters gaining 101 out of 165 seats in the Venezuelan National Assembly, and so in November 2001 they voted to allow him to pass 49 social and economic decrees.[162][163] This move antagonized the opposition movement particularly strongly.[155]
At the start of the 21st century, Venezuela was the world's fifth largest exporter of crude oil, with oil accounting for 85.3% of the country's exports, therefore dominating the country's economy.[164][165] Previous administrations had sought to privatise this industry, with U.S. corporations having a significant level of control, but the Chávez administration wished to curb this foreign control over the country's natural resources by nationalising much of it under the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PdVSA). In 2001, the government introduced a new Hydrocarbons Law through which they sought to gain greater state control over the oil industry: they did this by raising royalty taxes on the oil companies and also by introducing the formation of "mixed companies", whereby the PdVSA could have joint control with private companies over industry. By 2006, all of the 32 operating agreements signed with private corporations during the 1990s had been converted from being primarily or solely corporate-run to being at least 51% controlled by PdVSA.[164]
Growing opposition and the CD[link]
During Chávez's first term in office, the opposition movement had been "strong but reasonably contained, [with] complaints centring mainly on procedural aspects of the implementation of the constitution".[155] However, the first organized protest against the Bolivarian government occurred in January 2001, when the Chávez administration tried to implement educational reforms through the proposed Resolution 259 and Decree 1.011, which would have seen the publication of textbooks with a heavy Bolivarian bias. The protest movement, which was primarily by middle class parents whose children went to privately run schools, marched to central Caracas shouting out the slogan "Don't mess with my children." Although the protesters were denounced by Chávez, who called them "selfish and individualistic," the protest was successful enough for the government to retract the proposed education reforms and instead enter into a consensus-based educational program with the opposition.[166] That year, an organization known as the Coordinadora Democrática de Acción Cívica (CD) was founded, under which the Venezuelan opposition political parties, corporate powers, most of the country's media, the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce, the Frente Institucional Militar and the Central Workers Union all united to oppose Chávez's regime.[162][167] The prominent businessman Pedro Carmona (1941–) was chosen as the CD's leader.[162] They received support from various foreign sources.
The CD and other opponents of Chávez's Bolivarian government accused it of trying to turn Venezuela from a democracy into a dictatorship by centralising power amongst its supporters in the Constituent Assembly and granting Chávez increasingly autocratic powers. Many of them pointed to Chávez's personal friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro and the one-party socialist government in Cuba as a sign of where the Bolivarian government was taking Venezuela.[162] Others did not hold such a strong view, but still argued that Chávez was a "free-spending, authoritarian populist" whose policies were detrimental to the country.[168] For instance, Venezuelan lawyer and academic Allan R. Brewer-Carías, a prominent and vocal opponent of Chávez, made the claim that under his regime the country had "suffered a tragic setback regarding democratic standards, suffering a continuous, persistent and deliberate process of demolishing institutions and destroying democracy, which has never before been experienced in the constitutional history of the country."[169] Other academics have argued that the opposite was true, and that "the Chávez government is in fact more democratic than previous ones" because of the increased checks and balances introduced by the 1999 constitution and the introduction of workers' councils.[170]
The pro-Chávez political analyst Gregory Wilpert argued, in his study of the Bolivarian administration, that the opposition movement was dominated primarily by members of the middle and upper classes. He further argued that this wealthy elite was particularly furious at the Bolivarian government because they themselves had lost much of their dominance over Venezuelan politics with the introduction of the 1999 constitution and the relegitamization of all areas of government that it required.[171] He went on to argue that this wealthy elite subsequently used its control of the country's mass media to create an anti-Chávez campaign aimed primarily at the middle classes, stirring up the latent racism and classism that existed in Venezuelan culture.[172][173] One of the most prominent examples of this was through the popularization of the racist term ese mono ("that monkey") which began to be applied to Chávez by his opponents,[140][174][175] who would also often accuse him of being "vulgar and common".[157][174][176] Both Venezuelan and Western opposition media also characterized Chávez's supporters, who were known as the Chávistas, as being "young, poor, politically unsophisticated, antidemocratic masses" who were controlled, funded and armed by the state,[177] and they were regularly referred to as "hordes" in opposition media discourse, which also commonly referred to the Bolivarian Circles as "terror circles".[175] Such descriptions have been refuted by certain academics, such as Cristóbal Valencia Ramírez, who, after studying Chavista groups, have argued that they consist of people from many classes of society, and are educated and largely non-violent.[178] Chavista-run organizations have since claimed to have been the target of violent attacks from opposition groups: for instance, the Ezequiel Zamora National Farmers' Coordinator estimated that 50 Chavista leaders involved in the land-reform program had been assassinated during 2002 and 2003.[179]
Coup, strikes and the recall referendum[link]
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This section requires expansion with: greater detail on the various events described, using a wider range of academic sources.. |
Main articles: 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003, and Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004
On 11 April 2002, mass protests took place in Caracas against the Bolivarian government, during which guns were fired, and violence ensued involving both pro- and anti-Chávez supporters, the police and the army.[180] Twenty people were killed and over 110 were wounded.[181] A group of high ranking anti-Chávez military officers, likely supported by figures in the business community, media and certain political parties, had been planning to launch a coup against Chávez and used the civil unrest as an opportunity.[182] After the plotters gained significant power, Chávez agreed to step down, and was transferred by army escort to La Orchila, and although he requested to be allowed to leave the country, he refused to officially resign from the presidency at the time. Nonetheless, the wealthy business-leader Pedro Carmona declared himself president of an interim government.[183] Carmona abolished the 1999 constitution and appointed a small governing committee to run the country.[155] Protests in support of Chávez along with insufficient support for Carmona's regime, which many felt was implementing totalitarian measures, led to Carmona's resignation and Chávez was returned to power on 14 April.[184]
Chávez's reaction to the coup attempt was to moderate his approach, implementing a new economic team that appeared to be more centrist and reinstated the old board of directors and managers of the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), whose replacement had been one of the reasons for the coup.[185][186] At the same time, the Bolivarian government began preparing for potential future uprisings or even a US invasion by increasing the country's military capacity, purchasing 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and several helicopters from Russia, as well as a number of Super Tucano light attack planes from Brazil. Troop numbers were also increased, with Chávez announcing in 2005 the government's intention to increase the number of military reserves from 50,000 to 2,000,000.[187]
In December 2002, the Chávez presidency faced a two-month management strike at the PdVSA when he initiated management changes. As Wilpert noted, "While the opposition labelled this action a 'general strike', it was actually a combination of management lockout, administrative and professional employee strike, and general sabotage of the oil industry."[188] The Chávez government's response was to fire about 19,000 striking employees for illegally abandoning their posts, and then employing retired workers, foreign contractors and the military to do their jobs instead. This move further damaged the strength of Chávez's opposition by removing the many managers in the oil industry who had been supportive of their cause to overthrow Chávez.[188]
Following the failure of these two attempts to remove Chávez from power, the opposition finally resorted to legal means in order to try to do so. The 1999 constitution had introduced the concept of a recall referendum into Venezuelan politics, and so the opposition called for such a referendum to take place. A 2004 referendum to recall Chávez was defeated. 70% of the eligible Venezuelan population turned out to vote, with 59% of voters deciding to keep the president in power.[158][189] Unlike his original 1998 election victory, this time Chávez's electoral support came almost entirely from the poorer working classes rather than the middle classes, who "had practically abandoned Chávez" after he "had consistently moved towards the left in those five and a half years".[190] Meanwhile, some figures in the opposition movement began calling for the United States military to intervene and invade the country in order to topple Chávez.[189]
"Socialism of the 21st Century"[link]
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[Bolivarian] socialism would be 'based in solidarity, in fraternity, in love, in justice, in liberty, and in equality' and would mean the 'transformation of the economic model, increasing cooperativism, collective property, the submission of private property to the social interest and to the general interest', created 'from the popular bases, with the participation of the communities'. This socialism was not a dogma, however, but 'must be constructed every day'.
Barry Cannon, Irish political analyst (2009)[48]
The various attempts at overthrowing the Bolivarian government from power had only served to further radicalize Chávez. In January 2005, he began openly proclaiming the ideology of "Socialism of the 21st Century", something that was distinct from his earlier forms of Bolivarianism, which had been social democratic in nature, merging elements of capitalism and socialism. He used this new term to contrast the democratic socialism which he wanted to promote in Latin America from the Marxist-Leninist socialism that had been spread by socialist states like the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China during the 20th century, arguing that the latter had not been truly democratic, suffering from a lack of participatory democracy and an excessively authoritarian governmental structure.[48]
In May 2006, Chávez visited Europe in a private capacity, where he announced plans to supply cheap Venezuelan oil to poor working class communities in the continent. The leftist Mayor of London Ken Livingstone welcomed him, describing him as "the best news out of Latin America in many years".[191]
Third Presidential Term: 2006–present[link]
In the presidential election of December 2006, which saw a 74% voter turnout, Chávez was once more elected, this time with 63% of the vote, beating his closest challenger Manuel Rosales, who conceded his loss.[189] The election was certified as being free and legitimate by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center.[192][193][194] After this victory, Chávez promised an "expansion of the revolution."[195]
United Socialist Party of Venezuela and domestic policy[link]
On 15 December 2006, Chávez publicly announced that those leftist political parties who had continually supported him in the Patriotic Pole would unite into one single, much larger party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, PSUV).[104] In the speech which he gave announcing the PSUV's creation, Chávez declared that the old parties must "forget their own structures, party colours and slogans, because they are not the most important thing for the fatherland."[104] According to political analyst Barry Cannon, the purpose of creating the PSUV was to "forge unity amongst the disparate elements [of the Bolivarian movement], providing grassroots input into policy and leadership formation, [and] uniting the grassroots and leadership into one single body."[196] It was hoped that by doing so, it would decrease the problems of clientelism and corruption and also leave the movement less dependent on its leadership:[196] as Chávez himself declared, "In this new party, the bases will elect the leaders. This will allow real leaders to emerge."[196]
Chávez had initially proclaimed that those leftist parties which chose to not dissolve into the PSUV would have to leave the government, however, after several of those parties supporting him refused to do so, he ceased to issue such threats.[197] There was initially much grassroots enthusiasm for the creation of the PSUV, with membership having rising to 5.7 million people by 2007,[196][198] making it the largest political group in Venezuela.[199] The United Nations' International Labour Organization however expressed concern over some voters being pressured to join the party.[200]
In 2007, the Bolivarian government set up a constitutional commission in order to review the 1999 constitution and suggest potential amendments to be made to it. Led by the prominent pro-Chávez intellectual Luis Britto García, the commission came to the conclusion that the constitution could include more socially progressive clauses, such as the shortening of the working week, a constitutional recognition of Afro Venezuelans and the elimination of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.[189] It also suggested measures that would have increased many of the president's powers, for instance increasing the presidential term limit to seven years, allowing the president to run for election indefinitely and centralizing powers in the executive.[189] The government put the suggested changes to a public referendum in December 2007.[201] Abstention rate was high however, with 43.95% of registered voters not turning out, and in the end the proposed changes were rejected by 50.65% of votes.[189][202] This would prove to the first electoral loss that Chávez had faced in the thirteen electoral contests held since he took power,[189] something analysts argued was due to the top-down nature of the changes, as well as general public dissatisfaction with "the absence of internal debate on its content, as well as dissatisfaction with the running of the social programmes, increasing street crime, and with corruption within the government."[203]
In order to ensure that his Bolivarian Revolution became socially engrained in Venezuela, Chávez discussed his wish to stand for re-election when his term ran out in 2013, and spoke of ruling beyond 2030.[204] Under the 1999 constitution, he could not legally stand for re-election again, and so brought about a referendum on 15 February 2009 to abolish the two-term limit for all public offices, including the presidency.[205] Approximately 70% of the Venezuelan electorate voted, and they approved this alteration to the constitution with over 54% in favor, allowing any elected official the chance to try to run indefinitely.[204][205][206]
Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Bank of the South[link]
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This section requires expansion with: further information on the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas and Chavez's recognition of FARC as a true military force. |
The Bolivarian government placed a great emphasis on providing financial and medical aid to the rest of Latin America, bolstered by the profits produced by the Venezuela oil industry: indeed, in the first eight months of 2007 alone, Venezuela spent $8.8 billion in doing so, something which was "unprecedented for a Latin American country" in terms of scale.[207] Adding to this, the Chávez administration sought greater political, economic and military alliances with those Latin American countries who had seen leftist, and in particular socialist governments elected in the early 21st century. The widespread success of left-leaning candidates at the time had led to what political analysts have described as a "pink tide" sweeping the region, although there was a great deal of diversity within this leftist trend. Those that became the closest allies of Bolivarian Venezuela were Evo Morales and his Movement for Socialism, which was elected into power in Bolivia in 2005, and Rafael Correa and his PAIS Alliance, who won the election in Ecuador in 2006.[105]
In 2007, the socialist Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front were elected into government in Nicaragua, and his administration immediately entered into deals with the Venezuelan government. On Ortega's first day in power, Chávez announced plans to aid the impoverished Central American country by forgiving the $30 million it owed Venezuela, and agreed to supply them with a further gift of $10 million in aid, as well as providing them with a $20 million loan with little or no interest designed to benefit the country's poor.[208]
In 2004, Venezuela had been one of the founding states in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA).
As of 26 September 2009, Chávez, along with allies such as Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia, has set up a regional bank and development lender called Bank of the South, based in Caracas, an attempt to distance himself from financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Chávez first mentioned the project before winning the Presidential election in 1998.[209] Chávez maintains that unlike other global financial organizations, the Bank of the South will be managed and funded by the countries of the region with the intention of funding social and economic development without any political conditions on that funding.[210] The project is endorsed by Nobel Prize winning, former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz, who said: "One of the advantages of having a Bank of the South is that it would reflect the perspectives of those in the south," and that "It is a good thing to have competition in most markets, including the market for development lending."[211]
As the Arab Spring erupted across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, Chávez openly criticised those leaders who had been backed by the U.S., such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, but at the same time championed those who had adhered to Arab socialist ideals, such as Syria's Bashar al-Assad, whom he called "a humanist and a brother" in spite of Assad's government's violent crackdown on protesters.[212] Following the outbreak of the 2011 Libyan civil war, in which forces opposed to the socialist government rose up against the regime, Chávez, who had always had good international relations with Libya – describing its ceremonial leader Muammar al-Gaddafi as "a friend of mine"[212] – offered to act as an intermediary between the government and the rebel-controlled National Transitional Council (NTC), however the latter declined the offer.[213] During the subsequent 2011 military intervention in Libya, in which western forces attacked the Libyan army in support of the NTC, Chávez criticised the "indiscriminate bombing" of the country, accusing the United States of simply trying to "lay its hands on Libya's oil".[214] Upon the killing of Muammar al-Gaddafi in October 2011, Chávez proclaimed that "We shall remember Gaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr. They assassinated him. It is another outrage."[215]
Cancer and further nationalisation[link]
On 30 June 2011, Chávez confirmed in a televised address from Havana, Cuba, that he was recovering from a 10 June operation to remove an abscessed tumor with cancerous cells.[216] Vice President Elías Jaua declared that the President remained in "full exercise" of power and that there was no need to transfer power due to his absence from the country.[217] A 2 July report in El Periódico de Catalunya reported that, according to Venezuelan diplomatic sources, Chávez had "colon cancer that has perforated the intestinal wall and has caused an infection in the abdomen."[218] On 3 July, the Venezuelan government denied, however, that Chávez had colon cancer, and stated that the tumour had been completely removed, further stating that Chávez was heading for "complete recovery".[219] On 17 July 2011, television news reported that Chavez had returned to Cuba for further cancer treatments.[220]
Chávez gave a public appearance on his 57th birthday in which he stated that his health trouble had led him to radically reorient his life towards a "more diverse, more reflective and multi-faceted" outlook, and he went on to call on the middle classes and the private sector to get more involved in his Bolivarian Revolution, something he saw as "vital" to its success.[221] Soon after this speech, in August Chávez announced that his government would nationalise Venezuela's gold industry, taking it over from Russian-controlled company Rusoro, whilst at the same time also moving the country's gold stocks, which were largely stored in western banks, to banks in Venezuela's political allies like Russia, China and Brazil.[222]
Political philosophy[link]
Main articles: Bolivarianism and Bolivarian Circles
Hugo Chávez defines his political position as Bolivarianism, an ideology developed by himself which he claims is influenced by Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), a 19th-century general who led the fight against the imperialist Spanish authorities, and who is widely revered across Latin America today. Chavez claims that his movement is inspired by Bolivar because Bolivar is widely popular, so this puts the stamp of approval of Bolivar on his political movement.Along with Bolívar, the other two primary influences upon Bolivarianism are Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854), a philosopher who was Bolívar's tutor and mentor, and Ezequiel Zamora, (1817–1860), the Venezuelan Federalist general.[223] Political analyst Gregory Wilpert, in his study of Chávez's politics, noted that "The key ingredients for Chávez's revolutionary Bolivarianism can be summarized as: an emphasis on the importance of education, the creation of civilian-military unity, Latin American integration, social justice, and national sovereignty. In many ways this is not a particularly different set of principles and ideas to those of any other Enlightenment or national liberation thinker."[224]
Although he has been a leftist ever since his days at the military academy, since becoming president Chávez's political position has progressed further left, rejecting democratic leftist ideologies like social democracy or the Third Way and instead embracing socialism. He has propagated what he calls "socialism for the 21st century", but according to Gregory Wilpert, "Chávez has not clearly defined twenty-first century socialism, other than to say that it is about establishing liberty, equality, social justice, and solidarity. He has also indicated that it is distinctly different from state socialism", as implemented by the governments of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.[225] As a part of his socialist ideas, he has emphasised the role of so-called "participatory democracy", which he claims increases democratic participation, and is implemented through the foundation of the Venezuelan Communal Councils and Bolivarian Circles which he cites as examples of grassroots and participatory democracy.[226]
[D]emocracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest. Rousseau said, 'Between the powerful and the weak all freedom is oppressed. Only the rule of law sets you free.' That's why the only way to save the world is through socialism, a democratic socialism... [Democracy is not just turning up to vote every five or four years], it's much more than that, it's a way of life, it's giving power to the people ... it is not the government of the rich over the people, which is what's happening in almost all the so-called democratic Western capitalist countries.
Hugo Chávez, June 2010[128]
Chávez is well acquainted with the various traditions of Latin American socialism, espoused by such figures as Colombian politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán,[227] former Chilean president Salvador Allende,[227] former Peruvian president Juan Velasco Alvarado,[19] former Panamanian president Omar Torrijos[23] and the Cuban revolutionaries Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.[227] Other indirect influences on Chávez's political philosophy are the writings of American linguist Noam Chomsky[228] and the Gospel teachings of Jesus Christ.[229][230]
Chávez's connection to Marxism is a complex one. In May 1996, he gave an interview with Agustín Blanco Muñoz in which he remarked that "I am not a Marxist, but I am not anti-Marxist. I am not communist, but I am not anti-communist."[231] He is, however, well versed in many Marxist texts, having read the works of many Marxist theoreticians, and has often publicly quoted them. Various international Marxists have supported his government, believing it to be a sign of proletariat revolution as predicted in Marxist theory.[232] In 2010, Hugo Chávez proclaimed support for the ideas of Marxist Leon Trotsky, saying "When I called him (former Minister of Labour, José Ramón Rivero)" Chávez explained, "he said to me: 'president I want to tell you something before someone else tells you ... I am a Trotskyist', and I said, 'well, what is the problem? I am also a Trotskyist! I follow Trotsky's line, that of permanent revolution," and then cited Karl Marx and Lenin.[233][234]
On 24 December 2005, Chávez stated that "[t]he world is for all of us, then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendants of the same ones that kicked Bolívar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possession all of the wealth of the world."[235] Accusations of anti-semitism have been leveled against Chavez because of these comments.[236]
Policy overview[link]
Economic and social policy[link]
Venezuela is a major producer of oil products, which remains the keystone of the Venezuelan economy. Chávez has gained a reputation as a price hawk in OPEC, pushing for stringent enforcement of production quotas and higher target oil prices. According to Cannon, the state income from oil revenue has "increas[ed] from 51% of total income in 2000 to 56% 2006";[237] oil exports "have grown from 77% in 1997 [...] to 89% in 2006";[237] and "this dependence on oil is one of the chief problems facing the Chávez government".[237] The economist Mark Weisbrot, in an analysis of the Chávez administration, said: "The current economic expansion began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003. Since then, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP has nearly doubled, growing by 94.7 percent in 5.25 years, or 13.5 percent annually."[238] For the year 2009, the Venezuelan economy shrank by an average of 2.9% due to the global recession.[239] Chávez has stated that the Venezuelan economy will most likely continue shrinking throughout 2010, citing both the IMF and World Bank. Chávez sees the economic crisis as "an opportunity for socialism to spread and take root..".[240] According to Ian James, citing estimates from the Venezuelan Central Bank, the Venezuelan government "controls" the same percentage of the economy as when Chávez was elected in 1998, with "the private sector still control[ling] two-thirds of Venezuela's economy".[241]
Since Chávez was elected in 1998, over 100,000 state-owned cooperatives—which claim to represent approximately 1.5 million people—have been formed with the assistance of government start-up credit and technical training;[242] and the creation and maintenance, as of September 2010, of over 30,000 communal councils, examples of localised participatory democracy; which he intended to be integration into regional umbrella organizations known as "Communes in Construction".[243] In 2010, Chávez supported the construction of 184 communes, housing thousands of families, with $23 million in government funding. The communes produce some of their own food, and are able to make decisions by popular assembly of what to do with government funds.[244] In September 2010, Chávez announced the location of 876 million bolivars ($203 million) for community projects around the country, specifically communal councils and the newly formed communes. Chávez also criticised the bureaucracy still common in Venezuela saying, when in discussion with his Communes Minister Isis Ochoa, that "All of the projects must be carried out by the commune, not the bureaucracy." The Ministry for Communes, which oversees and funds all communal projects, was initiated in 2009.[243]
Chávez has also supported the creation of a series of Bolivarian Missions which are claimed to be aimed at providing public services to improve economic, cultural, and social conditions. A 2010 OAS report[245] indicated achievements in addressing illiteracy, healthcare and poverty,[246] and economic and social advances.[247]
Barry Cannon writes that "most areas of spending have increased".[248] "[S]pending on education as a percentage of GDP stood at 5.1% in 2006, as opposed to 3.4% in the last year of the Caldera government."[248] Spending on health "has increased from 1.6% of GDP in 2000 to 7.71% in 2006".[248] Spending on housing "receives low public support", increasing only "from 1% in GDP to 1.6% in 2006".[248] Teresa A. Meade, writes that Chávez's popularity "rests squarely on the lower classes who have benefited from these health initiatives and similar policies [...] poverty rates fell from 42 to 34 percent from 2000 to 2006, still leaving over 30 percent in this oil-rich nation below the poverty line".[249]
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) reports that the Venezuelan economy grew on average by 11.85% in the period 2004–2007.[250] According to The Washington Post, citing statistics from the United Nations, poverty in Venezuela stood at 28% in 2008,[251] down from 55.44% in 1998 before Chávez got into office.[252] Economist Mark Weisbrot found that, "During the ... economic expansion, the poverty rate [was] cut by more than half, from 54 percent of households in the first half of 2003 to 26 percent at the end of 2008. Extreme poverty has fallen even more, by 72 percent. These poverty rates measure only cash income, and does take into account increased access to health care or education."[238][253] Nicholas Kozloff, Chávez's biographer, stated of Chavez's economic policies: "Chavez has not overturned capitalism, he has done much to challenge the more extreme, neo-liberal model of development."[207]
Food[link]
In the 1980s and 1990s health and nutrition indexes in Venezuela were generally low, and social inequality in access to nutrition was high.[254] Chavez has frequently made it his stated goal to lower inequality in the access to basic nutrition, and to achieve food sovereignty for Venezuela.[255] The main strategy for making food available to all economic classes has been a controversial policy of fixing price ceilings for basic staple foods implemented in 2003.[256]
Despite these goals, however, Venezuela has been plagued by shortages of staples, including milk, meat, and coffee throughout Chavez' presidency.[257][258] An independent polling firm which regularly tracks scarcities found that powdered milk could only be found in 42% of grocery stores, and liquid milk was even more scarce.[257] Chávez has blamed "speculators and hoarders" for these scarcities.[258]
Chavez' strategy in response food shortages has consisted mainly in increasing domestic production through nationalizing large parts of the food industry. The price ceilings have increased the demand for basic foods while making it difficult for Venezuela to import goods causing increased reliance on domestic production. So according to commentators this policy may in fact have increased shortages.[257][258]
According to official statistics from the Ministry of Land and Agriculture, soybean production in Venezuela has grown by 858% to 54,420 tons over the past decade, and production of rice has risen by 84%, reaching close to 1.3 million tons yearly.[259] Chavez' presidency has also seen significant increases in milk production, as much as 50% over ten years reported by some sources.[260] Between 1998 and 2006 malnutrition related deaths fell by 50%.[238][261] In January 2012, the Executive Director of the National Institute of Nutrition (INN) Marilyn Di Luca reported that caloric intake of the Venezuelan people had increased by 130% over the past 13 years.[262]
Chavez has been strictly enforcing the price control policy, denouncing anyone who sells food products for higher prices as "speculators".[263] In January 2008, Chavez ordered the military to seize 750 tons of food that sellers were illegally trying to smuggle across the border to sell for higher prices than what was legal in Venezuela.[264] In February 2009, Chavez ordered the military to temporarily seize control of all the rice processing plants in the country and force them to produce at full capacity, which he claimed they had been avoiding in response to the price caps.[265] In May 2010, Chavez ordered the military to seize 120 tons of food from Empresas Polar after inconsistencies in reports from the Empresas Polar conglomerate were said to have been detected by authorities.[266]
In March 2009, the Venezuelan government set minimum production quotas for 12 basic foods that were subject to price controls, including white rice, cooking oil, coffee, sugar, powdered milk, cheese, and tomato sauce, which is intended to stop food companies from evading the law. Business leaders and food producers claimed that the government was forcing them to produce this food at a loss.[267] Chávez has expropriated and redistributed 5 million acres of farmland from large landowners, saying: "The land is not private. It is the property of the state... The land is for those who work it." But, the lack of basic resources has made it difficult or impossible to make full use of the expropriated lands by its new tenants - leading to a lower overall degree of productivity in spite of a larger overall area of land under cultivation. [268]
As part of his strategy of food security Chávez has started a national chain of supermarkets, the Mercal network, which has 16,600 outlets and 85,00 employees that distribute food at highly discounted prices, and runs 6000 soup kitchens throughout the country.[269] In 2008 the amount of discounted food sold through the network was 1.25 metric tonnes[238], often sold at as much as 40% below the price ceiling set for privately own stores. Simultaneously Chavez has expropriated many private supermarkets.[269] According to Commerce Minister Richard Canan, “The average [savings] for the basic food bundle (at the Mercal Bicentennial markets) is around 30%. There are some products, for example cheese and meat, which reach a savings of 50 to 60% compared with capitalist markets.”[270] The Mercal network is criticized by some commentators as being a part of Chavez strategy to brand himself as a provider of cheap food, and the shops feature his picture prominently. However, the Mercal network is also subject to frequent scarcities of basic staples such as meat, milk and sugar - and when scarce products arrive shoppers must often wait in line.[269]
In 2010, after the government nationalized the port at Puerto Cabello, more than 120,000 tons of food sat rotting at the port.[271] In May 2010, during a shortage of beef, at least 40 butchers were detained on charges of speculation for allegedly selling meat above the regulated price, some of them were held at a military base and later strip searched by police.[272]
Human rights[link]
In the 1999 Venezuelan constitution, 116 of 300 articles were concerned with human rights; these included increased protections for indigenous peoples and women, and established the rights of the public to education, housing, healthcare, and food. It called for dramatic democratic reforms such as ability to recall politicians from office by popular referendum, increased requirements for government transparency, and numerous other requirements to increase localized, participatory democracy, in favor of centralized administration. It gave citizens the right to timely and impartial information, community access to media, and a right to participate in acts of civil disobedience.[149][150]
However, as recently as 2010, Amnesty International has criticized the Chávez administration for targeting critics following several politically motivated arrests.[273] Freedom House lists Venezuela as being "partly free" in its 2011 Freedom in the World annual report, noting a recent decline in civil liberties.[274] A 2010 Organization of American States report found concerns with freedom of expression, human rights abuses, authoritarianism, press freedom, threats to democracy,[275][276] as well as erosion of separation of powers, the economic infrastructure and ability of the president to appoint judges to federal courts.[275][276][277] OAS observors were denied access to Venezuela;[277] Chávez rejected the OAS report, pointing out that its authors did not even come to Venezuela. He said Venezuela should boycott the OAS, which he feels is dominated by the United States; a spokesperson said, "We don't recognize the commission as an impartial institution". He disclaims any power to influence the judiciary.[278] A Venezuelan official said the report distorts and takes statistics out of context, saying that "human rights violations in Venezuela have decreased".[279] Venezuela has said it will not accept an IACHR/OAS visit as long as Santiago Cantón remains its Executive Secretary, unless the IACHR apologizes for what he describes as its support of the 2002 coup.[245][280]
In 2008, Human Rights Watch released a report reviewing Chávez's human rights record over his first decade in power.[281] The report praises Chávez's 1999 amendments to the constitution which significantly expanded human rights guarantees, as well as mentioning improvements in women's rights and indigenous rights, but notes a "wide range of government policies that have undercut the human rights protections established" by the revised constitution.[281] In particular, the report accuses Chávez and his administration of engaging in discrimination on political grounds, eroding the independence of the judiciary, and of engaging in "policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela."[282] The Venezuelan government retaliated for the report by expelling members of Human Rights Watch from the country.[283] Subsequently, over a hundred Latin American scholars signed a joint letter with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs criticizing the Human Rights Watch report for its alleged factual inaccuracy, exaggeration, lack of context, illogical arguments, and heavy reliance on opposition newspapers as sources, amongst other things.[284][285][286] The International Labor Organization of the United Nations expressed concern over voters being pressured to join the party.[200]
Venezuelan Judge Maria Afiuni was arrested in 2009 on charges of corruption, after she ordered the conditional release on bail of banker Eligio Cedeño, who had been held on charges of fraud and other crimes due to alleged illegal currency trading activities. Some human rights officials allege the arrest was politically motivated; Cedeño "had been in pretrial detention for nearly three years, despite a two-year limit prescribed by Venezuelan law".[287] Cedeño later fled to the U.S. to avoid prosecution. Following Afiuni's arrest, several groups, including the United Nations, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Episcopal Conference of Venezuela, Human Rights Watch, the Law Society of England and Wales, the U.S. Department of State, and the European Union Parliament accused Chávez of "creating a climate of fear" among Venezuela's legal profession.[287][288][289][290][291][292][293][294] The European Parliament called this "an attack on the independence of the judiciary by the President of a nation, who should be its first guarantor".[295] A director of Human Rights Watch said, "Once again the Chávez government has demonstrated its fundamental disregard for the principle of judicial independence."[287]
Media and the press[link]
See also: Media representation of Hugo Chávez
Although the freedom of the press is mentioned by two key clauses in the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela, in 2008, Human Rights Watch criticized Chávez for engaging in "often discriminatory policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression."[282] Freedom House lists Venezuela's press as being "Not Free" in its 2011 Map of Press Freedom, noting that "[t]he gradual erosion of press freedom in Venezuela continued in 2010."[296] Reporters Without Borders has criticized the Chávez administration for "steadily silencing its critics".[297] In the group's 2009 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders noted that "Venezuela is now among the region’s worst press freedom offenders."[297]
The large majority of mass media in Venezuela is privately owned but subject to significant state control. For example, the Venezuelan government has required that all private television stations dedicate at least 25%[clarification needed] of their airtime to programs created by community groups, non-profits, and other independent producers. As of 2007,[dated info] private corporations controlled 80% of the cable television channels, 100% of the newspaper companies, and 706 out of 709 radio stations.[298][299]
In July 2005 Chávez inaugurated TeleSUR, a Pan-American equivalent of Al Jazeera that seeks to challenge the present domination of Latin American television news by Univision and the United States-based CNN en Español.[300] In 2006 Chávez inaugurated a state-funded movie studio called Villa del Cine (English: Cinema City).[301] According to Chávez, the goal of this indigenous film industry is to counter what he describes "the dictatorship of Hollywood", the lack of alternative media.[302]
Chávez has a Twitter account with more than 1,100,000 followers as of December 2010.[303][304] Chávez's Twitter account has been described as a way for people to bypass bureaucracy and contact the president directly. There is a team of 200 people to sort through suggestions and comments sent via Twitter. Chávez has said Twitter is "another mechanism for contact with the public, to evaluate many things and to help many people",[305] and that he sees Twitter as "a weapon that also needs to be used by the revolution".[306] In a Twitter report released in June 2010 Venezuela is third globally for the prevalence of Twitter with 19% of the population using it, nearly 2/3 of all internet users. This is behind Indonesia with 20.8% and Brazil with 20.5%.[307]
In 2010 availability of Internet service in Venezuela rose by 43%. The Venezuelan state has instituted Infocenters, community spaces equipped with computers with internet connections which are free to use. As of March 2010 there are 668 such centers, with more planned.[307]
In the days before the 11 April 2002 coup, the five main private Venezuelan TV stations gave advertising space to those calling for anti-Chávez demonstrations.[308][309] In 2006, Chávez announced that the terrestrial broadcast license for RCTV would not be renewed, due to its refusal to pay taxes and fines, and its alleged open support of the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez, and role in helping to instigate the oil strike in 2002–2003.[310] RCTV was transmitted via cable and satellite and was widely viewable in Venezuela until January 2010, when it was excluded by cable companies in response to an order of National Commission of Telecommunications.[311][312][313] The failure to renew its terrestrial broadcast license had been condemned by a multitude of international organizations, many of whom have claimed that the closure was politically motivated, and was intended to silence government critics.[314][315][316][317]
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) questioned whether, in the event a television station openly supported and collaborated with coup leaders, the station in question would not be subject to even more serious consequences in the United States or any other Western nation.[318] In a poll conducted by Datanalisis, almost 70 percent of Venezuelans polled opposed the shut-down.[319]
Crime and punishment[link]
During the 1980s and 1990s there was a steady increase in crime in Latin America, and Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela and Brazil all had homicide rates above the regional average.[320] The major reasons for high levels of crime in Latin America are high inequality, low incarceration rates and small police forces.[321]
During Chávez's administration, homicide rates have more than doubled, with one NGO finding the rate to have nearly quadrupled.[322][323] The NGO found that the number of homicides increased from 6,000 in 1999 to 19,000 in 2011.[324][325] Kidnappings have also become increasingly common.[326] Caracas in 2010 had the world's highest murder rate.[327] Chávez maintains that the nation is no more violent now than it was when he took office.[328] Some claim that the current administration, or president Chavez himself is to blame for the rises in crime rates. Although critical of Chavez, a recent International Crisis Group report claimed that when Chavez took office, there were factors beyond his control that led to the crime phenomenon. The study went on to say that cross border activity, mainly with Colombia, is also an important factor. It claims that international organised crime filters between the two countries and leads to higher rates of kidnapping, drug trafficking and homicides. Furthermore, supporters claim that the states with the highest murder rates are controlled by the opposition.[329]
Citizens now believe that crime is a serious problem and that police were themselves a factor in the increase in crime. Between 2000 and 2007, 6,300 police were investigated for violations of human rights. Because decentralization of police was blamed for their ineffectiveness, the 1999 constitution required the National Assembly to form a national police force; however, legislation on this became bogged down in legislative discussions. In 2006, the government established the National Commission for Police Reform (Conarepol), in which a range of civil society representatives, politicians and academics investigated law enforcement in Venezuela and made recommendations. This included setting up a national police force designed to operate with high standards of professionalism and specific training in human rights. It also included initiatives whereby communal councils can participate in police supervision, by being able to request investigations into police behaviour and file recommendations and complaints.[324]
In 2008, Chávez passed a decree designed to implement Conarepol's recommendation on the national police force, and the National Bolivarian Police (PNB),[330][331] and Experimental Security University began operations in 2009. According to the PNB, murder has been reduced by 60%, robberies by nearly 59%, and gender-based violence has diminished by 66% in the pilot areas where the PNB has been active in and around Caracas.[331] However, not all homicides due to encounters with police are reported.[332] According to the publications El Espectador and Le Monde diplomatique, rising crime in rural and urban areas is partly due to increased cross-border activity by Colombian right-wing paramilitary groups like Águilas Negras.[333]
The decree has been criticized because it was negotiated behind closed doors, and did not follow Conarepol's recommendations to deal with human rights, and because "politicization of the force could undercut the goal of professionalization".[332][334]
Foreign policy[link]
|
This section requires expansion. |
Further information: Foreign policy of the Hugo Chávez government
Chávez has refocused Venezuelan foreign policy on Latin American economic and social integration by enacting bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements, including his so-called "oil diplomacy".[335][336] Chávez stated that Venezuela has "a strong oil card to play on the geopolitical stage ... It is a card that we are going to play with toughness against the toughest country in the world, the United States."[337] Chávez has focused on a variety of multinational institutions to promote his vision of Latin American integration, including Petrocaribe, Petrosur, and TeleSUR. Bilateral trade relationships with other Latin American countries have also played a major role in his policy, with Chávez increasing arms purchases from Brazil, forming oil-for-expertise trade arrangements with Cuba, and creating unique barter arrangements that exchange Venezuelan petroleum for cash-strapped Argentina's meat and dairy products. Additionally, Chávez worked closely with other Latin American leaders following the 1997 Summit of the Americas in many areas—especially energy integration—and championed the OAS decision to adopt the Anti-Corruption Convention. Chávez also participates in the United Nations Friends groups for Haiti, and is pursuing efforts to join and engage the Mercosur trade bloc to expand the hemisphere's trade integration prospects.[338]
Personal life[link]
Chávez has been married twice. He first wed Nancy Colmenares, a woman from a poor family in Chávez's hometown of Sabaneta. Chávez and Colmenares remained married for 18 years, during which time they had three children: Rosa Virginia, María Gabriela, and Hugo Rafael, the latter of whom suffers from behavioural problems.[339] The couple separated soon after Chávez's 1992 coup attempt. During his first marriage, Chávez had an affair with historian Herma Marksman; their relationship lasted nine years.[340] Chávez's second wife was journalist Marisabel Rodríguez de Chávez, whom he divorced in 2000.[341] Through that marriage, Chávez had another daughter, Rosinés.[342] Both María and Rosa have provided Chávez with grandchildren.[339][343] Allegations have been made that Chávez is a womaniser, and has been throughout both his marriages, but these have remained unproven and are contradicted by statements provided by other figures close to him.[344]
Chávez is a Catholic. He intended at one time to become a priest. He sees his socialist policies as having roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ,[345] and he publicly used the slogan of "Christ is with the Revolution!"[346] He has had some disputes with both the Venezuelan Catholic clergy and Protestant groups like the New Tribes Mission.[347][348] Although he has traditionally kept his own faith a private matter, Chávez has over the course of his presidency become increasingly open to discussing his religious views, stating that both his faith and his interpretation of Jesus' personal life and ideology have had a profound impact on his leftist and progressive views.
Recognition[link]
The United States-based Time magazine included Hugo Chávez among their list of the world's 100 most influential people in 2005 and 2006.[349][350] In a 2006 list compiled by the British magazine New Statesman, he was voted eleventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".[351] In 2010 the magazine included Chávez in its annual The World's 50 Most Influential Figures.[352] His biographers Marcano and Tyszka believed that within only a few years of his presidency, he "had already earned his place in history as the president most loved and most despised by the Venezuelan people, the president who inspired the greatest zeal and the deepest revulsion at the same time."[353]
During his term, Chávez has been awarded the following honorary degrees:[354]
- Honorary Doctorate in Political Science – Granted by Kyung Hee University (South Korea) by Rector Chungwon Choue on 16 October 1999.
- Honorary Doctorate in Jurisprudence – Granted by the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) on 9 March 2001.
- Honorary Doctorate – Granted by the University of Brasília (Brazil) by Rector Alberto Pérez on 3 April 2001.
- Honorary Doctorate – Granted by the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russian Federation) on 15 May 2001.
- Honorary Doctorate in Economics – Granted by the Faculty of Economics and Commerce of Beijing University (People's Republic of China) on 24 May 2001.
References[link]
Footnotes[link]
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j4aLvBQXAU
- ^ Ellner 2002.
- ^ Beaumont 2006.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 07–08, 247.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 21.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 08–09.
- ^ Chávez quoted in Jones 2007. pp. 22, 25.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 24.
- ^ Chávez quoted in Jones 2007. pp. 23, 25–26.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 11.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 23–24, 26–27.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 07, 24–26.
- ^ a b c Cannon 2009. p. 55.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 30.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 38.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 49–50.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 31.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 35.
- ^ a b Jones 2007. pp. 40–47.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 29–30.
- ^ a b Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 36.
- ^ Chávez quoted in Jones 2007. p. 40-47.
- ^ a b Jones 2007. pp. 52–53.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 54.
- ^ Chávez quoted in Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 36–37.
- ^ "Hugo Chávez Frías / Venezuela / América del Sur / Biografías Líderes Políticos / Documentation / CIDOB home page". Cidob.org. 2012-03-23. http://www.cidob.org/en/documentacio/biografias_lideres_politicos/america_del_sur/venezuela/hugo_chavez_frias. Retrieved 2012-04-14.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 54–56.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 37.
- ^ Chávez quoted in Jones 2007 pp. 54–55.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 38.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 57–59.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 59.
- ^ a b Chávez, quoted in Jones 2007. p. 59.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 39.
- ^ a b Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 41.
- ^ Chávez, quoted in Jones 2007. pp. 60–64.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 63–65.
- ^ Wilpert 2007. p. 15.
- ^ Cannon 2009. p. 54.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 65–77.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 634.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 48–49, 56.
- ^ Wilpert 2007. p. 16.
- ^ Gott 2005. pp. 23–24.
- ^ Cannon 2009. p. 56.
- ^ Chávez, quoted in Jones 2007. p. 80.
- ^ Chávez, quoted in Jones 2007. p. 81.
- ^ a b c Cannon 2009. p. 58.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 83–85.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 51–53.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 86–90.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 92–93.
- ^ Cárdenas, quoted in Jones 2007. pp. 92–93.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 50.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 98-102.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 103.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 105, 108.
- ^ Cannon 2009. pp. 36–37.
- ^ Kozloff 2006. pp. 43–44.
- ^ Gibbs 2006. p. 270.
- ^ Inter-American Court of Human Rights 1999.
- ^ Pretel 2005.
- ^ a b Kozloff 2006. pp. 46–47.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 55.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 122–123, 126.
- ^ a b Cannon 2009. pp. 55–56.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 64.
- ^ Gott 2005. p. 64.
- ^ Gott 2005. p. 63.
- ^ a b Sylvia and Danopolous 2003. p. 66.
- ^ Gott 2005. p. 69.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 131–155.
- ^ Chávez quoted in Jones 2007. p. 157.
- ^ Gott 2005. p. 23.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 157.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 75.
- ^ International Crisis Group 2007. p. 04.
- ^ Gott 2005. p. 67.
- ^ O'Keefe 2005.
- ^ Cannon 2009. p. 41.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 75–77.
- ^ International Crisis Group 2007. pp. 04–05.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 91–92.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 161–165.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 95.
- ^ Tarver and Frederick 2005. p. 167.
- ^ a b Cannon 2009. p. 37.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 104–105.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 177–181.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 107–108.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 182–186.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 187–188.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 235–236.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 190–191, 219.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 214–215, 220.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 192–195.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 195–198.
- ^ Cannon 2009. pp. 35–36.
- ^ Cannon 2009. p. 48.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 116.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 202–203.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 119.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 204.
- ^ a b c d Cannon 2009. p. 59.
- ^ a b Wilpert 2007. pp. 01–02.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 205–207.
- ^ "Chavez's constitutional reform; A hard look at the rationale & proposals", Latin America Weekly Report, 12 January 1999, Venezuela; Politics; WR-99-02; P. 18
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 214.
- ^ Trinkunas, Harold; Jennifer McCoy (February 1999). "Observation of the 1998 Venezuelan Elections: A Report of the Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government" (PDF). Carter Center. pp. p. 49. http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/1151.pdf. Retrieved 30 December 2006.
- ^ Sylvia and Danopolous 2003. p. 67.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 218.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 220–223.
- ^ a b Jones 2007. p. 223.
- ^ Wilpert 2007 pp. 18–19.
- ^ Cannon 2009. pp. 41–42.
- ^ a b Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 127.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 226.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 229.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 230.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. xx.
- ^ Romero 2010.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 234.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 151–153, 250–251.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 250–255.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 243.
- ^ Wilpert 2007 p. 03.
- ^ Ellner 2005.
- ^ a b Sackur and Chávez 2010.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 148–149.
- ^ Kozloff 2006. p. 61.
- ^ Jones 2007. pp. 234–236.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 154.
- ^ Gott 2005. pp. 178–179.
- ^ Kozloff 2006. pp. 83–84.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 138.
- ^ Chávez quoted in Jones 2007. p. 231.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 193–195.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 237.
- ^ a b Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 130.
- ^ a b Jones 2007. p. 238.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 239.
- ^ a b Jones 2007. p. 240.
- ^ a b c International Crisis Group 2007. p. 05.
- ^ Jones 2007. p. 241.
- ^ Belos 1999.
- ^ Kozloff 2006. p. 94.
- ^ Cannon 2009. pp. 61–62.
- ^ Wilpert 2007. pp. 31–41.
- ^ a b Wilpert 2003.
- ^ a b "Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela". Embassy of Venezuela in the US. 2000. http://www.embavenez-us.org/constitution/intro.htm. Retrieved 30 December 2006.
- ^ International Crisis Group 2007. pp. 05–06.
- ^ a b International Crisis Group 2007. p. 06.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 140.
- ^ Kozloff 2006. p. 88.
- ^ a b c d Cannon 2009. p. 63.
- ^ Cannon 2009. p. 42.
- ^ a b Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 141.
- ^ a b Ramírez 2005. p. 79.
- ^ Cannon 2009. pp. 42–44.
- ^ Kozloff 2008. pp. 23–24.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 208–209.
- ^ a b c d International Crisis Group 2007. p. 07.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 143.
- ^ a b Kozloff 2008. pp. 18–23.
- ^ Cannon 2009. p. 32.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 143–145.
- ^ Ramírez 2005. p. 80.
- ^ Cannon 2009. p. 01.
- ^ Brewer-Carías 2010. p. i.
- ^ Ramírez 2005. p. 83. See for example López 2003 and Wilpert 2007.
- ^ Wilpert 2007. pp. 04–05.
- ^ Wilpert 2007. p. 20.
- ^ The role of racism and classism in Venezuela is explored in Cannon 2009. pp. 38–41.
- ^ a b Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 260.
- ^ a b Cannon 2009. p. 46.
- ^ Cannon 2009. p. 45.
- ^ Ramírez 2005. p. 81.
- ^ Ramírez 2005. p. 84.
- ^ Ramírez 2005. pp. 83–84.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 171–172.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 168.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 170–171.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 175–184.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 181–185.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 185.
- ^ Wilpert 2007. p. 24.
- ^ Kozloff 2008. p. 71.
- ^ a b Wilpert 2007. p. 25.
- ^ a b c d e f g Cannon 2009. p. 64.
- ^ Wilpert 2007. p. 19.
- ^ The Observer 2006.
- ^ International Crisis Group 2007. p. 01.
- ^ BBC News 2006.
- ^ "Chavez wins Venezuelan election". Gulf News. 4 December 2006. http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/12/04/10087134.html. Retrieved 30 December 2006.
- ^ Ireland On-Line. Chavez promises more radical turn toward socialism. (4 December 2006). Retrieved 4 December 2006.
- ^ a b c d Cannon 2009. p. 60.
- ^ Cannon 2009. pp. 59–60.
- ^ Walter, Mathew. “Venezuela May Lower Voting Age, Add Gay Rights in Constitution.” Bloomberg. 11 October 2007. Retrieved 16 August 2010.
- ^ Fuentes, Federico. “Massive Turnout in PSUV Primaries Shows Support for Change.” Green Left Weekly. 9 May 2010. Retrieved 16 August 2010.
- ^ a b (Spanish)"En Pdvsa y Sidor se concentra criminalización de las protestas – Economía". El Universal. 16 June 2009. http://www.eluniversal.com/2009/06/16/eco_art_en-pdvsa-y-sidor-se_1433965.shtml. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ Ellsworth, Brian (16 August 2007). "Venezuela's Chavez calls for end to term limits". Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN1526395420070816. Retrieved 16 August 2007.
- ^ Romero, Simon (4 December 2007). "Venezuela Vote Sets Roadblocks on Chávez Path". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/world/americas/04venezuela.html. Retrieved 26 February 2010.
- ^ Cannon 2009. pp. 64–65.
- ^ a b Carroll 2009.
- ^ a b Cannon 2009. p. 65.
- ^ Forero, Juan (16 February 2009). "Chávez Wins Removal of Term Limits". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/15/AR2009021500136.html.
- ^ a b Kozloff 2008. p. 45.
- ^ Carl 2007.
- ^ McElhinny, Vince. "Bank of the South." Bank Information Center. November 2007. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
- ^ Carlson, Chris. "Brazil To Join Bank of the South". Venezuelanalysis.com. http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/2341. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ Rory Carroll in Caracas (12 October 2007). "Nobel economist endorses Chávez regional bank plan". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/oct/12/venezuela.banking. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ a b Otis, John (20 June 2011). "Hugo Chavez and the Arab Spring". Boston: The World. http://www.theworld.org/2011/06/hugo-chavez-arab-spring/. Retrieved 2 November 2011.
- ^ Chulov 2011.
- ^ BBC News 2011a.
- ^ "As it happened: Libya's Col Gaddafi killed". BBC. 20 October 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15387872. Retrieved 20 October 2011.
- ^ "President Chávez's address to the Nation". El Universal, 1 July 2011
- ^ "Venezuelan VP rules out declaring temporary absence of Chávez". El Universal, 1 July 2011
- ^ "Chávez fue operado de un cáncer de colon por un médico español." El Periódico de Catalunya, 2 July 2011
- ^ "Maduro niega que haya secretismo sobre salud de Chávez". El Nacional, 3 July 2011
- ^ WCBS-TV (New York) morning news report, 17 July 2011, 07:40 am
- ^ BBC News 2011b.
- ^ The Guardian 2011.
- ^ Cameron, Maxwell (2001). "Venezuela's Hugo Chavez: Savior or Threat to Democracy?". Latin American Research Review 36 (3): 263. . Online at [1][dead link]
- ^ Wilpert 2007 p. 16.
- ^ Wilpert 2007 p. 07.
- ^ Sojo, Cleto A. (Venezuelanalysis.com, 31 January 2005). "Venezuela's Chávez Closes World Social Forum with Call to Transcend Capitalism". Retrieved 20 October 2005.
- ^ a b c Wall Street Journal Claims Chavez Oil Policy "Aims to Weaken US", Stephen Lendman, COA News[dead link]
- ^ Suggett, James. "Noam Chomsky Meets with Chavez in Venezuela, James Suggett, Mérida, 27 August 2009". Venezuelanalysis.com. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4748. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ Hugo Chavez: Charming provocateur, Robin Lustig, BBC News, Paris
- ^ Chavez promises a socialist Venezuela as he starts new 6-year term, 1/10/2007, USA Today.com
- ^ Quoted in Jones 2007. p. 236.
- ^ See for instance Woods 2006 and Ali 2006.
- ^ Malinarich, Nathalie (10 January 2007). "Chavez accelerates on path to socialism". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6246219.stm.
- ^ http://www.marxist.com/chavez-trotskyist-president120107.htm
- ^ "Blast From the Past". The Weekly Standard. 11 January 2006.
- ^ "Hugo Chavez And Anti-Semitism\". Forbes.com. 15 February 2009.
- ^ a b c Cannon, p. 87.
- ^ a b c d Weisbrot, Mark, Ray, Rebecca, and Sandoval, Luis. "The Chávez Administration at 10 Years." Center for Economic and Policy Research. 2009. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ^ "Venezuela." CIA World Factbook. 3 August 2010. Retrieved 6 August 2010.
- ^ Daniel, Frank. "Chavez says Venezuela GDP may shrink again in 2010." Reuters. 25 April 2010. Retrieved 6 August 2010.
- ^ James, Ian. "Despite Chavez, Venezuela economy not socialist." ABC News. 18 July 2010. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
- ^ Bowman, Betsy; Stone, Bob (July/August). "Venezuela's Cooperative Revolution". Dollars and Sense 15 (266). http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0706bowmanstone.html
- ^ a b Ellis, Edward (31 August 2010). "Venezuelan President Visits Communes and Workers, Criticizes Bureaucracy". venezuelanalysis.com. http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5629. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ Pearson, Tamara 184 Communes Currently in Formation in Venezuela, Venezuela Analysis
- ^ a b "Press release N° 20/10, IACHR publishes report on Venezuela" (Press release). Organization of American States. 24 February 2010. http://www.cidh.oas.org/Comunicados/English/2010/20V-10eng.htm. Retrieved 26 February 2010.
- ^ Alonso, Juan Francisco (24 February 2010). "IACHR requests the Venezuelan government to guarantee all human rights". El Universal. http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/02/24/en_pol_esp_iachr-requests-the-v_24A3481131.shtml. Retrieved 25 February 2010.
- ^ Schimizzi, Carrie (24 February 2010). "Venezuela government violating basic human rights: report". Jurist: Legal news and research. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2010/02/venezuela-government-violating-basic.php. Retrieved 25 February 2010.
- ^ a b c d Cannon 2010. p. 98.
- ^ Meade, Teresa. A History of Modern Latin America: 1800 to the Present (Oxford 2010), p. 313.
- ^ Cannon, p. 86.
- ^ Forero, Juan (19 April 2010). "Despite billions in U.S. aid, Colombia struggles to reduce poverty". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/18/AR2010041803090.html.
- ^ Mark Weisbrot; Luis Sandoval; David Rosnick (2006). "Poverty Rates in Venezuela: Getting the Numbers Right". Center for Economic and Policy Research. p. 2. http://www.cepr.net/documents/venezuelan_poverty_rates_2006_05.pdf.
- ^ Ask the expert: Chávez and Venezuela. Financial Times, 30 January 2007.
- ^ George W. Schuyler. 2002. Globalization and Health: Venezuela and Cuba Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement Vol. 23, Iss. 4,
- ^ Parker, Dick. 2005. Chávez and the Search for an Alternative to Neoliberalism. Latin American Perspectives 32:39 p. 36
- ^ Chavez Activates Price Law to End Capitalist Speculation
- ^ a b c Neuman, William (20 Apr 2012). "With Venezuelan Food Shortages, Some Blame Price Controls". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/world/americas/venezuela-faces-shortages-in-grocery-staples.html?pagewanted=all. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
- ^ a b c Romo, Rafael (13 Dec 2011). "Food shortages worry Venezuelans". CNN. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-12-13/americas/world_americas_venezuela-food-shortages_1_food-shortages-traditional-venezuelan-dish-guaicaipuro?_s=PM:AMERICAS. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
- ^ Venezuela’s Agricultural Production Advances. Venezuelanalysis.com. Accessed: 27 February 2012.
- ^ Venezuela Milk and Dairy Products Market Outlook to 2015 "Abstract", Research & Markets
- ^ Derham, Michael. 2010 Politics in Venezuela: Explaining Hugo Chávez. Peter Lang. p. 296.
- ^ Venezuelan Diet Sees 130% Increase in Calory Intake. Venezuelanalysis.com. Accessed: 27 February 2012.
- ^ Chavez Activates Price Law to End Capitalist Speculation
- ^ Venezuelan troops crack down on smuggling along Colombian border, Associated Press, 22 January 2008
- ^ Chavez orders army to seize Venezuela rice mills, Reuters, 28 February 2009
- ^ Chavez Government Seizes 120 Tons of Food from Venezuela's Largest Company, Latin American Herald Tribune
- ^ Chavez boosts food price controls, BBC, 4 March 2009
- ^ In Venezuela, Land 'Rescue' Hopes Unmet, Washington Post, 20 June 2009
- ^ a b c A Food Fight for Hugo Chavez, Business Week, 11 March 2010
- ^ Popularity of State-Run Food Markets on the Rise. Venezuelanalysis.com. Accessed: 27 February 2012.
- ^ A Rotting Chicken in Every Pot: Venezuela's Disastrous Food Policy, Huffington Post, 2 August 2010
- ^ Hugo Chavez's Response to Beef Shortage: Arrest Butchers, CNBC, 7 May 2010
- ^ "Venezuelan government deliberately targeting opponents." Amnesty International. 1 April 2010. Retrieved 27 February 2012.
- ^ "Freedom in the World- Venezuela (2009)." Freedom House. 2011. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
- ^ a b Forero, Juan (24 February 2010). "Venezuela, President Chávez criticized in OAS report". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/24/AR2010022401884.html?hpid=moreheadlines. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
- ^ a b "Venezuela violates human rights, OAS commission reports". CNN. 24 February 2010. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/24/venezuela.human.rights/. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
- ^ a b Prado, Paulo (24 February 2010). "OAS Report Chastises Venezuela". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703510204575085801117383696.html. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
- ^ "Chavez Rejects Report Citing Rights Violations". New York Times. Associated Press. 25 February 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/25/world/AP-LT-Venezuela-Rights-Report.html. Retrieved 25 February 2010. [dead link]
- ^ "Venezuelan official disputes report on human rights abuses". CNN. 25 February 2010. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/25/venezuela.human.rights.report/?hpt=Sbinn. Retrieved 26 February 2010.
- ^ Venezuelanalysis, 20 October 2009, Venezuela's OAS Rep: Opposition Human Rights Claims a Smear Campaign
- ^ a b Holland, Alisha. A decade under Chávez. New York: Human Rights Watch. 2008. p 1.
- ^ a b Holland 2008, p 2.
- ^ BBC NEWS. Venezuela expels rights activists. (19 September 2008).
- ^ "Taking Human Rights Watch to Task on the Question of Venezuela’s Purported Abuse of Human Rights" (Press release). Council on Hemispheric Affairs. 18 December 2008. http://www.coha.org/taking-human-rights-watch-to-task/.
- ^ "Scholars Respond to HRW’s Kenneth Roth’s Riposte on Venezuelan Human Rights" (Press release). Council on Hemispheric Affairs. 12 January 2009. http://www.coha.org/scholars-respond-to-hrw-directors-riposte-on-venezuelan-human-rights/.
- ^ Gregory Wilpert. "Smoke and Mirrors: An Analysis of Human Rights Watch's Report on Venezuela"]. Venezuela Analysis. http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3882#report.
- ^ a b c "Rights group says Caracas attacks judicial freedom". Reuters. 8 April 2010. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6375A020100408. Retrieved 6 August 2010.
- ^ "U.N. experts say Venezuela's Chavez creating fear." Reuters. 16 December 2009. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ^ "Venezuelan leader violates independence of judiciary—UN rights experts" (Press release). UN News Centre. 16 December 2009. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33273&Cr=judges&Cr1. Retrieved 14 April 2010.
- ^ "U.N. criticizes Venezuela's President Chavez for judge's arrest". LA Times. 17 December 2009. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-venezuela17-2009dec17,0,7129748.story. Retrieved 14 April 2010.
- ^ (Spanish) "TSJ suspende sin goce de sueldo a Afiuni". Noticia al Dia. 15 January 2010. http://noticiaaldia.com/2010/01/tsj-suspende-sin-goce-de-sueldo-a-afiuni/. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
- ^ (Spanish) "Conferencia Episcopal llama al diálogo y deplora agresiones". El Nacional. 25 January 2010. http://www.el-nacional.com/www/site/p_contenido.php?q=nodo/119125/Nacional/Conferencia-Episcopal-llama-al-di%C3%A1logo-y-deplora-agresiones. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
- ^ (Spanish) "EE.UU. advierte a Chávez que respete los DD.HH. y la libertad de expresión". La Nacion. 26 March 2010. http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1247767. Retrieved 14 April 2010.
- ^ "Vietnamese lawyer escapes death sentence". Law Society of England and Wales. 28 January 2010. http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/vietnamese-lawyer-escapes-death-sentence. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
- ^ European Parliament resolution of 8 July 2010 on Venezuela, in particular the case of Maria Lourdes Afiuni http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2010-0289+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
- ^ "Map of Press Freedom 2011." Freedom House.org. 2011. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
- ^ a b "Reporters Sans Frontières". En.rsf.org. http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2009,1001.html. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ David Edwards (19 October 2007). "Chávez and RCTV: Media Enemies at Home and Abroad". Media Accuracy. http://www.mediaaccuracy.org/node/8.
- ^ Lamrani, Salim "Reporters Without Borders and Venezuela’s RCTV", ZNet, 11 July 2007
- ^ Bruce, Ian. (BBC, 28 June 2005). "Venezuela sets up 'CNN rival'". Retrieved 13 June 2006.
- ^ Information on the Villa del Cine Bolivarian Government of Venezuela
- ^ Ingham, James Venezuelan cinema, Chavez style BBC News
- ^ Carroll, Rory. "Hugo Chávez embraces Twitter to fight online 'conspiracy'." The Guardian. 28 April 2010. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ^ "Hugo Chávez Frías (chavezcandanga) on Twitter". Twitter. http://twitter.com/chavezcandanga. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ Carroll, Rory (10 August 2010). "Hugo Chávez's Twitter habit proves a popular success". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/10/hugo-chavez-twitter-venezuela.
- ^ Chris Toothaker Chavez Hires 200 To Manage His Twitter Account, Associated Press, 05/8/2010
- ^ a b By AVN. "Internet Usage Advances in Venezuela". Venezuelanalysis.com. http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5596. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ Duncan Campbell, "It's a Coup: your sets will adjust accordingly," The Guardian, 29 April 2002.
- ^ "The Media War Against the People: A Case Study of Media Concentration and Power in Venezuela", in Olivia Burlingame Goumbri, The Venezuela Reader, Washington D.C., U.S.A., 2005, p 94.
- ^ BBC NEWS. Chavez to shut down opposition TV. (29 December 2006).
- ^ "CONATEL ordenó a las cableras suspender la señal de RCTV por no cumplir la Ley Resorte en". Noticias24.com. http://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/140738/piden-a-operadores-de-cable-suspender-la-senal-de-rctv-por-no-encadenarse/. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ [dead link]"Anti-Chávez Channel Is Taken Down "
- ^ Station was never closed as claimed Venezuela's RCTV Reappears on Cable and Satellite Venezuelanalysis.com Accessed 12 August 2007.
- ^ Forero, Juan. "Pulling the Plug on Anti-Chavez TV". (The Washington Post, 18 January 2007). Retrieved 18 January 2007.
- ^ Joel Simon, Executive Director CPJ urges Chávez to allow RCTV to stay on the air Committee to Protect Journalists Accessed 29 May 2007.
- ^ Venezuela (2006). Freedom House. Accessed 29 May 2007.
- ^ IPI condemns shutdown of RCTV television station in Venezuela International Press Institute Accessed 29 May 2007.
- ^ "Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs." FAIR. 25 May 2007. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
- ^ Ellsworth, Brian; Oliver, Christian (28 May 2007). "Venezuela replaces opposition TV with state network". Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSN2723008820070528?pageNumber=1.
- ^ Reid, Michael.Forgotten continent: the battle for Latin America's soul, p. 248. Yale, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-300-11616-0
- ^ Di Tella, Rafael, Edwards, Sebastian and Schargrodsk, Ernesto. The economics of crime: lessons for and from Latin America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, p. 22 ISBN 0-226-15374-6, ISBN 978-0-226-15374-2
- ^ Pretel, Enrique Andres (2 September 2010). "Chavez defends his record on crime in Venezuela". Reuters. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100903/wl_nm/us_venezuela_crime_1. Retrieved 10 September 2010. [dead link]
- ^ "Venezuela murder-rate quadrupled under Chavez: NGO". Reuters. 11 March 2010. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62A44A20100311. Retrieved 10 September 2010.
- ^ a b Holland, Alisha. A decade under Chávez: political intolerance and lost opportunities for advancing human rights in VenezuelaNew York: Human Rights Watch, 2008 ISBN 1-56432-371-4
- ^ "Chavez criticizes US take on crime in Venezuela". The Boston Globe. 27 March 2012. http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-27/news/31245826_1_violent-crime-murder-and-non-negligent-manslaughter-murder-rate. Retrieved 16 May 2012.
- ^ "Hugo Chavez's Domestic Crisis: A Plague of Kidnappings – TIME". Time. 29 December 2009. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1950227,00.html. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
- ^ Ramírez Miranda, Deivis (25 August 2010). "Caracas has become the deadliest city in the world". El Universal. http://english.eluniversal.com/2010/08/25/en_pol_esp_caracas-has-become-t_25A4380891.shtml.
- James, Ian (28 August 2010). "Venezuelans protest rampant violence, some liken bloodshed to 'undeclared war'". Associated Press. SunSentinel.com. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/topic/sns-ap-lt-venezuela-violence,0,185516.story.
- Bowman, Michael (24 August 2010). Violence-101380809.html "Venezuelans Despair Over Rampant, Deadly Violence". Voice of America. http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Venezuelans-Despair-Over-Rampant-Deadly Violence-101380809.html. Retrieved 28 August 2010.
- Romero, Simon (22 August 2010). "Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Wonders Why". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/americas/23venez.html?_r=1.
- ^ Pretel, Enrique Andres (2 September 2010). "Chavez defends his record on crime in Venezuela". Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68201520100903. Retrieved 10 September 2010.
- ^ Aug 22 (2011-08-06). "Violence in Venezuela | The Stream - Al Jazeera English". Stream.aljazeera.com. http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/violence-venezuela. Retrieved 2012-04-14.
- ^ James, Ian (28 August 2010). "Venezuelans protest against unchecked violence". MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38896407/ns/world_news-americas. Retrieved 10 September 2010. [dead link]
- ^ a b Ellis, Edward; "New Police Force Reduces Crime", Correo del Orinoco, 23 July 2010
- ^ a b (Spanish)"Provea rechaza no incluir a delincuentes en cifra de homicidios – Sucesos – EL UNIVERSAL". Calidaddevida.eluniversal.com. http://calidaddevida.eluniversal.com/2010/09/06/suc_ava_provea-rechaza-no-in_06A4433371.shtml. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ Lemoine, Maurice. "Venezuela murder mystery."Le Monde diplomatique. August 2010. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
- ^ Holland 2008, p 214.
- ^ "Using oil to spread revolution" (retitled to "Venezuela and Latin America") The Economist, (28 July 2005). Retrieved 11 June 2005.
- ^ Guyana Diary. (Monthly Newsletter of the Guyana Embassy, Caracas, Venezuela, February 2004). "Guyana to Try for Better Oil Rates Under Caracas Accord". Retrieved 14 June 2006." Under the Caracas Energy Accord, countries can purchase oil supplies on concessional terms. It complements the terms of the San Jose Agreement, through which Venezuela offers special financial conditions to signatory oil-buying countries."
- ^ Blum, Justin (Washington Post, 22 November 2005). "Chavez Pushes Petro-Diplomacy". Retrieved 29 November 2005.
- ^ "Hugo Chavez in Moscow Thinks First, Then Speaks". Pravda.ru. 1 October 2009. http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/10-09-2009/109196-chavez_moscow-0. Retrieved 21 September 2009.
- ^ a b Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 254–255.
- ^ Byrne, Jennifer. "Venezuela – Bolivarian Revolution".Foreign Correspondent. 3 June 2003. Retrieved 11 November 2005.
- ^ (Spanish) "Actriz Venezolana Ruddy Rodríguez Niega Romance con Hugo Chávez." IBL News. 30 June 2006. Retrieved 1 February 2007.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 254.
- ^ Guevara, Aleida, and Hugo Chávez. Chavez, Venezuela and the new Latin America. New York: Ocean Press. 2005. p 95.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. pp. 230–232.
- ^ "Chavez demands Pope apologize for Indian comments". Reuters. 19 May 2007. Retrieved 16 August 2010.
- ^ Chávez quoted in Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 140.
- ^ Alford 2005.
- ^ (Spanish) Otaola, Javier. "Chávez y sus 'demonios'." La Jornada. 12 February 2006. Retrieved 27 December 2006.
- ^ Padgett 2005.
- ^ Padgett 2006.
- ^ Cowley 2006.
- ^ New Statesman 2010.
- ^ Marcano and Tyszka 2007. p. 148.
- ^ (Spanish) "Gobierno en Línea: Biografía del Presidente Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías". Government of Venezuela. 2005. http://gobiernoenlinea.gob.ve/home/poderG_detalle_interna.dot. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
Bibliography[link]
Books[link]
- Ali, Tariq (2006). Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope. London and New York: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-102-1. http://books.google.com/?id=jSkdAQAAIAAJ&q=Pirates+of+the+Caribbean:+Axis+of+Hope&dq=Pirates+of+the+Caribbean:+Axis+of+Hope.
- Brewer-Carías, Allan (2010). Dismantling Democracy in Venezuela: The Chávez Authoritarian Experiment. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19587-4. http://books.google.com/?id=2m9-gYOs9K4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=dismantling+democracy+in+venezuela#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- Bruce, Iain (2008). The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st century. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-2736-5. http://books.google.com/?id=H6naAAAAMAAJ&q=the+real+venezuela&dq=the+real+venezuela.
- Cannon, Barry (2009). Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution: Populism and Democracy in a Globalised Age. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-7771-5. http://books.google.com/?id=mGyGPgAACAAJ&dq=Hugo+Ch%C3%A1vez+and+the+Bolivarian+Revolution:+Populism+and+Democracy+in+a+Globalised+Age.
- Corrales, Javier and Penfold, Michael (2011). Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chávez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8157-0497-3. http://books.google.com/?id=pxgkx1rRkJQC&pg=PA163&dq=dragon+in+the+topics#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- Gates, Leslie C. (2010). Electing Chávez: The Business of Anti-Neoliberal Politics in Venezuela. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0-8229-6064-5. http://books.google.com/?id=z9OKMvILDcIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=electing+chavez#v=onepage&q=electing%20chavez&f=false.
- Gott, Richard (2005). Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. London and New York: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-533-3. http://books.google.com/?id=ft6AyMxG4JEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hugo+Ch%C3%A1vez+and+the+Bolivarian+Revolution+in+Venezuela#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- Hawkins, Kirk A. (2010). Venezuela's Chavismo and Populism in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-76503-9. http://books.google.com/?id=ujAydQj-x_4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Venezuela%27s+Chavismo+and+Populism+in+Comparative+Perspective#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- Jones, Bart (2007). Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution. Hanover, New Hampshire: Steerforth Press. ISBN 978-1-58642-135-9. http://books.google.com/?id=aYlx3aChEqoC&dq=Hugo!+The+Hugo+Ch%C3%A1vez+Story+from+Mud+Hut+to+Perpetual+Revolution.
- Kozloff, Nicholas (2006). Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the United States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-7315-3. http://books.google.com/?id=kYGdEtdZrFUC&pg=PA7&dq=Hugo+Ch%C3%A1vez:+Oil,+Politics,+and+the+Challenge+to+the+United+States#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- Kozloff, Nicholas (2008). Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-61754-4. http://books.google.com/?id=3cU5ELUxXAEC&dq=Revolution!:+South+America+and+the+Rise+of+the+New+Left.
- Marcano, Christina and Tyszka, Alberto Barrera (2007). Hugo Chávez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-679-45666-7.
- McCaughan, Michael (2005). The Battle of Venezuela. New York: Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1-58322-680-3. http://books.google.com/?id=Rt7tAAAAMAAJ&q=the+battle+of+venezuela&dq=the+battle+of+venezuela.
- Tarver, H. Michael and Frederick, Julia C. (2005). The History of Venezuela. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-33525-9. http://books.google.com/?id=krJxx5adqHoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+history+of+venezuela#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- Trinkunas, Harold A. (2005). Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela: A Comparative Perspective. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-5650-5. http://books.google.com/?id=rIRJSwlxxuEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Crafting+Civilian+Control+of+the+Military+in+Venezuela#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- Wilpert, Gregory (2007). Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government. London and New York: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-552-4. http://books.google.com/?id=QtQnAAAAYAAJ&q=changing+Venezuela&dq=changing+Venezuela.
- Woods, Alan (2006). The Venezuelan Revolution: A Marxist Perspective (Third Edition). London: Well Red Books. ISBN 978-1-900007-21-4. http://books.google.com/?id=3VdvqMtpLzAC&dq=Venezuelan+revolution+a+marxist+perspective.
Academic articles[link]
- Ellner, Steve, S. (2002). "The 'Radical' Thesis on Globalization and the Case of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez". Latin American Perspectives (Thousand oaks, California: SAGE Publications) 29 (6) (6): 88–93. JSTOR 3185001.
- Gibbs, Terry, T. (2006). "Business as Usual: what the Chávez era tells us about democracy under globalisation". Third World Quarterly (London: Routledge) 27 (2) (2): 265–279. JSTOR 4017674.
- Lopez Maya, Margarita (2003). Steve Ellner and Daniel Hellinger. ed. "Hugo Chávez Frias: his movement and his presidency". Venezuelan Politics in the Chavez Era: Class, Polarization and Conflict (Boulder: Lynne Riener): 73–92.
- Ramírez, Cristóbal Valencia, C. b. V. (2005). "Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution: Who Are the Chavistas?". Latin American Perspectives (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications) 32 (3) (3): 79–97. JSTOR 30040243.
- Sylvia, Ronald D. and Danopoulos, Constantine P., R. D.; Danopoulos, C. P. (2003). "The Chávez Phenomenon: Political Change in Venezuela". Third World Quarterly (London: Routledge) 24 (1) (1): 63–76. JSTOR 3993630.
- Zúquete, José Pedro (Spring 2008). "The Missionary Politics of Hugo Chávez". Latin American Politics and Society (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell) 50 (1): 91–121. JSTOR 30130840.
News articles and reports[link]
- Alford, Deann (14 October 2005). "Venezuela to Expel New Tribes Mission". Christianity Today (Carol Stream, Illinois: Christianity Today International). http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/141/53.0.html. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
- Beaumont, Peter (7 May 2006). "The new kid in the barrio". The Observer (London: Guardian Media Group). http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2006/may/07/featuresreview.review. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
- Bellos, Alex (17 December 1999). "New Venezuela hands Chavez wide powers". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/dec/17/alexbellos?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
- Carl, Traci (11 January 2007). "Nicaragua's Ortega Signs Trade Pact". The Washington Post (Washington D.C.: The Washington Post Company). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011101856.html. Retrieved 12 May 2011.
- Carroll, Rory (16 February 2009). "Hugo Chávez wins referendum allowing indefinite re-election". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/16/hugo-chavez-indefinite-rule. Retrieved 27 March 2011.
- Chulov, Martin (3 March 2011). "Libyan rebels reject Hugo Chávez mediation offer". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/03/libyan-rebels-reject-hugo-chavez. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
- Cowley, Jason (22 May 2006). "Heroes of our time – the top 50". New Statesman (London). http://www.newstatesman.com/200605220016. Retrieved 27 March 2011.
- Padgett, Tim (18 April 2005). "Hugo Chávez: The Radical with Deep Pockets". Time (New York City: Time Inc.). http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1972656_1972691_1973045,00.html. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
- Padgett, Tim (30 April 2006). "Hugo Chávez: Leading the Left Wing Charge". Time (New York City: Time Inc.). http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187165,00.html. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
- Padgett, Tim (3 March 2008). "War Drums in Latin America". Time (New York City: Time Inc.). http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1719158,00.html. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
- Pretel, Enrique Andres (21 September 2009). "Venezuela exhumes unnamed dead in riot investigation". London: Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/22/idUSN21321293. Retrieved 30 March 2011.
- Romero, Simon (16 February 2010). "Purging Loyalists, Chávez Tightens His Inner Circle". The New York Times (New York City: The New York Times Company). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/world/americas/17venez.html?scp=2&sq=hugo+chavez&st=nyt. Retrieved 10 April 2011.
- Shifter, Michael, M. (May–June 2006). "In Search of Hugo Chávez". Foreign Affairs (New York City: Council on Foreign Relations) 85 (3) (3): 45–59. JSTOR 20031966.
- "Chávez to nationalise Venezuelan gold industry". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). 18 August 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/aug/18/chavez-nationalise-venezuela-gold-industry. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
- "Chavez offers oil to Europe's poor". The Observer (London: Guardian Media Group). 14 May 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/14/oil.venezuela?INTCMP=SRCH. Retrieved 27 March 2011.
- "Chavez wins Venezuela re-election". London: BBC News. 4 December 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6205128.stm. Retrieved 27 March 2011.
- "Venezuela President Hugo Chavez meets Libyan delegation". London: BBC News. 26 April 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13203703. Retrieved 11 May 2011.
- "Venezuela President Hugo Chavez in middle class appeal". London: BBC News. 30 July 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14351508. Retrieved 30 July 2011.
- "50 People Who Matter 2010: 10. Hugo Chavez". New Statesman (London). 21 September 2010. http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/09/hugo-chavez-latin-lover-russia. Retrieved 27 March 2011.
Interviews[link]
- Sackur, Stephen; Chávez, Hugo (subject) (15 June 2010). "Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela". HARDtalk. London: British Broadcasting Corporation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00stbv6/HARDtalk_Hugo_Chavez_President_of_Venezuela/?t=2m50s. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
Websites and e-publications[link]
- Ellner, Steve (17 October 2005). "Venezuela's "Demonstration Effect": Defying Globalization's Logic". Venezuela Analysis. http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1418. Retrieved 30 March 2011.
- O'Keefe, Derrick (9 March 2005). "Building a democratic, humanist socialism". ZCommunications. http://www.zcommunications.org/building-a-democratic-humanist-socialism-by-site-administrator. Retrieved 30 March 2011.
- Wilpert, Gregory (27 August 2003). "Venezuela's New Constitution". Venezuela Analysis. http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/70. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
- Trinkunas, Harold and McCoy, Jennifer (February 1999). "Observation of the 1998 Venezuelan Elections: A Report of the Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government". Atlanta, Georgia: The Carter Centre. http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/1151.pdf. Retrieved 21 March 2011.
- "Del Caracazo Case". Inter-American Court of Human Rights. 11 November 2011. http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/IACHR/1999/12.html. Retrieved 21 March 2011.
- "Venezuela: Hugo Chávez's Revolution". International Crisis Group. 22 February 2007. http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/latin-america/venezuela/19_venezuela___hugo_chavezs_revolution.ashx. Retrieved 8 April 2011.
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hugo Chávez |
 |
Wikisource has original works written by or about: |
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Hugo Chávez |
- Official
- Official personal blog (Spanish)
- Hugo Chávez on Twitter
- Multimedia
- PBS Frontline Documentary: The Hugo Chávez Show
- The Guardian: The Rise and Rule of 'Hurricane Hugo' audio slide show
- Democracy Now! 16 September 2005 Interview: Part I and Part II with Hugo Chavez, in New York City
- ABC News Video, 27 April 2007: Barbara Walters interviews Hugo Chávez
- Interview with Hugo Cháves about the American threat October 2009
- NPR Audio Report, 18 February 2008: The Politics of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Articles and Interviews
- BBC News: Profile: Hugo Chávez
- Shifter, Michael. In Search of Hugo Chávez. Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006 issue
- Palast, Greg. Hugo Chávez Interview. The Progressive, July 2006
- Hugo Chávez collected news and commentary at Al Jazeera English
- Hugo Chávez collected news and commentary at The Guardian
- Hugo Chávez collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Hugo Chávez collected news and commentary at The Wall Street Journal
- Miscellaneous
- Extended biography by CIDOB (in Spanish)
- Hugo Chávez at the Internet Movie Database
- Works by or about Hugo Chávez in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Rafael Caldera |
President of Venezuela 1999–present |
Incumbent |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by None |
Chairman of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela 2007–present |
Incumbent |
| Preceded by None |
Chairman of the Fifth Republic Movement 1997–2007–present |
Incumbent |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Chávez, Hugo Rafael |
| Alternative names | Chávez Frías, Hugo Rafael |
| Short description | Venezuelan President |
| Date of birth | 28 July 1954 |
| Place of birth | Sabaneta, Barinas, Venezuela |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
For other people named George Galloway, see George Galloway (disambiguation).
| George Galloway MP | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Galloway at a Stop The War protest in London, 24 February 2007 | |
| Member of Parliament for Bradford West |
|
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 29 March 2012 |
|
| Preceded by | Marsha Singh |
| Majority | 10,140 (16.7%) |
| Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow |
|
| In office 5 May 2005 – 6 May 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | Oona King |
| Succeeded by | Rushanara Ali |
| Majority | 823 (1.9%) |
| Member of Parliament for Glasgow Kelvin |
|
| In office 1 May 1997 – 5 May 2005 |
|
| Preceded by | Constituency created |
| Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
| Majority | 7,260 (27.1%) |
| Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead |
|
| In office 11 June 1987 – 1 May 1997 |
|
| Preceded by | Roy Jenkins |
| Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
| Majority | 4,826 (12.3%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1954-08-16) 16 August 1954 (age 57) Dundee |
| Citizenship | British |
| Political party | Respect (2004–present) Labour (1967–2003) |
| Residence | London |
| Website | www.georgegalloway.com |
George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, journalist, and broadcaster, and the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West. He was previously an MP for the Labour Party, for Glasgow Hillhead and then its successor constituency Glasgow Kelvin from 1987 until 2005. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 because of his strident public opposition to the Iraq War.[1] He subsequently became a founding member of the left-wing Respect Party, and was elected as the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005.[2] In 2010, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the seat of Poplar and Limehouse, and in 2011 he unsuccessfully contested the Glasgow list for the Scottish Parliament, before being elected as an MP in the Bradford West by-election, 2012.[3][4]
Galloway is well known for his campaigns in support of the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In the late-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Ba'ath regime, and Galloway opposed Saddam's regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991.[5] Galloway is known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein, and delivered a speech, which ended in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."[6] He has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech.[7] Galloway testified to the United States Senate in 2005 over alleged illicit payments from the United Nations' Oil for Food Programme.[8]
Contents
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Early and personal life[link]
Galloway was born in the Lochee area of Dundee to a Scottish trade unionist father and Irish republican mother.[9][10] He describes himself as "born in an attic in a slum tenement in the Irish quarter of Dundee, which is known as Tipperary".[11][12] He grew up in Charleston and attended Charleston Primary and then Harris Academy, a non-denominational school. During his school years at Charleston Primary and Harris Academy, he used to play football for the school team. As an amateur footballer, he went on to play for West End United U12s, Lochee Boys Club U16s and St Columbus U18s.[13]
From 1979 to 1999, he was married to Elaine Fyffe, with whom he has a daughter. In 1994, he married Amineh Abu-Zayyad as a second wife in a Muslim ceremony (later after his divorce from his first wife, he and Abu-Zayyad also undertook a civil ceremony); Zayyad filed for divorce in 2005. In 2005, Galloway married as his third wife Rima Husseini, a Lebanese woman and former researcher, also in a Muslim ceremony. She gave birth to their first son in May 2007, and a second son in December 2011. In March 2012, Galloway married Putri Gayatri Pertiwi, a consultant with a Dutch research firm.[14]
Galloway was raised as a Roman Catholic.[12] By his own account he decided, at the age of 18, never to drink alcohol. He disapproves of it and describes it as having a "very deleterious effect on people".[9][15] He stated at a March 2012 rally "We stand for justice and haqq" and "A Muslim is somebody who is not afraid of earthly power but who fears only the Judgment Day. I’m ready for that, I’m working for that and it’s the only thing I fear".[16]
In a April 2012 New Statesman magazine interview with Galloway, Jemima Khan asserted that the politician had become a Muslim sometime around 2000, but had not advertised this fact.[17] Galloway subsequently denied a ceremony had taken place: "I have never attended any such ceremony in Kilburn, Karachi or Kathmandu. It is simply and categorically untrue."[18]
Labour Party organiser[link]
Galloway joined the Labour Party at 13 years old and, within five years, was secretary of the Dundee West Constituency Labour Party. His enthusiasm led him to become Vice-Chairman of the Labour Party in the City of Dundee and a member of the Scottish Executive Committee in 1975. On 5 May 1977, he contested his first election campaign in the Scottish district elections, but failed to hold the safe Labour seat at Gillburn, Dundee. He was defeated by the Independent candidate Bunty Turley. Galloway became the secretary organiser of Dundee Labour Party—the youngest ever Scottish chairman—in March 1981 at 26 years old.[19]
In his mid-20s after a trip to Beirut in 1977,[12] he became a passionate supporter of Palestine stating "barely a week after my return I made a pledge to devote the rest of my life to the Palestinian and Arab cause". He supported Dundee City Council which flew the Palestinian flag inside the City Chambers and was involved in the twinning of Dundee with Nablus in 1980,[20] although he did not take part in the visit of Lord Provost Gowans, Ernie Ross MP and three City Councillors to Nablus and Kuwait in April 1981.[19]
In 1981, Galloway wrote an article in Scottish Marxist supporting Communist Party affiliation with the Labour Party. In response, Denis Healey, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, tried and failed to remove Galloway from the list of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. Healey lost his motion by 13 votes to 5.[21] Galloway had argued that this was his own personal viewpoint, not that of the Labour Party. He once quipped that, in order to overcome a £1.5 million deficit which had arisen in the city budget, he, Ernie Ross and leading Councillors should be placed in the stocks in the city square: "we would allow people to throw buckets of water over us at 20p a time."[22]
Galloway stood for a place on the Labour Party National Executive Committee in 1986; in a large field of candidates he finished second from the bottom. At the 1986 Labour Party Conference, he made a strong attack on the Labour Party's Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor Roy Hattersley for not favouring exchange controls.
War on Want[link]
From November 1983 to 1987, Galloway was General Secretary of War on Want, a British charity that campaigns against poverty worldwide. In this post he was much travelled, writing eye-witness accounts of the famine in Eritrea in 1985 which were published in The Sunday Times and The Spectator.[23]
The Daily Mirror accused him of living luxuriously at the charity's expense.[24] An independent auditor cleared him of misuse of funds,[25] though he did repay £1,720 in contested expenses.[26] He later reportedly won £155,000 from "The Mirror in an unrelated libel lawsuit.[27]
More than two years after Galloway stepped down to serve as a Labour MP, the UK Government investigated War on Want. It found accounting irregularities from 1985 to 1989, but little evidence that money was used for non-charitable purposes. The commission said responsibility lay largely with auditors, and did not single out individuals for blame.[25]
Reported Break In[link]
In an article published by the Daily Mail at the beginning of May 2012, it was asserted that staff at his £1.4 million London home had discovered items had been moved and curious objects were found in the house such as an empty bottle of gin and a gay pornographic video stashed in a closet. The culprit is thought to have been an unidentified homeless man.[28] Galloway has increased security at his home to prevent any more homeless intruders.
Parliamentary career[link]
Member of Parliament for a Glasgow seat[link]
In the 1987 election, Galloway won Glasgow Hillhead constituency for the Labour Party from Roy Jenkins of the Social Democratic Party (who had briefly led that Party earlier in the decade) with a majority of 3,251. Although known for his left-wing views, Galloway was never a member of Labour's leftist groupings of MPs, the Tribune Group or the Socialist Campaign Group. In 2002, Galloway stated "I am on the anti-imperialist left... If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life."[29]
Asked about a War on Want conference on Mykonos, Greece during his previous job, the new MP replied "I travelled and spent lots of time with people in Greece, many of whom were women, some of whom were known carnally to me. I actually had sexual intercourse with some of the people in Greece."[30] The statement put Galloway on the front pages of the tabloid press and in February 1988 the Executive Committee of his Constituency Labour Party passed a vote of no confidence in him.[30]
He gained re-selection when challenged by Trish Godman (wife of fellow MP Norman Godman) in June 1989, but failed to get a majority of the electoral college on the first ballot. This was the worst result for any sitting Labour MP who was reselected; 13 of the 26 members of the Constituency Party's Executive Committee resigned that August, indicating their dissatisfaction with the result.[31]
In 1990, a classified advertisement appeared in the Labour-Left weekly Tribune headed "Lost: MP who answers to the name of George", "balding and has been nicknamed gorgeous", claiming that the lost MP had been seen in Romania but had not been to a constituency meeting for a year. A telephone number was given which turned out to be for the Groucho Club in London, from which Galloway had recently been excluded (although subsequently readmitted). Galloway threatened legal action and pointed out that he had been to five constituency meetings. He eventually settled for an out-of-court payment by Tribune.
The leadership election of the Labour Party in 1992 saw Galloway voting for the eventual winners, John Smith for Leader and Margaret Beckett as Deputy Leader. In 1994, after Smith's death, Galloway declined to cast a vote in the leadership election (one of only three MPs to do so). In a debate with the Leader of the Scottish National Party Alex Salmond, Galloway responded to one of Salmond's jibes against the Labour Party by declaring "I don't give a fuck what Tony Blair thinks."[31]
Although facing a challenge for the Labour nomination for the seat of Glasgow Kelvin in 1997, Galloway defeated Shiona Waldron. He was unchallenged for the nomination in 2001.
In the 1997 and 2001 elections Galloway was the Labour candidate for the seat of Glasgow Kelvin, winning with majorities of over 16,000 and 12,000 respectively. During the 2001 Parliament, he voted against the Whip 27 times. During the 2001–02 session he was the 9th most rebellious Labour MP.
Expulsion from the Labour Party[link]
Galloway became the Vice President of the Stop the War Coalition in 2001. He is actively involved, often speaking on StWC platforms at anti-war demonstrations. From this position Galloway made many aggressive and controversial statements in opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. These were the formal reasons for his expulsion from the Labour Party. He reportedly said in a 28 March 2003 interview with Abu Dhabi TV that Tony Blair and George W. Bush had "lied to the British Air Force and Navy, when they said the battle of Iraq would be very quick and easy. They attacked Iraq like wolves...." and added, "... the best thing British troops can do is to refuse to obey illegal orders."[32] He called the Labour Government "Tony Blair's lie machine."[33] The Observer reported in 2003 that the Director of Public Prosecutions looked at a request by the solicitor Justin Hugheston-Roberts to pursue Galloway under the Incitement to Disaffection Act, 1934,[34] though no prosecution occurred.
On 18 April, The Sun published an interview with Tony Blair who said: "His comments were disgraceful and wrong. The National Executive will deal with it." The General Secretary of the Labour Party, citing Galloway's outspoken opinion of Blair and Bush in their pursuit of the Iraq war, suspended him from holding office in the party on 6 May 2003, pending a hearing on charges that he had violated the party's constitution by "bringing the Labour Party into disrepute through behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Party". The National Constitutional Committee held a hearing on 22 October 2003, to consider the charges, taking evidence from Galloway himself, from other party witnesses, viewing media interviews, and hearing character testimony from Tony Benn, among others. The following day, the committee found the charge of bringing the party into disrepute proved, and so expelled Galloway from the Labour Party. Galloway called the Committee's hearing "a show trial" and "a kangaroo court".[35]
2005 election[link]
In January 2004, Galloway announced he would be working with members of the Socialist Alliance in England and Wales, and others, under the name Respect – The Unity Coalition, generally referred to simply as Respect.
Galloway later announced that he would not force a by-election and intended not to contest the next general election in Glasgow. Galloway's Glasgow Kelvin seat was split between three neighbouring constituencies for the May 2005 general election. One of these, the new Glasgow Central constituency, might have been his best chance with a relatively large Muslim vote. However, his long-time friend Mohammad Sarwar, the first Muslim Labour MP and a strong opponent of the Iraq War also intended to go for it; Galloway did not wish to challenge him. After the European election results became known, Galloway announced that he would stand in Bethnal Green and Bow, the area where Respect had its strongest election results and where the sitting Labour MP, Oona King, supported the Iraq War. On 2 December, despite speculation that he might stand in Newham, he confirmed that he would be the candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow.
The ensuing electoral campaign in the seat proved to be a difficult one with heated rhetoric. The BBC reported that Galloway had himself been threatened with death by extreme Islamists from the banned organisation al-Ghurabaa. All the major candidates united in condemning the threats and violence.[36] On 5 May, Galloway won the seat by 823 votes and made a fiery acceptance speech, saying that Tony Blair had the blood of 100,000 people on his hands and denouncing the returning officer over alleged discrepancies in the electoral process. When challenged in a subsequent televised interview by Jeremy Paxman as to whether he was happy to have removed one of the few black women in Parliament, Galloway replied "I don't believe that people get elected because of the colour of their skin. I believe people get elected because of their record and because of their policies."[37] Jeremy Paxman during the same BBC interview accused Galloway of being a demagogue.[37]
Oona King later told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that she found Paxman's line of question inappropriate. "He shouldn't be barred from running against me because I'm a black woman. ... I was not defined, or did not wish to be defined, by either my ethnicity or religious background."[38]
"It's good to be back", Galloway said on being sworn in as MP for Bethnal Green after the May election. He pledged to represent "the people that New Labour has abandoned" and to "speak for those who have nobody else to speak for them."[39]
Parliamentary participation statistics[link]
After he was suspended and later expelled from the Labour Party, Galloway's participation in Parliamentary activity fell to minimal levels. After speaking in a debate on Iraq on 25 March 2003, Galloway did not intervene in any way in Parliamentary debates or ask any oral questions for the remainder of the Parliament and his participation in House of Commons divisions was among the lowest of any MP.[40]
Following the 2005 election, his participation rate remained low, and at the end of the year he had participated in only 15% of Divisions in the House of Commons since the general election, placing him 634th of 645 MPs. Of the eleven MPs below him in the rankings, one was the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, five were Sinn Féin members who have an abstentionist policy toward taking their seats, three were the speaker and deputy speakers and therefore ineligible to vote, and two had died since the election. Galloway claims a record of unusual activity at a "grass roots" level. His own estimate is that he made 1,100 public speeches between September 2001 and May 2005.[41]
In September 2009, he still had one of the lowest voting participation records in parliament at 8.4% as a total of 93 votes out of a possible 1,113 divisions.[42]
Suspension from the House of Commons[link]
On 17 July 2007, following a four-year inquiry, the House of Commons Select Committee on Standards and Privileges published its sixth report. The Committee concluded that there was no evidence that Galloway gained any personal benefit from either the former Iraqi regime, or from the Oil-for-Food Programme.
| “ | I have not found evidence that Mr Galloway has, directly and personally, unlawfully received moneys from the former Iraqi regime. I have been given evidence by Dr Al-Chalabi of a payment by him of $120,000 to Mr Galloway's former wife, Dr Abu-Zayyad, which derived from a commission payment Dr Al-Chalabi received under the programme. As I do not have access to the bank accounts in question, I do not know whether Mr Galloway benefited in any way from this payment. Nor do I know whether Mr Galloway benefited from a payment of $150,000 to Dr Abu-Zayyad which the US Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations found to have been made by Mr Fawaz Zureikat out of oil contract commission.[43] | ” |
However, it found that Galloway's use of parliamentary resources to support his work on the Mariam Appeal "went beyond what was reasonable."
| “ | Had these been the only matters before us, we would have confined ourselves to seeking an apology to the House. However, Mr Galloway's conduct . . . and his calling into question of the Commissioner's and our own integrity have in our view damaged the reputation of the House. In accordance with precedent, we recommend that he apologise to the House, and be suspended from its service for a period of eighteen actual sitting days. As the House is shortly to go into its Summer Recess, we further recommend that Mr Galloway's period of suspension should begin on 8 October, the day it resumes.[44] | ” |
In response, Galloway stated
| “ | The Committee appear utterly oblivious to the grotesque irony of a pro-sanctions and pro-war Committee of a pro-sanctions and pro-war Parliament passing judgement on the work of their opponents."[45] | ” |
At a press conference following publication of the report, Galloway stated "To be deprived of the company for 18 days of the honourable ladies and gentleman behind me [in parliament] will be painful ... but I'm intending to struggle on regardless ... What really upset them [the committee] is that I always defend myself.[46]
Candidate at other elections[link]
On 10 August 2007, Galloway confirmed he would stand in newly created constituency of Poplar and Limehouse[47][48] where the Labour Party had a notional majority of 3,942.[49] The Labour candidate was the current Poplar and Canning Town MP Jim Fitzpatrick. Galloway said he had planned to stand down from Parliament at the next election, but was prompted to stay on and fight to win the neighbouring east London constituency after he felt he was unfairly suspended from Parliament for 18 days. In the election Galloway was defeated, coming third after the Labour and Conservative candidates. He received 8,460 votes. Galloway headed the post-split Respect (London-wide) top-up list for the London Assembly election, 2008 but was not selected.[50]
On 5 May 2011, in the Scottish Parliament general election, 2011, the Respect Party, on whose list Galloway was standing in the Glasgow electoral region, received 6,972 votes (3.3%), failing to achieve any seats in the Holyrood Parliament.[51][52]
2012 by-election[link]
Main article: Bradford West by-election, 2012
After the resignation of sitting Labour MP Marsha Singh due to ill health, Galloway returned to Parliament at the March 2012 Bradford West by-election in an unexpected landslide result, with Galloway calling it "the most sensational victory in British political history".[53] His 36% swing from Labour was the third-largest in modern British political history.[54]The result was seen as a major disappointment for Labour, with Galloway speaking of his belief that it showed the "alienation" of voters from the leading three political parties.[55]
On 16 April, Galloway was sworn into Parliament by the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.[56]
Political views[link]
Galloway advocates greater spending on welfare benefits, and some nationalisation of large industries. Galloway is opposed to abortion, although he supports Respect's pro-choice stance. He opposes Scottish independence but supports the right of the people to vote on the matter via a referendum. He also supports the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, George Galloway supported Solidarity,[57] despite not supporting all their policies, such as Scottish independence. Galloway has attracted most attention for his comments on foreign policy, taking a special interest in Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to the report Preventing terrorism, where next for Britain? from the counter-extremism think tank Quilliam, which receives private and public funding, Galloway is "Islamist backed".[58] Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4Uk and a former MCB spokesperson, disagreed, saying: "This is just like something straight out of a Stasi manual. The advice from Quilliam is frankly appalling and incredibly self-serving."[59]
Iraq and Saddam Hussein[link]
Galloway opposed the 1991 Gulf War and was critical of the effect the subsequent sanctions had on the people of Iraq. He visited Iraq twice and met senior government officials. His involvement caused some critics to deride him as the "member for Baghdad North". In 1994, Galloway faced some of his strongest criticism on his return from a Middle-Eastern visit during which he had met Saddam Hussein "to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war". At the meeting, he reported the support given to Saddam by the people of the Gaza Strip and ended his speech in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability".[60] In a January 2007 edition of the BBC's Hardtalk he stated that he was saluting the "Iraqi people".[7] Galloway's speech was translated for Hussein. Anasal-Tikriti, a friend of Galloway's and a Respect candidate, spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain said: "I understand Arabic and it [Galloway's salutation] was taken completely out of context. When he said "you" he meant the Iraqi people, he was saluting their indefatigability, their resolve against sanctions. Even the interpreter got it right and, in Arabic, says salutes the stand of the Iraqi people'."[61]
In 1999, Galloway was criticised for spending Christmas in Iraq with Tariq Aziz, who was Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister. In the 17 May 2005, hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Galloway stated that he had had many meetings with Aziz, and characterised their relationship as friendly.[62] After the fall of Saddam, he continued to praise Aziz, calling him "an eminent diplomatic and intellectual person". In 2006 a video surfaced showing Galloway enthusiastically greeting Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, with the title of "Excellency" at Uday's palace in 1999.[63] "The two men also made unflattering comments about the United States and joked about losing weight, going bald and how difficult it is to give up smoking cigars," according to The Scotsman.[64]
In a House of Commons debate on 6 March 2002, Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw said of Galloway that he was "not just an apologist, but a mouthpiece, for the Iraqi regime over many years." Galloway called the Minister a liar and refused to withdraw: "[Bradshaw's] imputation that I am a mouthpiece for a dictator is a clear imputation of dishonour" he said, and the sitting was suspended due to the dispute.[65] Bradshaw later withdrew his allegation, and Galloway apologised for using unparliamentary language. In August 2002, Galloway returned to Iraq and met Saddam Hussein for a second time. According to Galloway, the intention of the trip was to persuade Saddam to re-admit Hans Blix, and the United Nations weapons inspectors into the country.[66]
Giving evidence in his libel case against the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2004, Galloway testified that he regarded Saddam as a "bestial dictator" and would have welcomed his removal from power, but not by means of a military attack on Iraq. Galloway also pointed that he was a prominent critic of Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, as well as of the role of Margaret Thatcher's government in supporting arms sales to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. Labour MP Tam Dalyell said during the controversy over whether Galloway should be expelled from the Labour Party that "in the mid-1980s there was only one MP that I can recollect making speeches about human rights in Iraq and this was George Galloway."[67] When the issue of Galloway's meetings with Saddam Hussein is raised, including before the US Senate, Galloway has argued that he had met Saddam "exactly the same number of times as US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns."[68] He continued "I met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war".
During a 9 March 2005 interview at the University of Dhaka campus Galloway called for a global alliance between Muslims and progressives: "Not only do I think it’s possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries."[69]
Israel and Palestine[link]
At a 22 July 2006 demonstration (and later in a Socialist Worker op-ed),[70] Galloway stated "Hezbollah has never been a terrorist organisation!" The National Union of Students of the United Kingdom passed a motion condemning Galloway for this statement. In 2009, Galloway received a Palestinian passport from Hamas leader Ismail Haniya. Hamas are a considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union, and the US.[71]
According to Al-Ahram, in a series of speeches broadcast on Arab television, Galloway described Jerusalem and Baghdad as being "raped" by "foreigners," referring to Israel's illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, and the war in Iraq.[72]
In an interview with the American radio host Alex Jones, Galloway blamed Israel for creating "conditions in the Arab countries and in some European countries to stampede Jewish people ... into the Zionist state". Jones then alleged that the "Zionists" funded Hitler, to which Galloway replied that Zionists used the Jewish people "to create this little settler state on the Mediterranean," whose purpose was "to act as an advance guard for their own interests in the Arab world..."[73]
Galloway was introduced as “a former member of the British Houses of Parliament” during a live interview with Qatari Al-Jazeera television, to which he responded: “I am still a member of parliament and was re-elected five times. On the last occasion I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism.”
Galloway expressed support for the Syrian presence in Lebanon five months before it ended, telling the Daily Star of Lebanon "Syrian troops in Lebanon maintain stability and protect the country from Israel". In the same article he expressed his opposition to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which urged the Lebanese Government to establish control over all its territory.[74]
In an interview with the Hizbullah run Al-Manar TV, which aired on 26 July 2011 (as translated by MEMRI), Galloway accused Israel of being responsible for the assassination of Rafiq Al-Hariri, stating that "Israel was the only country with any interest and any benefit to gain from the assassination of the martyr Rafiq Al-Hariri. They are the ones who had the capability to do so, they are the ones who had the motive for doing so, and they are the ones who had the criminal record for doing so. How many hundreds of people has Israel killed in Lebanon? Assassination squads of people landing on the beach, and people planting bombs of one kind or another..." He further stated that "When this inquiry [the Special Tribunal for Lebanon] refused to lead in that direction, I knew it was a fake inquiry" and that "this process and all these individuals are completely discredited."[75][76][77]
Several months earlier in a speech given in Edmonton, Alberta in November 2010, Galloway stated that
“I believe, and I don’t know anybody who is objective in this matter who does not believe, that Hezbollah are absolutely innocent of this crime, and it is time that the tribunal looked to the people who benefited from this crime..in Israel."[78][79]
Blair and Bush[link]
At the national conference of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, on 30 June 2003, Galloway apologised for describing George W. Bush as a "wolf", saying that to do so defamed wolves: "No wolf would commit the sort of crimes against humanity that George Bush committed against the people of Iraq."
On 20 November 2004, George Galloway gave an interview on Abu Dhabi TV in which he said:[80]
| “ | The people who invaded and destroyed Iraq and have murdered more than a million Iraqi people by sanctions and war will burn in Hell in the hell-fires, and their name in history will be branded as killers and war criminals for all time. Fallujah is a Guernica, Fallujah is a Stalingrad, and Iraq is in flames as a result of the actions of these criminals. Not the resistance, not anybody else but these criminals who invaded and fell like wolves upon the people of Iraq. And by the way, those Arab regimes which helped them to do it will burn in the same hell-fires. | ” |
On 20 June 2005, he appeared on Al Jazeera English to lambast these two leaders and others.[80]
| “ | Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Silvio Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalised capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known. It has killed far more people than Adolf Hitler. It has killed far more people than George Bush. The economic system which these people support, which leaves most of the people in the world hungry, and without clean water to drink. So we're going to put them on trial, the leaders, when they come. They think they're coming for a holiday in a beautiful country called Scotland; in fact, they're coming to their trial....Ancient freedoms, which we had for hundreds of years, are being taken away from us under the name of the war on terror, when the real big terrorists are the governments of Britain and the United States. They are the real rogue states breaking international law, invading other people's countries, killing their children in the name of anti-terrorism, when in fact, all they're achieving is to make more terrorists in the world, not less, to make the world more dangerous, rather than less. | ” |
On 3 February 2006, Galloway was refused entry to Egypt at Cairo Airport and was detained "on grounds of national security", where he had been invited to 'give evidence' at a 'mock trial' of Bush and Blair. After being detained overnight, he said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak "apologised on behalf of the Egyptian people", and he was allowed to enter the country. After initial derogatory comments from Galloway[citation needed] and a spokesman from his Respect party regarding Mubarak's pro-Western stance and ties to Bush and Blair, Galloway later commented: "It was a most gracious apology which I accept wholeheartedly. I consider the matter now closed."[81][82]
Suicide bombings[link]
In the House of Commons, on the day of the 7 July 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people and injured hundreds more, and following a visit to the Royal London Hospital in his constituency where many of the victims had been taken, Galloway condemned the attacks strongly, but argued that they could not be separated from the hatred and bitterness felt among Muslims because of injustices in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, including injustices, he said, suffered as a result of British foreign policy:
| “ | I condemn the act that was committed this morning. I have no need to speculate about its authorship. It is absolutely clear that Islamist extremists, inspired by the al-Qaeda world outlook, are responsible. I condemn it utterly as a despicable act, committed against working people on their way to work, without warning, on tubes and buses. Let there be no equivocation: the primary responsibility for this morning's bloodshed lies with the perpetrators of those acts... The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), in an otherwise fine speech, described today's events as "unpredictable". They were not remotely unpredictable. Our own security services predicted them and warned the Government that if we [invaded Iraq] we would be at greater risk from terrorist attacks such as the one that we have suffered this morning... Despicable, yes; but not unpredictable. It was entirely predictable and, I predict, it will not be the last.[83][84] | ” |
Winding up the debate for the government in the last moments allotted, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram described Galloway's remarks as "disgraceful" and accused Galloway of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood."[85] No time remained for Galloway to intervene and he ran afoul of the Deputy Speaker when trying to make a point of order about Ingram's attack. He later went on to describe Ingram as a "thug" who had committed a "foul-mouthed, deliberately timed, last-10-seconds smear."[86] The men had previously clashed over claims in Galloway's autobiography (see below).
In an interview with Piers Morgan for GQ Magazine in May 2006, Galloway was asked whether a suicide bomb attack on Tony Blair with "no other casualties" would be morally justifiable "as revenge for the war on Iraq?". He answered "Yes it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it, but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable, and morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did." He further stated that if he knew about such a plan that he would inform the relevant authorities, saying: "I would [tell the police], because such an operation would be counterproductive because it would just generate a new wave of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment whipped up by the press. It would lead to new draconian anti-terror laws, and would probably strengthen the resolve of the British and American services in Iraq rather than weaken it. So yes, I would inform the authorities."[87] Christopher Hitchens claimed this to be a call for an attack while appearing not to.[88]
Pakistan coup of 1999[link]
At the time of the 1999 Musharraf coup in Pakistan, he wrote, "In poor third world countries like Pakistan, politics is too important to be left to petty squabbling politicians. Pakistan is always on the brink of breaking apart into its widely disparate components. Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together... Democracy is a means, not an end in itself and it has a bad name on the streets of Karachi and Lahore."[89] Nonetheless, on his TalkSport talk radio show, Galloway has been outspoken in criticising the former Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf.
Record on LGBT issues[link]
In 1994, Galloway voted in support of the equalisation of the age of consent for homosexuality (which was then 21 years) with that for heterosexuality at 16 years.[90] He also voted against a reduction of the homosexual age of consent to 18.[91] He voted in favour of permitting unmarried and gay couples to adopt children.[92] Critics have claimed that his involvement in the leadership of Respect – which made no explicit mention of gay rights in its 2005 election manifesto[93] and accepted donations from Islamic Party members[94] – raise questions about commitment to those issues, as does his rather poor voting record in parliamentary divisions, 80% of which he missed, during the 2001-5 parliament while still a Glasgow MP.[95] However, Respect's 2005 conference, in which Galloway took part, resolved that explicit defence of equal rights and calls for the end to all discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people would be made in all of its manifestos and principal election materials.[96]
Galloway's assertion on The Wright Stuff chat show (13 March 2008) that the executed boyfriend of homosexual Iranian asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi was executed for sex crimes rather than for being homosexual[97] received criticism from Peter Tatchell, among others.[98] Galloway also stated on The Wright Stuff that the case of gay rights in Iran was being used by supporters of war with Iran.
Humanitarian work[link]
Mariam Appeal[link]
In 1998 Galloway founded the Mariam Appeal, intended "to campaign against sanctions on Iraq which are having disastrous effects on the ordinary people of Iraq". The campaign was named after Mariam Hamza, a child flown by the fund from Iraq to Britain to receive treatment for leukaemia. The intention was to raise awareness of the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of other Iraqi children due to poor health conditions and lack of suitable medicines and facilities, and to campaign for the lifting of the Iraq sanctions that many maintained were responsible for that situation.
The fund received scrutiny during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after a complaint that Galloway used some of the donation money to pay his travel expenses.[99] Galloway said that the expenses were incurred in his capacity as the Appeal's chairman. Although the Mariam Appeal was never a registered charity and never intended to be such, it was investigated by the Charity Commission. The report of this year-long inquiry, published in June 2004,[100] found that the Mariam Appeal was doing charitable work (and so ought to have registered with them), but did not substantiate allegations that any funds had been misused.
A further Charity Commission Report published on 7 June 2007 found that the Appeal had received funds from Fawaz Zureikat that originated from the Oil For Food programme, and concluded that: "Although Mr Galloway, Mr Halford and Mr Al-Mukhtar have confirmed that they were unaware of the source of Mr Zureikat’s donations, the Commission has concluded that the charity trustees should have made further enquiries when accepting such large single and cumulative donations to satisfy themselves as to their origin and legitimacy. The Commission’s conclusion is that the charity trustees did not properly discharge their duty of care as trustees to the Appeal in respect of these donations." They added: "The Commission is also concerned, having considered the totality of the evidence before it, that Mr Galloway may also have known of the connection between the Appeal and the Programme".[101] Galloway responded: "I've always disputed the Commission's retrospective view that a campaign to win a change in national and international policy—a political campaign—was, in fact, a charity."[102]
Viva Palestina aid convoy[link]
Main article: Viva Palestina
In response to the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, in January 2009 Galloway instigated the Viva Palestina aid convoy to the Gaza Strip. On 14 February 2009, after raising over £1 million-worth of humanitarian aid in four weeks, Galloway and hundreds of volunteers launched the convoy comprising approximately 120 vehicles intended for use in the Strip, including a fire engine donated by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), 12 ambulances, a boat and trucks full of medicines, tools, clothes, blankets and gifts for children. The 5,000-mile route passed through Belgium, France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.[103]
On 20 February, Galloway condemned Lancashire Police after they arrested nine of the volunteers under the Terrorism Act a day before the convoy's launch. Galloway said: "The arrests were clearly deliberately timed for the eve of the departure of the convoy. Photographs of the high-profile snatch on the M65 were immediately fed to the press to maximise the newsworthiness of the smear that was being perpetrated on the convoy." Viva Palestina reported an 80% drop in donations following the broadcast of the arrests and the police allegations on the BBC.[104]
The convoy arrived in Gaza on 9 March,[105] accompanied by approximately 180 extra trucks of aid donated by Libya's Gaddafi Foundation. All the British aid was delivered with the exception of the fire engine and boat which were blocked by the Egyptian government. The boat is to be delivered later in a flotilla of craft which Viva Palestina intends to take into Gaza harbour.[106] On 10 March 2009, Galloway announced at a press conference in Gaza City attended by several senior Hamas officials: "We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of their contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say. We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine," adding he would personally donate three cars and 25,000 pounds to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.[107]
The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry into Viva Palestina on 23 March 2009, citing concerns over the finances, use of funds for non-charitable purposes, and the lack of "substantive response" to their repeated requests.[108] George Galloway admitted that the appeal had not responded to the requests, but argued that a substantive response was anyway due to be passed to the Charity Commission only hours after they launched the inquiry. He argued that the Charity Commission's actions were suspicious, hinting that they might be politically motivated.[108] On 8 April 2009, Galloway joined Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic to launch Viva Palestina US.[109]
A third Viva Palestina convoy began at the end of 2009. On 8 January 2010, Galloway and his colleague Ron McKay were deported from Egypt immediately upon entry from Gaza. They had been attempting to help take about 200 aid trucks into the Gaza Strip. They were driven by the police to the airport and put on a plane to London. The previous day an Egyptian soldier had been killed during a clash at the border with Hamas loyalists. Several Palestinians were also injured.[110][111]
The Foreign Ministry of Egypt released a statement reading: "George Galloway is considered persona non grata and will not be allowed to enter into Egypt again". Shortly after his deportation Galloway said, "It is a badge of honour to be deported by a dictatorship" and "I've been thrown out of better joints than that."[112][113] He also vowed to go back to the Gaza strip. The Daily Record described his mood as "defiant".[113]
Controversy[link]
Oil for Food[link]
[edit] Daily Telegraph libel case
On 22 April 2003, the Daily Telegraph published news articles and comment describing documents found by its reporter David Blair in the ruins of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. The documents purported to be records of meetings between Galloway and Iraqi intelligence agents, and state that he had received £375,000 per year from the proceeds of the Oil-for-Food Programme. Galloway completely denied the story, and pointed to the nature of the discovery within an unguarded, bombed-out building as being questionable. He instigated legal action against the newspaper, which was heard in the High Court from 14 November 2004.[114]
On 2 December, Justice David Eady ruled that the story had been "seriously defamatory", and that the Telegraph was "obliged to compensate Mr Galloway ... and to make an award for the purposes of restoring his reputation". Galloway was awarded damages of £150,000 plus, after a failed appeal in 2006,[115] legal costs of about £2 million.[116]
The libel case was regarded by both sides as an important test of the Reynolds qualified-privilege defence. The Daily Telegraph did not attempt to claim justification (where the defendant seeks to prove the truth of the defamatory reports): "It has never been the Telegraph's case to suggest that the allegations contained in these documents are true".[117] Instead, the paper sought to argue that it acted responsibly because the allegations it reported were of sufficient public interest to outweigh the damage caused to Galloway's reputation.[118] However the trial judge did not accept this defence saying the suggestion such as Galloway was guilty of "treason", "in Saddam's pay", and being "Saddam's little helper" caused him to conclude "the newspaper was not neutral but both embraced the allegations with relish and fervour and went on to embellish them".[116] Additionally Galloway had not been given a fair or reasonable opportunity to make inquiries or meaningful comment upon the documents before they were published.[114]
The issue of whether the documents were genuine was likewise not at issue at the trial. However, it later transpired that the expert hired by Galloway's lawyers, a forensic expert named Oliver Thorne, said "In my opinion the evidence found fully supports that the vast majority of the submitted documents are authentic."[119] He added "It should be noted that I am unable to comment on the veracity of the information within the disputed Telegraph documents, whether or not they are authentic."
Others[link]
The Christian Science Monitor also published a story on 25 April 2003, stating that they had documentary evidence that he had received "more than ten million dollars" from the Iraqi regime. However, on 20 June 2003, the Monitor reported[120] that their own investigation had concluded the documents were sophisticated forgeries, and apologised. Galloway rejected the newspaper's apology, asserted that the affair was a conspiracy against him, and continued a libel claim against the paper.
The Christian Science Monitor settled the claim, paying him an undisclosed sum in damages, on 19 March 2004.[121][122] It emerged that these documents had first been offered to the Daily Telegraph, but they had rejected them. The documents' origin remains obscure.
In January 2004, a further set of allegations were made in Al-Mada,[123] a newspaper in Iraq. The newspaper claimed to have found documents in the Iraqi national oil corporation showing that Galloway received (through an intermediary) some of the profits arising from the sale of 19.5 million barrels (3,100,000 m³) of oil. Galloway acknowledged that money had been paid into the Mariam Appeal by Iraqi businessmen who had profited from the UN-run programme, but denied benefiting personally, and maintained that, in any case, there was nothing illicit about this:
| “ | It is hard to see what is dishonourable, let alone "illicit", about Arab nationalist businessmen donating some of the profits they made from legitimate UN-controlled business with Iraq to anti-sanctions campaigns, as opposed to, say, keeping their profits for themselves. | ” |
The report of the Iraq Survey Group published in October 2004 claimed that Galloway was one of the recipients of a fund used by Iraq to buy influence among foreign politicians. Galloway denied receiving any money from Saddam Hussein's regime. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards had begun an investigation into George Galloway but suspended it when Galloway launched legal action.
US Senate[link]
Allegations[link]
In May 2005, a US Senate committee report[124] accused Galloway along with former French minister Charles Pasqua of receiving the right to buy oil under the UN's oil-for-food scheme. The report was issued by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota. The report cited further documents from the Iraqi oil ministry and interviews with Iraqi officials.
Coleman's committee said Pasqua had received allocations worth 11 million barrels (1,700,000 m3) from 1999 to 2000, and Galloway received allocations worth 20 million barrels (3,200,000 m3) from 2000 to 2003. The allegations against Pasqua and Galloway, both outspoken opponents of U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, have been made before, including in an October report by US arms inspector Charles Duelfer as well as in the various purported documents described earlier in this section. But Coleman's report provided several new details. It also included information from interrogations of former high-ranking officials in US custody, including former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Among the claims is that there is new evidence to suggest that the Mariam Appeal, a children's leukaemia charity founded by Galloway, was in fact used to conceal oil payments. The report cites Ramadan as saying under interrogation that Galloway was allocated oil "because of his opinions about Iraq."
Socialist Worker reported what they say is evidence that the key Iraqi oil ministry documents regarding oil allocations, in which Galloway's name appears six times (contracts M/08/35, M/09/23,[125] M/10/38, M/11/04, M/12/14, M/13/48) have been tampered with. They published a copy of contract M/09/23 and allege that George Galloway's name appears to have been added in a different font and at a different angle to the rest of the text on that line. In these documents (relating to oil allocations 8–13), Galloway is among just a few people whose nationality is never identified, whilst Zureikat is the only one whose nationality is identified in one instance but not in others.[126] Galloway combatively countered the charges by accusing Coleman and other pro-war politicians of covering up the "theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth... on your watch" that had occurred under a post-invasion Coalition Provisional Authority, committed by "Halliburton and other American corporations... with the connivance of your own government."[127][128]
Galloway's response[link]
On 17 May 2005, the committee held a hearing concerning specific allegations (of which Galloway was one part) relating to improprieties surrounding the Oil-for-Food programme. Attending Galloway's oral testimony and enquiring of him were two of the thirteen committee members: the chair (Coleman) and the ranking Democrat (Carl Levin).[129]
Upon Galloway's arrival in the US, he told Reuters, "I have no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neo-con George Bush". Galloway described Coleman as a "pro-war, neo-con hawk and the lickspittle of George W. Bush", who, he said, sought revenge against anyone who did not support the invasion of Iraq.
In his testimony, Galloway made the following statements in response to the allegations against him:[130]
| “ | Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf. Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice. | ” |
He questioned the reliability of evidence given by former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, stating that the circumstances of his captivity by American forces call into question the authenticity of the remarks. Galloway also pointed out an error in the report, where documents by The Daily Telegraph were said to have covered an earlier period from those held by the Senate. In fact the report's documents referred to the same period as those used by The Daily Telegraph, though Galloway pointed out that the presumed forgeries pertaining to the Christian Science Monitor report did refer to an earlier period.
Galloway also denounced the invasion of Iraq as having been based on "a pack of lies" in his Senate testimony. The US media, in reporting his appearance, emphasised his blunt remarks on the war. The British media gave generally more positive coverage; TV presenter Anne Robinson said Galloway "quite frankly put the pride back in British politics" when introducing him for a prime time talk show.[131][132]
A report by the then-majority Republican Party staff of the United States Senate Committee on Investigations published in October 2005 asserted that Galloway had given false "or misleading"[133] testimony under oath when appearing before them. The report exhibits bank statements it claims show that £85,000 of proceeds from the Oil-for-Food Programme had been paid to Galloway's then-wife Amineh Abu-Zayyad. Galloway reiterated his denial of the charges and challenged the US Senate committee to charge him with perjury. He claimed Coleman's motive was revenge over the embarrassment of his appearance before the committee in May.[134][135][136]
Stance on the Islamic Republic of Iran[link]
Galloway has attracted criticism from both the Left and the Right for his comments relating to the regime in Iran, and his work for the state-run satellite television channel, Press TV. Scott Long, writing in The Guardian, criticised Galloway's claim that "homosexuals aren't executed in Iran, just rapists", pointing out that current law in the country stipulates that "Penetrative sex acts between men can bring death on the first conviction".[137] Long-time Gay Rights activist Peter Tatchell, also writing in The Guardian, accused Galloway of spouting "Iranian Propaganda", continuing: "His claim that lesbian and gay people are not at risk of execution in Iran is refuted by every reputable human rights organisation, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the International Lesbian and Gay Association."[138] Galloway argued that Western governments should accept the election of the conservative President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[139]
The Trotskyist Workers' Liberty group also condemns Galloway, largely on the basis of his support and work for the current Iranian regime. In "No vote for Galloway – an open letter to the left", he is quoted from his Press TV interview with President Ahmadinejad as stating that he requires "police protection in London from the Iranian opposition because of my support for your election campaign. I mention this so you know where I’m coming from."[140]
Controversy at Oxford University[link]
On 2 November 2006, The Times reported that Galloway was in a fracas at the Oxford Union. He was there to discuss his book. (Galloway, George (2006). Fidel Castro Handbook. MQ Publications. ISBN 1-84072-688-1. ) In his speech to the Union, Galloway claimed "that democracy in Cuba is more “free” than in the UK", and when questioned on this, he mentioned "that Oxford students are too privileged to understand what he was talking about".[141] Three former state school students who met him afterwards and disputed this description, allege that Galloway said: "I don’t represent anyone’s views. I represent me. I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks."[141]
[edit] Clashes with the News of the World
Galloway says that the Metropolitan Police Service told him they had evidence he was targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator working for the News of the World who was jailed for phone hacking in 2007. In 2010 Galloway began legal action for breach of privacy. In 2012 it was reported that Galloway had settled out of court, along with many other victims of phone hacking.[142] The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but he had previously claimed to have been offered "substantial sums of money" by NOTW to settle out of court.[143]
The settlement with News International in respect of phone-hacking is understood not to cover a legal dispute regarding the activities of Mazher Mahmood, an undercover reporter for the News of the World. In March 2006 Galloway claimed in a statement that Mahmood, who uses a disguise as a sheikh to frame celebrities, targeted him in an alleged sting operation. Galloway claims that Mahmood and an accomplice tried but failed to implicate him in illegal party funding, and to agree with antisemitic statements. Galloway wrote to the Metropolitan police commissioner and the Speaker of the House of Commons about the incident. He also released photographs of Mahmood and revealed other aspects of his activities.[144][145] The News of the World lost a High Court action to prevent publication of photographs of Mahmood.[146]
Islamic Forum of Europe[link]
Galloway has been recorded as saying that he owes "more than I can say, more than it would be wise for me to say, to the Islamic Forum of Europe".[147][148]
Hamas[link]
Respect MP George Galloway was barred in 2009 from visiting Canada (a ban now reversed[149]) because of his support for Hamas,[150] and donations to suspected vehicles of the Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip.[151]
Forbidden to enter Canada[link]
On 20 March 2009, Galloway was advised by the Canada Border Services Agency he was deemed inadmissible to Canada on "security grounds" due to his involvement in the Viva Palestina aid convoy to the Gaza Strip following the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict.[151] The Gaza Strip is governed by Hamas, which is on Canada's list of terrorist organisations. This resulted from a personal donation of £25,000 made by Galloway ten days earlier. The Canadians ruled (and maintained on appeal) that this constituted explicit support for Hamas, although Galloway argued it was not the case as the money was intended to be used for aid purposes.[71][152]
Galloway was on a lecture tour of North America, and was due to speak on war prevention and Gaza for a United Church congregation in Toronto, as well as for events in Mississauga, Ottawa and Montreal. Galloway was also described as an "infamous street-corner Cromwell" by Alykhan Velshi, communications director for Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Galloway described the ban as "idiotic"[153] and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was accused by Jack Layton, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP), of being a "minister of censorship."[154][155] Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, the group who invited Galloway to Canada, sought an emergency injunction to allow for his entry into Canada for the first speech in Toronto citing their rights to freedom of association and freedom of expression.[151] On 30 March 2009, the Federal Court of Canada upheld the decision of the Canada Border Services Agency.[156] Justice Luc Martineau cited non-citizens "do not have an unqualified right to enter in Canada. The admission of a foreign national to this country is a privilege determined by statute, regulation or otherwise, and not as a matter of right." The judge also noted "a proper factual record and the benefit of full legal argument...are lacking at the present time."[151] Subsequently, Galloway cancelled his Canadian tour and instead, delivered his speech over video link from New York to his Canadian audiences.[157]
Galloway was allowed entry into Canada in October 2010, after a judge concluded that the original ban had been undertaken for political reasons. He continued to criticise Jason Kenney, saying that the minister had "damaged Canada's reputation" and had used "anti-terrorism" as a means of suppressing political debate.[158] Galloway has also threatened to sue the Canadian government for the banning incident.[159]
Media activities[link]
Autobiography[link]
His autobiography, I'm Not The Only One, was published on 28 April 2004. The book's title is a quotation from the song "Imagine" by John Lennon. Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram applied for an interim interdict to prevent the book's publication. Ingram asserted that Galloway's text, which stated that Ingram "played the flute in a sectarian, anti-Catholic, Protestant-supremacist Orange Order band", was in bad faith and defamatory, although Ingram's lawyers conceded that for a year as a teenager he had been a member of a junior Orange Lodge in Barlanark, Glasgow, and had attended three parades. The Judge, Lord Kingarth, decided to refuse an interim interdict, that the balance of the arguments favoured Galloway's publisher, and that the phrase "sectarian, anti-Catholic, Protestant-supremacist" was fair comment on that organisation. Although Ingram was not and never had been a flute-player, the defending advocate observed that "playing the flute carries no obvious defamatory imputation ... it is not to the discredit of anyone that he plays the flute." The judge ruled that Ingram should pay the full court costs of the hearing.[160]
Other books[link]
Galloway has also published the Fidel Castro Handbook, a biography of the former Cuban President in 2006 (MQ Publications. ISBN 1-84072-688-1).
In August 2011, Galloway's book entitled Open Season: The Neil Lennon Story[161] which explores anti-Irish and anti-Catholic racism and bigotry in Scotland and describes many of the related hardships which have befallen Celtic manager Neil Lennon throughout his footballing career. Galloway himself has claimed that he was the victim of a sectarian attack at Glasgow Airport on 10 June 2007.[162][163] He believes that his attackers were on the way home from attending an Orange Order parade in London and that they attacked him because he is a Celtic fan.[164] No arrest was made in connection with this incident.
Publishing ventures[link]
Galloway has been involved in several publishing companies. He owned Asian Voice, which published a newspaper called East from 1996. It later transpired that the Pakistan Government was funding Galloway's company Asian Voice with several hundred-thousand-pounds. "Documents show that the Pakistan government agreed an initial budget for the weekly newspaper of £547,000. According to a memorandum dated 2 January 1996, the Pakistan government proposed to "covertly sponsor" the publication, with money allocated to "the Secret Fund of the High Commissioner for Pakistan in the UK as a special grant for the project".[165] The Commons Committee cleared Galloway of any wrongdoing in this matter.[166]
In 2005 Galloway established Friction Books, an imprint for fiction and non-fiction, with longstanding associate Ron McKay.[167] Friction claimed its purpose was to publish "books that burn, books that cause controversy and get people talking". As of 2009[update] it has released at least two books: Paco Ignacio Taibo II novel An Easy Thing[168] and Topple the Mighty by Leon Kuhn and Colin Gile.[169]
[edit] Celebrity Big Brother
In January 2006 Galloway appeared on the fourth series of the reality show for three weeks. During his time on the programme he appeared apparently licking milk, while pretending to be a cat, from the cupped hands of another housemate, actress Rula Lenska. Galloway was a sitting member of parliament at the time, leading to the allegation that he was bringing parliament into disrepute.[170]
Galloway acted as the guest presenter for the E4 companion programme to the 2007 edition of Big Brother, Big Brother's Big Mouth, from 5 to 8 June 2007.
talkSPORT[link]
| Genre | Political discussion |
|---|---|
| Running time | Friday 22:00–01:00 Saturday 22:00–01:00 |
| Country | UK |
| Languages | English |
| Home station | talkSPORT |
| Syndicates | Talk 107 |
| Hosts | George Galloway |
| Recording studio | Central London |
| Opening theme | The theme from Top Cat |
On 11 March 2006, Galloway started broadcasting on Britain's commercial radio station, the UTV-owned talkSPORT, and two weeks later started a simultaneous broadcast on Talk 107, TalkSPORT's Edinburgh-based sister station.
Billed as "The Mother of All Talk Shows", Galloway began every broadcast by playing the theme from the Top Cat cartoon series.
Galloway ceased presenting the show on 27 March 2010, due to campaign commitments in the 2010 UK General Election. During this time, he was replaced by Mike Graham.[171]
In August 2010, Galloway returned to the radio station with a new show bearing a similar format to his original, but this time titled The Week with George Galloway, described by the station as a "No-holds barred review of the past seven days around the world".[172] It was announced in March 2012 that Galloway's programme is to end as TalkSport plans to drop the non-sport elements of its schedule.[173]
Connection to Press TV[link]
Galloway began presenting a programme titled The Real Deal on 21 May 2007. Originally on Raj TV, a satellite channel primarily aimed at the British Asian community, the show was resurrected, following a short break, on 10 February 2008 by Press TV, a London-based news channel controlled by the government of Iran. The series was still running in late 2011.[174]
Galloway hosts a 45-minute weekly current affairs show Comment on Press TV. This programme invites the viewers to engage in lively debate on international political issues.[175]
In 2009, the British telecommunications regulator Ofcom criticised Galloway for breaching their broadcasting code by "breaking impartiality rules" in several of his Press TV programmes on the war in Gaza in which Israeli opinion failed to be "'adequately represented'".[176]
Journalism[link]
As of 25 June 2007, Galloway has contributed a weekly column in the Daily Record giving his views on politics and popular culture. He used this column to reveal he was considering running for a seat in the Scottish Parliament in the May 2011 election.[177] Galloway is an occasional contributor to The Guardian newspaper and website.[178]
As an orator[link]
|
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: George Galloway |
The Times finds that he has "the gift of the Glasgow gab, a love of the stage and an inexhaustible fund of self-belief."[179] The Guardian finds him "renowned for his colourful rhetoric and combative debating style"[180] and the Spectator once awarded him Debater of the Year.[181]
Honours[link]
Galloway has been conferred by the President of Pakistan with the following decorations:[182]
- Hilal-e-Pakistan
- Hilal-e-Quaid-e-Azam
References[link]
- ^ "Galloway expelled by Labour". BBC. 24 October 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3205889.stm. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
- ^ "George Galloway profile". bbc online. 17 July 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4539429.stm. Retrieved 4 August 2009.
- ^ "Poplar & Limehouse: Constituency". The Daily Telegraph (London). 7 May 2010. http://ukpolitics.telegraph.co.uk/Poplar+%26+Limehouse. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
- ^ "Glasgow region round-up: Galloway misses out". Glasgow: STV. 6 May 2011. http://news.stv.tv/election-2011/247466-galloway-misses-out-on-glasgow-regional-vote/. Retrieved 30 March 2012.
- ^ David Aaronovitch (27 April 2003). "Lies and the Left". The Observer (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/apr/27/labour.uk. Retrieved 22 June 2011. "Galloway was once a genuine critic of Saddam's"
- ^ "Profile of George Galloway", BBC News, 22 April 2003. Retrieved on 8 September 2007.
- ^ a b Sackur, Stephen (26 January 2007). "Hardtalk: George Galloway". BBC NEWS. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/6302175.stm. Retrieved 21 August 2008.
- ^ Jeffrey, Simon (17 May 2005). "Galloway defends himself at US Senate". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/17/iraq.usa. Retrieved 9 January 2010.
- ^ a b McVeigh, Karen (3 December 2004). "The rise and fall and rise again of 'Gorgeous' George". The Scotsman (Edinburgh). http://news.scotsman.com/georgegalloway/The-rise-and-fall-and.2585112.jp. Retrieved 11 April 2010.
- ^ Morley, David (2007). Gorgeous George: The Life and Adventures of George Galloway. Politico's Publishing. p. 5. ISBN 1-84275-185-9.
- ^ Andy McSmith (31 March 2012). "George Galloway: The political rebel with a cause - Profiles - People". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/george-galloway-the-political-rebel-with-a-cause-7604006.html. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
- ^ a b c David Smith. "The Observer Profile: George Galloway | Media | The Observer". Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/nov/21/iraq.pressandpublishing. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
- ^ "George Galloway". Youth Football Scotland. http://www.youthfootballscotland.co.uk/news-a-media/my-youth-career/1391-george-galloway. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
- ^ Cristina Odone (3 April 2012). "What is it about Gorgeous George that gets the girls?". Daily Telegraph. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100148867/what-is-it-about-gorgeous-george-that-gets-the-girls/. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
- ^ Smith, Aidan (15 October 2006). "Meet the cat that got the cream". The Scotsman (Edinburgh: Johnston Press Digital Publishing). http://news.scotsman.com/georgegalloway/Meet-the-cat-that-got.2818619.jp. Retrieved 29 September 2010.
- ^ "A runaway victory for George Galloway – and all praise to Allah". Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9176195/A-runaway-victory-for-George-Galloway-and-all-praise-to-Allah.html. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
- ^ Gribbin, Alice. "George Galloway's conversion to Islam". New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/george-galloway-conversion-islam-muslim. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
- ^ Helen Pidd "George Galloway denies Jemima Khan's claims of Muslim conversion ceremony", The Guardian, 26 April 2012
- ^ a b "George Galloway". Dundee Courier and Advertiser. 24 April 1981.
- ^ Scott, Kirsty; MacAskill, Ewen (23 April 2003). "Special Reports: Two views of George: all heart or a pain in the neck". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/apr/23/uk.iraq4. Retrieved 15 December 2005.
- ^ Geoffrey Parkhouse "Benn to Fight Purge on Left", The Glasgow Herald, 10 December 1981, p.1 (as reproduced on the news.google website)
- ^ "Remarkable idea to raise funds for city". Dundee Courier and Advertiser: p. 3. 19 August 1981.
- ^ 'Glasgow Hillhead' (PA number 263) in "General Election Constituency Guide", BBC Data, 1987.
- ^ Jamie Wilson, Owen Bowcott and Vikram Dodd (23 April 2003). "Charity, fundraiser or political campaign?". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/apr/24/uk.labour1. Retrieved 21 August 2008.
- ^ a b Michael Paterson (23 April 2003). "Leadership of War on Want marked by turbulence and tension". The Daily Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1428223/Leadership-of-War-on-Want-marked-by-turbulence-and-tension.html. Retrieved 21 August 2008.
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- ^ "Probe into Galloway attack claims". BBC News. 11 June 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6740775.stm. Retrieved 21 August 2008.
- ^ "Galloway in sectarian belly attack". Metro. 11 June 2007. http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=52505. Retrieved 21 August 2008.
- ^ Watson, Richard (26 April 2003). "Why the MP went begging to Pakistan". Telegraph (London). Archived from the original on 14 May 2007. http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-2715607_ITM.
- ^ Jamie Wilson, Owen Bowcott and Vikram Dodd (21 August 2008). "Charity, fundraiser or political campaign?". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/apr/24/uk.labour1. Retrieved 21 August 2008.
- ^ Campbell, Duncan (23 December 2004). "Galloway brings Zapatista to book". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/dec/23/books.media. Retrieved 21 August 2008.
- ^ "3am Literature: MEXICAN NEW WAVE". 3ammagazine.com. May 2005. http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2005/may/mexican_new_wave.html. Retrieved 9 January 2010.
- ^ Stothard, Peter (26 September 2005). "WBLG: Topple the mighty". The Times. http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/2005/09/topple_the_migh.html. Retrieved 27 November 2009.
- ^ Gillan, Audrey (14 January 2006). "From firebrand to pussycat: Galloway's TV transformation". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/14/channel4.broadcasting.
- ^ "George Galloway – 'The Mother of All Talk Shows'". Spidered News. 27 March 2010. http://www.spiderednews.com/GeorgeGalloway.htm?vid=2448065. Retrieved 28 March 2010.
- ^ "The Week with George Galloway official site". talkSPORT. August 2010. http://www.talksport.co.uk/radio/week-george-galloway.
- ^ John Plunkett "TalkSport to axe all non-sports content", The Guardian 7 March 2012
- ^ "Programme: The Real Deal". Press TV. September 2010. http://www.presstv.ir/program/144165.html.
- ^ "Programs: Comment". Press TV. September 2010. http://www.presstv.ir/program/143887.html.
- ^ Sweney, Mark (9 August 2009). "George Galloway rapped by Ofcom over impartial Press TV chatshows". London: MediaGuardian<!. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/03/george-galloway-ofcom-press-tv. Retrieved 27 December 2010.
- ^ George Galloway (June 2007). "George Galloway: The US Senate and Westminster got both barrells, now it's your turn". Daily Record. http://blogs.dailyrecord.co.uk/georgegalloway.
- ^ George Galloway contributor page, The Guardian website
- ^ Macintyre, Ben (18 May 2005). "The Day Garrulous George fired at the Senate with both barrels". The Times (London). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article523692.ece. Retrieved 15 December 2005.
- ^ Happold, Tom (7 June 2005). "Bagdhad, Washington, South Shields". The Guardian (London). http://politics.guardian.co.uk/otherparties/story/0,9061,1501189,00.html. Retrieved 15 December 2005.
- ^ Chamberlain, Gethin (18 May 2005). "Galloway bluster fails to convince Senate". The Scotsman (Edinburgh). http://news.scotsman.com/georgegalloway/Galloway-bluster-fails-to-convince.2627434.jp. Retrieved 21 August 2008.
- ^ "www.defence.pk". www.defence.pk. 27 December 2009. http://www.defence.pk/forums/national-political-issues/42603-british-mp-george-galloway-exposed-musharraf-mqm.html. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
External links[link]
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: George Galloway |
- GeorgeGalloway.com Official website
- www.debretts.co.uk
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by George Galloway
- George Galloway at the Internet Movie Database
- The Scotsman. Indefatigably yours. Personal interview, 19 May 2003.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| Preceded by Roy Jenkins |
Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead 1987 – 1997 |
Succeeded by Constituency Abolished |
| Preceded by Constituency Created |
Member of Parliament for Glasgow Kelvin 1997 – 2005 |
Succeeded by Constituency Abolished |
| Preceded by Oona King |
Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow 2005 – 2010 |
Succeeded by Rushanara Ali |
| Preceded by Marsha Singh |
Member of Parliament for Bradford West 2012 – present |
Incumbent |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | George Galloway |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | politician |
| Date of birth | 16 August 1954 |
| Place of birth | Dundee, Scotland |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/George_Galloway
Related pages:
http://ru.wn.com/Галлоуэй, Джордж
http://de.wn.com/George Galloway
http://fr.wn.com/George Galloway
http://pl.wn.com/George Galloway
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Galloway
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Nicolás Maduro Moros | |
|---|---|
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| Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office August 2006 |
|
| President | Hugo Chávez |
| Preceded by | Alí Rodríguez Araque |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 23, 1962 Caracas |
Nicolás Maduro Moros (born 23 November 1962 in Caracas) is a Venezuelan politician who was appointed foreign minister by President Hugo Chávez on 9 August 2006.[1]
Biography[link]
Nicolas Maduro began his political career as a bus driver and unofficial trade-unionist representing the workers of the Caracas Metro system in the 1970s and 1980s (back then, unions within the Metro company were not allowed). He finished high school in the Liceo Avalos, a public high-school west of Caracas during the '80 (El Valle neighborhood), but lacks any university or further education. He is considered one of the founders of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), but his biggest political accomplishment was as activist for the release of Hugo Chávez from prison, and later as one of this regional political coordinators during the 1998 presidential race. Maduro was elected on the MVR ticket to the Venezuelan Chamber of Deputies in 1998, to the National Constituent Assembly in 1999, and to the National Assembly in 2000 and 2005, representing the Capital District. The legislature elected him Speaker of the Assembly, even though he did not have a college degree or formal education. He held that position from 2005 until the first half of 2006.[2] Maduro is married to Cilia Flores,[3] herself a prominent figure within the MVR. She replaced Maduro as Speaker of assembly.[4]
In January 2009, Israel ordered the Venezuelan ambassador and his staff to leave the country after Venezuela expelled Israeli diplomats over Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Maduro stated, with regard to Israel's expelling of the Venezuelan ambassador, that "The response of the State of Israel is weak, late and in any case for us it's an honor. We're proud that the State of Israel that exists today, led by these criminals, made this decision."[5]
On September 2006, he was detained by the Homeland Security officers at JFK Airport, after paying for three air tickets in cash.[6]
On the 15th of December 2011, it was reported in El Universal that President Hugo Chavez wished to make Maduro, the PSUV candidate in the state of Carabobo for governor, which is currently held by the opposition MUD.
References[link]
- ^ http://www.venezuela-oas.org/Notadeprensa09-8-06.html
- ^ http://www.mre.gob.ve/Noticias/Canciller_NM/curriculum.htm
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/story/2005/12/051214_venezueladenunciarc.shtml
- ^ http://www.rnv.gov.ve/noticias/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=36771
- ^ Israel expels Venezuelan envoy, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), 28 January 2009.
- ^ [1]
External links[link]
- Ministerio del Poder Popular para Relaciones Exteriores (Venezuelan Foreign Ministry)
- Nicolás Maduro Moros, Ministro del Poder Popular para Relaciones Exteriores (government CV)
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Alí Rodríguez Araque |
Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs August 2006 - |
Succeeded by |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Maduro Moros, Nicolas |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 23 November 1962 |
| Place of birth | Caracas |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Nicolás_Maduro
Related pages:
http://ru.wn.com/Мадуро, Николас
http://fr.wn.com/Nicolás Maduro
http://de.wn.com/Nicolás Maduro
http://es.wn.com/Nicolás Maduro
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolás_Maduro
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Diosdado Cabello | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| President of Venezuela Acting |
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| In office 13 April 2002 – 14 April 2002 |
|
| President | Hugo Chávez |
| Preceded by | Pedro Carmona (de facto) |
| Succeeded by | Hugo Chávez |
| 20th Vice President of Venezuela | |
| In office 13 January 2002 – 28 April 2002 |
|
| President | Hugo Chávez |
| Preceded by | Adina Bastidas |
| Succeeded by | José Vicente Rangel |
| Minister of Interior and Justice | |
| In office May 2002 – January 2003 |
|
| Preceded by | Ramón Rodríguez Chacín |
| Succeeded by | Lucas Rincón Romero |
| 35th Governor of Miranda | |
| In office 2004–2008 |
|
| Preceded by | Enrique Mendoza |
| Succeeded by | Henrique Capriles Radonski |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1963-04-15) April 15, 1963 (age 49) El Furrial, Monagas State, Venezuela |
| Political party | MVR (1997–2008) PSUV (2008 – present) |
| Profession | Engineer |
Diosdado Cabello Rondón (born April 15, 1963[1]) is a Venezuelan politician. A former member of the armed forces, he was involved in Hugo Chávez's February 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt. He became a leading member of Chavez's Movimiento V República (MVR), and remains a leading member of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela into which MVR was merged in 2007. Governor of Miranda from 2004 to 2008,he lost the 2008 election to Henrique Capriles Radonski, and was subsequently appointed Public Works & Housing Minister. In November 2009 he was additionally appointed head of the National Commission of Telecom, a position traditionally independent from Ministry of Public Works and Housing.[2] In 2010, he was elected deputy of the National Assembly of Venezuela, the country's legislative branch.
Background[link]
Diosdado Cabello was born in El Furrial, Monagas State.[1] His background is in engineering: he has an undergraduate degree in systems engineering from the Instituto Universitario Politécnico de las Fuerzas Armadas Nacionales[1] and a graduate degree in engineering project management from the Andrés Bello Catholic University.[1] A former member of the armed forces, he was involved in Chávez's abortive coup d'état of February 1992, for which he was jailed for two years.[3]
Political career[link]
| Miranda State Governor Election, 2008 Results Source: CNE data |
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Following Chávez's 1998 electoral victory, he helped set up the pro-Chávez grassroots civil society organizations known as "Bolivarian Circles". He was head of telecoms regulator Conatel during the time the market was opened to competition. In May 2001 he became Chavez' chief of staff, and was appointed Vice President by President Hugo Chávez on January 13, 2002, replacing Adina Bastidas.[3] As such, he was responsible to both the president and the National Assembly, and for the relations between the executive and legislative branches of the government.
On April 13, 2002, he took on the duties of the presidency on a temporary basis, replacing Pedro Carmona, head of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, as interim president after the coup d'état when Chávez was kept prisoner and was consequently absent from office. Upon taking office, Cabello said that "I, Diosdado Cabello, am assuming the presidency until such time as the president of the republic, Hugo Chávez Frías, appears." A few hours later, Chávez was back in office. This made Cabello's presidency the world's second briefest, after that of Mexican President Pedro Lascuráin.
On April 28, 2002, Cabello was replaced as Vice President by José Vicente Rangel. Cabello was named interior minister in May 2002,[4] and then infrastructure minister in January 2003.
In October 2004, he was elected to a four-year term as Governor of Miranda State. He lost the 2008 election to Henrique Capriles Radonski, and was subsequently appointed Public Works & Housing Minister. In November 2009 he was additionally appointed head of Conatel.[2]
His sister, Glenna Daboin, is a political scientist and current Counsellor of the Venezuelan Permanent Mission to the United Nations.[5] His brother, José David Cabello, previously minister of infrastructure, is in charge of the nation's taxes as head of SENIAT, Venezuela's revenue service.
References[link]
- ^ a b c d Vicepresidencia de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello Rondón, accessed 19 April 2010
- ^ a b "Chavez eliminates autonomy of broadcasting commission," Informe21, Nov 11, 2009.
- ^ a b [1]"Chavez Dismisses Vice President," Associated Press, Jan 13, 2002.
- ^ "Venezuela president names new cabinet", BBC News, May 6, 2002.
- ^ [2]"Assembly Hears Report from Sixth Committee"
| Preceded by Adina Bastidas Ramírez |
Vice President of Venezuela 2002–2002 |
Succeeded by José Vicente Rangel Vale |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Rondón, Diosdado Cabello |
| Alternative names | Cabello, Diosdado |
| Short description | Venezuelan politician |
| Date of birth | April 15, 1963 |
| Place of birth | El Furrial, Monagas State |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Diosdado_Cabello
Related pages:
http://de.wn.com/Diosdado Cabello
http://it.wn.com/Diosdado Cabello
http://es.wn.com/Diosdado Cabello
http://pl.wn.com/Diosdado Cabello
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diosdado_Cabello
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Jaime Bayly | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jaime Bayly Letts (1965-02-19) February 19, 1965 (age 47) Lima, Peru |
| Occupation | Writer, Journalist |
| Language | (Spanish) (English) |
| Spouse(s) | Silva Nuñez del Arco (2011-present) Sandra Masías (1993-1997) |
Jaime Bayly Letts (born (1965-02-19) February 19, 1965 (age 47), in Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian writer, journalist and television personality.[1] He is the third of 10 children and is known as "el niño terrible" (the terrible boy).[citation needed]
Contents |
Early life[link]
A student at Markham College, an English private school in Lima, and later at Colegio San Agustín of Lima. In his early youth he was coerced by his mother to work at daily newspaper La Prensa of Lima in order to become more responsible through a part-time job. He spent every afternoon after school working in journalism until late.
In 1982 he was accepted to the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. After studying for four years, he had to leave the university as he could not pass a mandatory subject.
Career[link]
His first television appearance was in 1983 during Peruvian municipal elections, interviewing candidates and politicians. Later on, he began a career as a late show host interviewing celebrities.
Bayly's first late-night show, '1990 en America', got the attention of TV audiences and critics. The following year he hosted a copy of David Letterman's Late Show called 'Que hay de nuevo?', also highly popular.[2]
During the 1990s Bayly hosted late-night shows in the United States at CBS Telenoticias Network Latin America and Telemundo for six years.
After President of Peru Alberto Fujimori sought asylum in Japan in 2001 following a ten-year term in order to avoid prosecution on charges of corruption, independent news media found itself in a better position. Bayly was able to host political programme 'El Francotirador' ('The Sniper'), interviewing candidates to the 2001 Presidential Election. In that program, he apparently offended several personalities with his political opinions, and finally had to quit. Inspired by the experience, Bayly wrote a book, taking the title from the show. Later he resumed the program.[citation needed] His interviewing style is somewhat aggressive & controversial leaving him looking calm & collected but reflecting poorly on his guests.[citation needed]
In 2010, Bayly announced he intended to run for President in the Peruvian general election, 2011 to succeed Alan García[citation needed]. Later that year, he supported leftist candidate Susana Villaran in her successful campaign to become mayor of Lima[citation needed]. As a consequence, broadcasting company Frecuencia Latina cancelled his show.[citation needed]
On his U.S. program which airs on the Miami-based MegaTV channel, Bayly is well-known for his radical right-wing views which have included attacks against indigenous movements in Bolivia and Peru, support for the 2009 military coup in Honduras and attacks against the governments of Venezuela and Cuba[citation needed]. Bayly has constantly warned about Hugo Chavez trying to "form an empire" in South America[citation needed]. During the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, Bayly initially supported John McCain[citation needed], stating that he believed McCain would be willing to invade Cuba and "hang the Castro brothers from palm trees."[citation needed] Bayly later switched his support to Obama when it became obvious McCain would lose the elections.[citation needed]
Bayly routinely mocks Bolivian president Evo Morales on his television show, calling him "mentally challenged," "ignorant" and makes fun of his heavy native accent[citation needed]. When the democratically elected Honduran government of Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup in June 2009, Bayly stated he "would not shed tears over the coup" and poked fun at Zelaya's appearance, labeling him "El Mariachi Zelaya." Since then Honduras has become one of the region's most dangerous countries for journalists as several reporters and activists have been assassinated.[citation needed]
During his MegaTV program on February 2, 2012, Bayly announced that when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez dies, he and the network would throw "a big party" to celebrate.[citation needed]
In March 2012 Bayly stated on his show that anyone who "is a coup plotter against Chavez will be considered a friend and ally..."
Books[link]
His novel No se lo Digas a Nadie (Don't Tell Anyone) inspired a screenplay in 1998 directed by Francisco Lombardi starring Santiago Magill and Christian Meier. He wrote other novels, all of them on politics, sexual freedom and friendship. Several of his books contain recurring semi-autobiographical elements (e.g. bisexual cocaine using Peruvian newscaster who moves to Miami). The character for "El Cojo" is supposedly based on his father who was also crippled. His characters are often heartless, and reflect moral ambivalence, which makes it difficult to identify with them.
- No se lo Digas a Nadie (Don't Tell Anyone) (1994); film by Francisco Lombardi in 1998.
- Fue Ayer y No Me Acuerdo (It Was Yesterday, I Don't Remember It) (1995).
- Los Últimos Días de La Prensa (The Last Days of La Prensa) (1996).
- La Noche es Virgen (The Night Is Virgin) (1997).
- Yo Amo a Mi Mami (I Love My Mommy) (1999).
- Los Amigos que Perdí (The Friends I Lost) (2000).
- Aquí no hay Poesía (There Is No Poetry Here) (2001)
- La Mujer de mi Hermano (My Brother's Wife) (2002), film by Ricardo de Montreuil in 2005.
- El Huracán Lleva tu Nombre (The Hurricane Has Your Name) (2004)
- Y de Repente, Un Ángel (Suddenly, An Angel) (2005), finalist of Premio Planeta
- El Canalla Sentimental (The Sentimental Jerk) (2008).
- El Cojo y el Loco (The Crippled And The Crazy) (2009).
- Morirás Mañana: El Escritor Sale a Matar (You Will Die Tomorrow: The Writer Goes On to Kill) (2010).
References[link]
- ^ Rohter, Larry (18 August 1996). "Miami, the Hollywood of Latin America". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/18/arts/miami-the-hollywood-of-latin-america.html. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
- ^ "Jaime Bayly bio". http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0063121/bio?mode=desktop.
External links[link]
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Bayly, Jaime |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | February 19, 1965 |
| Place of birth | Lima, Peru |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Jaime_Bayly
Related pages:
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http://pt.wn.com/Jaime Bayly
http://de.wn.com/Jaime Bayly
http://it.wn.com/Jaime Bayly
http://pl.wn.com/Jaime Bayly
http://es.wn.com/Jaime Bayly
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Bayly
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
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Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as]; born 28 July 1954) is the current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Following his own political ideology of Bolivarianism and "Socialism for the 21st Century", he has focused on implementing socialist reforms in the country as a part of a social project known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has seen the implementation of a new constitution, participatory democratic councils and the nationalisation of several key industries.
Born into a working class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system, he founded the secretive Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s to work towards overthrowing it. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez government in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Getting out of prison after two years, he founded a social democratic political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He subsequently introduced a new constitution which increased rights for marginalised groups and altered the structure of Venezuelan government, and was re-elected in 2000. During his second presidential term, he introduced a system of Bolivarian Missions, Communal Councils and worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform, whilst also nationalising various key industries.
