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“... that the levees were sinking and done nothing; rescue operations were shambolic and inadequate. Hugo Chávez rubbed it in by offering to send Louisiana a planeload of Venezuelan aid workers. Fidel Castro offered to send doctors. On 1 September, Condoleezza Rice was spotted in Manhattan shoe-shopping at Ferragamo: a symbol of a government that didn’t ...”

“... claim that the revolution avoided personality cults, Havana is full of billboards showing Che, Hugo Chávez and, above all, El Comandante – my favourite has him dressed in full olive drab regalia, gazing out benevolently, saying ‘vamos bien.’ But is Cuba doing well? Kapcia is right to say that the ‘sheer fact of survival’ is a remarkable ...”

“... Tierra del Fuego’. Latin America’s conversion to free trade was short-lived, however. In 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela, and Latin America began another turn to the left. In one country after another, self-described socialists, from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Michelle Bachelet in Chile to Evo Morales in Bolivia and ...”

“... neighbours are sometimes apprehensive, they are not participants in its troubles. Even President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela (about whom Richard Gott has recently written in the LRB) has done no more than strike an occasional ‘Bolivarian’ populist attitude. Few countries in the last two centuries have been as little involved as Colombia in ...”

“... we learned that the elderly passenger had lived in Venezuela for a year. The driver chipped in: Hugo Chávez, he said, was his hero. The mood stayed light until talk turned to Beslan: the elderly man’s granddaughter was one of the school hostages; she survived the assault on the building but was injured and lost an eye. He said he didn’t blame the ...”

“... are unlikely to be assassinated in the vicinity of Wall Street and Rockefeller Centre. In 2006, Hugo Chávez delivered free heating oil to the South Bronx and ostentatiously paid off the debts of Hispanic NGOs in the city. For Castro in the 1960s, Harlem was a useful place to expose American injustice. He made a point of inviting the hotel’s mostly ...”

“... conference circuit, sitting on panels with former heads of state. When a reporter needs a quote on Hugo Chávez or Iraq, Villalobos is there to help. As many of his compatriots have noted, the life Villalobos leads today resembles the one promised to Dalton by the CIA in 1964, ‘a life with all the possibilities’. Villalobos’s apostasy is an extreme ...”

“... as a whole. Credit for this is commonly given to the support Cuba enjoyed from the government of Hugo Chávez – as if the island had exchanged reliance on the Soviets for Bolivarian dependency. But Venezuelan oil is only part of the story. Over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, the Cuban economy was reshaped by a turn away from sugar: once the ...”

“... parties and factions across the globe, with hardline groups in New York and London and Stockholm. Hugo Chávez got his start in a Venezuelan platoon putting down a group of Hoxhaist rebels; an offshoot of the Hoxhaist party in Ecuador holds the provincial government of Esmeraldas. In Berlin, where I live, there are certain protests where the old ...”

“... Germans? Unlikely. In Latin America the only leader who seems to believe in continental unity is Hugo Chávez, which is to say someone whom most other people do not wish to unite with. Often Latin Americans give the impression that language is still the key, so if their own team goes out they would side with Spain or Portugal; a problem in the ...”

“... and ancient peasant struggles against the landlords. The process that began with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela nearly ten years ago, and continued with the emergence of leftist presidents at the head of indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador, may yet produce a surprise result in Paraguay’s elections. Fernando Lugo, a 58-year-old ...”

“... People got through the Special Period thanks to tourist dollars and remittances. After Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, Venezuela provided a major boost to the Cuban economy with oil subsidies and special trade agreements. But since 2014, following Venezuela’s own economic meltdown, no patron has stepped in to subsidise Cuba’s ...”

“... forces and to produce ethanol from sugar cane. So Zelaya turned instead to another regional power, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. From 2007 onwards, Chávez began to deliver subsidised petroleum and to invest in the development projects that Zelaya wanted to promote. In 2008, Zelaya raised the minimum wage to the ...”

“... Robin Hood is a programme of the left. Robin Hood is Jeremy Corbyn. He’s Russell Brand. He’s Hugo Chávez. So it used to seem. But a change has come about. The wealthiest and most powerful in Europe, Australasia and North America have turned the myth to their advantage. In this version of Robin Hood the traditional poor – the unemployed, the ...”

“... and prices reacted accordingly (amid some agitation among traders regarding the ascension of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and deteriorating US-Iraq relations). Rising oil prices in 2000, and the bursting of the Wall Street high-technology bubble, doubtless fed the perception that oil was scarce and economic recovery might be compromised. But rising ...”