Monday, October 15, 2007

Chávez: Venezuela and Cuba have the same government

Chávez: Venezuela and Cuba have the same government
MARÍA LILIBETH DA CORTE
EL UNIVERSAL

"Until victory, forever. We are overcoming," said Cuban and Venezuelan
presidents Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez Sunday after they talked over
the phone for one hour and 22 minutes, during Chávez' weekly radio and
TV show Aló, Presidente (Hello, President). It was the first live
contact with the Cuban leader since he got ill almost 15 months ago.

Before their phone talk, a 17-minute video footage was broadcast showing
a meeting the two leaders held last October 13 in Havana, which
according to Chávez took more than four hours. During their encounter,
the Venezuelan ruler gave Castro a painting he made while in Yare jail.
Castro asked Chávez to sign the painting.

Chávez' weekly show Sunday was broadcast from Santa Clara town in Cuba
and was dedicated to honor Argentinean guerrillas leader Ernesto "Che"
Guevara, on the 40th anniversary of his death. Such commemoration and
the presentation of Castro occupied most of Chávez' show. After the
transmission, Chávez was scheduled to attend the so-called "pre-opening
ceremony" of Cienfuegos refinery in the island.

Chávez was visibly excited when he talked to Castro, who certified that
he was talking live by describing every move Chávez was making on TV. "I
watch you waving your left hand, yes, I know you are left-handed," said
Fidel from Havana.

During the talk, Chávez highlighted the work his government has been
making with the Cuban administration and said: "We are one single
government."

Earlier, Chávez reminded the words of Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage,
who once said that the island had "two presidents: Castro and Chávez."
"This causes urticaria to the Venezuelan oligarchy, and we do not want
them to get sick. Yet Lage said so, that Cuba had two presidents, and
then I just said in Cuba that Venezuela has two presidents too, but we
are one single government. We are headed for the (José) Martí-style,
Caribbean, South American Confederation of Bolivarian Republics."

"Fidel, let's tell everybody, we are going to turn this aggregation of
countries -the Bolivarian Alternatives for the Peoples of the Americas
(ALBA) and beyond that- into a confederation of republics. We are going
to turn the union of our peoples into a region-power."

Then the Venezuelan ruler claimed that the links between Cuba and his
country dated back to the times before independence. His remarks came
following his reading of a letter forwarded to Francisco de Miranda
while in Havana from, Chávez said, Simón Bolívar's father. "Love and
desire between Cuba and Venezuela have been in the air for centuries,"
the Venezuelan president added.

Meanwhile, amidst jokes and criticisms regarding US President George W.
Bush, Castro extolled Wolfgang Larrazábal, the chair of the government
board that took power in 1958 after Marcos Pérez Jiménez was overthrown.

"As you have seen from this video footage, Fidel is in a good mood. He
has a nice color. I told him, 'Hey, you look blushed.' He has his beard
trimmed and the best mood and mystic," said Chávez, after Castro
terminated the phone talk because he was going "to take some pills."

A threat against Bolivian dissenters
Perhaps getting ahead of his planned confederation of republics, Chávez
warned "the Bolivian oligarchy" that his government would not "fold its
arm" if his Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales were overthrown or killed.
He added that Bolivian oligarchs, "based on tricks and terror," are
sabotaging the Constituent Assembly.

He forecast that "evidently" the Constituent Assembly in Bolivia could
not draft a new Constitution. In a contemplative mood, Chávez stated,
"oligarchies do not forgive." He told his ministers that "no consensus
can be sought with such currents. What consensus? The consensus of
Washington. All they want is hegemony and imposition."

"Be careful, because you could be faced not only with the Vietnam of the
ideas, but also the Vietnam of the machine guns of war," Chávez
threatened Bolivian opposition groups.

Translated by Maryflor Suárez R.
msuarez@eluniversal.com

http://www.eluniversal.com/2007/10/15/en_pol_art_chavez:-venezuela-an_15A1130399.shtml

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