On April 25, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro announced the arrest of American Timothy Hallet Tracy. “The gringo who financed the violent groups,” Maduro said, “has been captured.” His justice minister claimed that Tracy was trained as a spy and was involved in an intricate plot aimed at fostering destabilizing violence. At the root of the […]
David Fernandez/Newscom Voters go to the polls on Sunday, April 14, to elect Venezuela’s next president. Snap elections followed the March 5 death of the authoritarian populist Hugo Chavez. It appears likely that voters will choose Nicolas Maduro, interim president, and Chavez’s handpicked successor, over opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. A dying Chavez defeated Capriles on […]
LEO RAMIREZ/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom The situation encountered by Heritage analysts on the ground in Venezuela last week was of a country that has been looted and is falling apart—literally and figuratively. The once thriving nightlife of downtown Caracas is but a distant memory. These days the streets are deserted, surrendered to gangsters and narcotraffickers. People are […]
Hugo Chavez may be gone, but the Jews of Venezuela are not resting any easier. Over the weekend, anti-Semitic graffiti was found scrawled on the walls and doors in the San Bernadino section of Caracas, the country’s capital city. The graffiti contained messages such as “Jews are murderers, Jews out,” and several comments that implied […]
Although Jerusalem’s keeping quiet about Hugo Chavez’s death, Haaretz reports of Israeli hopes to “reboot” relations with Venezuela. For background on El Commandante’s animus towards Israel, see Israel HaYom. The JTA elaborates on Chavez’s strained relationship with Venezuela’s Jewish community. Repairing Israeli-Venezuelan ties isn’t far-fetched. Elections are supposed to be held within 30 days; the […]
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died after a two-year battle with cancer, ending the socialist leader’s 14-year rule of the South American country, Vice President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised speech. The flamboyant 58-year-old leader had undergone four operations in Cuba for a cancer that was first detected in his pelvic region in mid-2011. His last surgery […]
Photo credit: Venezuelan Presidency/ZUMA Press/Newscom In the early morning of February 18, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez tweeted that he was back in Caracas, after spending over two months in a Havana hospital. On December 11, Chavez underwent a fourth round of surgery for an undisclosed cancer. Chavez was immediately moved to a military hospital under […]
Venezuela’s government is flat-out lying to its people about cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez’s health, the country’s leading opposition figure charged Sunday. “The people are being told bald-faced lies about the situation the president is in,” Henrique Capriles, who lost last October’s presidential race to Chavez, said at a ceremony in Miranda state of which he […]
Over the holidays, Venezuelans continued to receive increasingly grim news regarding the health of President Hugo Chavez. Current Vice President and Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro rushed to Havana and reported back that Chavez had suffered “new complications” and that the President remains in a “delicate” condition following his fourth round of cancer surgery on December […]
The latest [dictator] to publicly announce his support for the commander-in-chief’s reelection bid was Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who this week assured he’d vote for Obama if he were from the United States. The America-bashing strongman made the announcement on state-owned television, saying “Obama is a good guy” and that if Obama was from Caracas, he’d […]
