[R-G] Hugo Chavez and the U.S. Media

[Anthony Fenton]

Hugo Chavez and the U.S. Media
November 19, 2008 By Jules Boykoff
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19685

In May 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech in Miami where he argued that  
President Bush's flawed foreign policy in the Middle East had swerved  
our eyes off the Latin American prize, rendering the U.S. "incapable  
of advancing our interests in the region."

He went on to say, "No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez  
have stepped into this vacuum. His predictable yet perilous mix of  
anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook  
diplomacy offers the same false promise as the tried and failed  
ideologies of the past."[i]

A few months later at the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney  
railed from the rostrum that Republicans, "will strengthen our economy  
and keep us from being held hostage by [Vladimir] Putin, [Hugo] Chavez  
and [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. And we will never allow America to retreat  
in the face of evil extremism!"[ii]

Such harsh assessments of Hugo Chavez—as a demagogue with a high  
dictator quotient, someone whose oil wealth allows him to interfere in  
the region and who's mentioned in the same breath as supposed  
proponents of "evil extremism"—have become a common feature of U.S.  
political banter. Bashing Hugo Chavez, it seems, has become as bi- 
partisan as grandiloquent campaign promises to reform Washington.

But politicians will be politicians. The bigger-impact question is  
whether the mainstream press in the U.S. has adopted the same  
contemptuous mentality. As arbiters of reality, the media set the  
social goalposts for how we view the world and prioritize particular  
social issues over others. The way the media present news veers us  
toward perceiving certain issues as problems, certain activists as  
troublemakers, certain personalities as scalawags.

Mass-media scholars identify "frames," or, persistent patterns of  
selection and emphasis that structure not only what becomes news, but  
also prime us for how to think about that news. By selecting  
particular features of the undulating political complex and deeming  
these features important, the media play a critical function in the  
ebb and flow of socio-political power.

Venezuela mavens have long suspected Chávez has been given the short  
end of the U.S. media stick. For instance, Mark Weisbrot of the Center  
for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) wrote that the U.S. government  
has actively attempted "to demonize Chavez and de-legitimize the  
democratic government of Venezuela" and that "the U.S. and  
international media have enthusiastically embraced this agenda."[iii]  
In a scholarly article I wrote—"Devil or Democrat?: Hugo Chávez and  
the U.S. Prestige Press"— that's forthcoming in the peer-review  
journal New Political Science (March 2009), I systematically test  
Weisbrot's hunch. In this analysis I found that the U.S. prestige press 
—meaning the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the  
Washington Post—adopted four dominant frames when reporting on Chávez:  
the Dictator Frame, the Castro Disciple Frame, the Declining Economy  
Frame, and the Meddler-in-the-Region Frame. This study analyzed 979  
articles that appeared in these publications during the ten-year time  
period between 1998, the year he was first elected president, and  
December 2007.


"Mr. Chávez's jackboots"

Hugo Chávez has won three presidential elections (in 1998, 2000, 2006)  
and propelled a new constitution into being with the help of a  
Constituent Assembly (in 1999). Nevertheless, the U.S. press  
frequently portrayed him as a dictator or a demagogue with  
"authoritarian tendencies."[iv] The Dictator Frame was the most  
predominant frame in both hard news and opinion pieces, with 53.4% of  
all articles framing Chávez as a dictator or demagogue. The Washington  
Post employed the frame the most, in almost three of every five  
articles it printed (59.8%) followed by the Wall Street Journal  
(52.4%) and the New York Times (50.5%).

Even before Chávez was elected president, the U.S. press was laying  
the groundwork for the Dictator Frame, allowing Chávez's detractors to  
define him. In a Washington Post story from the campaign trail, the  
Chávez opposition was given space to trashtalk: "Branded by his  
detractors as a reckless dictator-in-waiting with leftist leanings,  
Chavez, 44, has created a sense of uneasiness with both his proposals  
and his defiant, high-voltage campaign style." Such "high-voltage"  
campaigning was actually a vow to prevent voting corruption by  
securing election monitors who could ensure the integrity of the vote- 
counting.[v]Often journalists relied entirely on the claims of  
unidentified disgruntled members of the opposition. This "he said"  
construction (often without the "she said" in support of Chávez's  
policies) frequently put unsubstantiated oppositional claims center  
stage.

After Chávez's ascendance to the presidency, the media kicked its use  
of the Dictator Frame into high gear. For instance, in article titled,  
"In Latin America, the Strongman Stirs in His Grave," the New York  
Times wrote, "All across Latin America, presidents and party leaders  
are looking over their shoulders. With his landslide victory in  
Venezuela's presidential election on Dec. 6, Hugo Chavez has revived  
an all-too-familiar specter that the region's ruling elite thought  
they had safely interred: that of the populist demagogue, the  
authoritarian man on horseback known as the caudillo."[vi] In the  
years that followed, Chávez was frequently dubbed a "strongman," a  
label usually reserved for unelected dictators.

The opinion pages also rippled with the Dictator Frame, which was  
often established though a guilt-by-association logic. Mirroring Mitt  
Romney's comments above, a Wall Street Journal editorial wrote,  
"Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is an ally of the Iranian mullahs, a  
supporter of North Korea, a close friend of Fidel Castro and a good  
customer for Vladimir Putin's weapon factories."[vii] Mary Anastasia  
O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal penned numerous diatribes that  
dubbed Chávez a dictator, alleging gross "human-rights violations  
carried out by the Venezuelan military" and that "One is left to  
ponder why so many human-rights groups that have long monitored Latin  
American military abuses are now so passive toward Mr. Chavez's  
jackboots."[viii] She later pointed to Chávez's "totalitarian  
aspirations" and argued his administration was "draining the last bit  
of freedom out of Venezuelan society."[ix]

The New York Times followed suit in a 2005 editorial that highlighted  
the "dangerous concentration of power" under Chávez, "a quasi  
dictator" who is engaging in "petulant idiocy." It concluded, "The  
United States should not further feed Mr. Chavez's ego and give him  
more excuses for demagogy by treating him as clumsily as it has  
treated his hero and role model, Fidel Castro, for the past four and a  
half decades."[x]


The Castro Connection

A second frame prestige-press journalists employed was the Castro  
Frame: linking Chávez to the iconic head of Cuba and to Cuba in  
general. Chávez was repeatedly depicted as Castro's disciple, acolyte,  
apprentice, or protégé. On one hand, this is true—Chávez does have an  
amiable relationship with the Cuban leader. But the media frequently  
invoked Castro even when he had nothing to do with the topic of the  
article. To put this in comparative perspective, how often do the  
media introduce the president of the United States based on that  
president's closest allies (say, Pervez Musharraf) when they're  
discussing domestic issues (say, abortion)? This only happens when  
that international ally is relevant to the story. Highlighting this  
relationship with Castro also taps into long-lasting American  
prejudices, given that Castro has—since the early 1960s—been the bête  
noire of the U.S. government. In public opinion polls has long been  
viewed as "unfavorable," as with a 2006 USA Today/Gallup poll that  
found 82% of those polled had an "unfavorable" opinion of the Cuban  
president.[xi] So, connecting Chávez to Castro and Cuba means slapping  
the "unfavorable" label on the Venezuelan president via guilt by  
association.

The Castro Disciple frame appeared in 31.4% of all articles, with the  
Washington Post using the frame most (40.6% of articles), followed by  
the Wall Street Journal (35.6%) and the New York Times (23.3%). Both  
hard-news articles and opinion pieces regularly portrayed Chávez and  
Castro as chummier than chummy.

For instance, covering Chávez's inauguration, the New York Times  
reported, "President Castro took copious notes throughout Mr. Chavez's  
speech. Afterward, the Cuban leader embraced Mr. Chavez in a bearhug  
at a street ceremony and directed a smart salute to the Venezuelan  
military high command, some of whom fought guerrillas financed and  
trained by Cuba 35 years ago."[xii] The content of the speech wasn't  
even discussed. Instead the Times opted to focus on the Castro  
connection. The "flirtation with Fidel Castro," as the Times put it in  
an article called "Venezuela's New Leader: Democrat or Dictator?,"  
picked up steam steam as the years went by.[xiii]

Even when Castro was irrelevant to the story, the media regularly  
referred to Chávez's supposed desire to impose a "Cuban-style  
government" in Venezuela.[xiv] This accusation often emerged from  
anonymous opposition members without affording Chávez supporters the  
chance to comment on such claims. A front-page Wall Street Journal  
article called Chávez a "Fidel Castro wannabe," asserting his "worst  
sin, some critics contend, is his close relationship with communist  
Cuba's dictator Fidel Castro."[xv].

In an op-ed Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post concurred: "In his  
ever-closer bonding with Havana's security and intelligence apparatus,  
his aggressive encouragement of the insurgencies in Bolivia and  
elsewhere, and his constant stoking of Latin anti-Americanism, the  
elected but increasingly authoritarian Venezuelan is emerging as the  
natural successor to a fading Fidel Castro - only Chavez is neither  
broke nor bound to an outdated Soviet ideology."[xvi]


"Economists blame Mr. Chávez": The Declining Economy Frame

When Chávez took the presidential helm in 1999, the Venezuelan economy  
was distressed. The oil industry had recently been de-nationalized in  
neoliberal fashion, and by the end of 1998, the poverty rate had risen  
above 50%, with more than one in five Venezuelans living in extreme  
poverty.[xvii] Along with privatization, the Venezuelan government had  
internationalized the tentacles of the state oil company—Petroleo de  
Venezuela, or PDVSA—acquiring oil refineries in Europe and the United  
States. This shifted hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign  
subsidiaries. In Changing Venezuela by Taking Power, Gregory Wilpert  
argues this resulted in "tremendous PDVSA costs that were incurred  
outside Venezuela" and "‘imported' to the national branch of PDVSA,  
thus lowering the overall profits and transfers to the  
government."[xviii] The fact that Venezuela's state-run oil company  
was relatively inefficient didn't help matters. In combination, these  
problems decreased the government's ability to offer its population  
social services and educational benefits.

After Chávez took office, Venezuela was burdened by political  
instability—including the coup in April 2002 and a devastating oil  
strike from December 2002 to February 2003—that translated into an  
economic nightmare. By the end of 2002, poverty rates had climbed to  
more than 55% while extreme poverty had reached 25% of the population. 
[xix] But after enduring the oil strike, Chávez has overseen a  
steadily improving economy, boosted in part by a sharp boost in oil  
prices. According to Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval of CEPR, "Since  
the first quarter of 2003, the economy has grown by a remarkable 87.3  
percent."[xx] At the same time, the Chávez government has jumpstarted  
social spending on education and literacy programs as well as health  
care, housing, and food subsidies for the poor, from 8.2% of GDP in  
1998 to 13.6% in 2006.[xxi]

Yet, this economic progress is virtually ignored by the U.S. prestige  
press, which often alleges that Venezuela's economy is sharply decline  
because of the policies and personality of Chávez. The Declining  
Economy Frame appeared in nearly a third of all articles (32.0%). The  
Wall Street Journal used the frame at the highest rate (43.8%), which  
shouldn't come as a surprise since the Journal's central focus is the  
economy. The New York Times employed the frame 28.5% of the time  
followed by the Washington Post at 24.1%. As time went by, use of the  
frame tapered off after oil strike was resolved in early 2003 and oil  
production resumed full-bore. The skyrocketing price of oil also  
contributed to the gradually diminishing use of this frame.

A Declining Economy Frame shouldn't be surprising since, at least  
through the oil strike and its aftershocks, the economy was hurting.  
Yet, too often the newspapers flattened the complex situation into a  
blame-game where Chávez was the sole cause of the economic malaise. To  
do this, the prestige press often made use of anonymous economists.  
For instance, during the oil strike, the Wall Street Journal reported,  
"Economists blame Mr. Chavez—who has a penchant for heated  
revolutionary rhetoric and revels in his friendships with Fidel Castro  
and Moammar Gadhafi—for the political turmoil that has engulfed the  
world's fifth-largest oil exporter and brought the economy to a near  
halt. Economists say Venezuela's economic situation will continue to  
worsen as long as Mr. Chavez rejects demands by a large chunk of  
Venezuelan society for a recall vote on his leadership, either through  
a referendum or an early election."[xxii]

Another common theme that emerged was the media's propensity to  
discipline Chávez for not following lockstep with the principles and  
practices of neoliberal capitalism. Even in the run-up to the 1998  
presidential election, reporters were questioning his economics. The  
New York Times reported, "To business leaders and international  
investors, Mr. Chavez is the red menace resurrected." The Times also  
reported that the possibility of non-neoliberal economic plans—in  
combinbation with his "vitriolic oratory and his support for Cuba"—  
has "terrified upper-class Venezuelans, who have been sending their  
money and other assets out of the country for fear of a Chavez  
victory." The Times then turned to unsourced critics who "also fear  
that he will raise protectionist barriers and - in the worst case -  
institute exchange and price controls."[xxiii] Once Chávez moved into  
Miraflores Palace (the president's official residence), and began to  
institute his economic program, which did not take privatization as a  
given, real questions began to emerge about his leadership. In the  
wake of a devastating natural disaster in 2000, the Washington Post  
reported, "Troubling signs...are emerging about the long-term  
viability of Chavez's agenda." The article referred to Jose Errada, a  
church official, who gandered, "It is possible that all Chavez is  
going to do is create communities where people will go from poor to  
poorer over time."[xxiv] Soon enough, the Wall Street Journal was  
regularly referring to his "constant government meddling in the  
economy"[xxv]

As watchdogs of the neoliberalism, the Journal experienced cognitive  
dissonance when Chávez's swerved from "free-market" doctrines. In an  
op-ed Mary Anastasia O'Grady railed, "Statist economic policies have a  
sorry productivity record and in this case that record is highly  
unlikely to be improved. The big trouble is that Chavez has put  
Venezuela on a centrally planned economic path not much different from  
the failed experiments of the 20th century."[xxvi] This tendency was  
magnified in January 2005 when Chávez announced plans for what he  
called "21st century socialism." The prestige press pounced, using  
"mainstream economists"—i.e. proponents of neoliberal capitalism—to  
attack his economic programs and policies. The New York Times  
reported, "political analysts and mainstream economists warn of  
recession and dourly note that foreign investment is about a third of  
what it was five years ago. They say that Venezuela's vast oil profits  
give the illusion of prosperity—the economy's growth rate is 9.3  
percent—but that if prices fall, or Venezuela's growing spending  
catches up, the economy could founder."

Accuracy was also sacrificed in numerous articles that alleged poverty  
was increasing in Venezuela, which is flat-out incorrect. O'Grady was  
guilty of this inaccuracy more than once, writing in November 2005  
that "Venezuelan poverty [is] growing"[xxvii] and in January 2006 that  
"After six years of Chavez, Venezuelans, once ecstatic about their  
Bolivarian Revolution, are sinking deeper into poverty."[xxviii] The  
Wall Street Journal's hard-news accounts also asserted "Venezuela has  
seen little progress on issues such as reducing poverty"[xxix] when in  
fact it had reduced its poverty rate from 62% in 2003 to 33% in 2007. 
[xxx]


There's a Meddler in the Region...

The fourth and final frame the media used to cover Chávez was the  
Meddler-in-the-Region Frame. This took three main forms: (1) Chávez as  
economic counterweight to supra-national organizations like the World  
Bank and International Monetary Fund, (2) Chávez as meddler in  
internal Colombian affairs through support of leftist guerrilla group  
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and (3) Chávez as  
noncompliant in the "War on Drugs." Instead of depicting Chávez's  
efforts to integrate Latin America—e.g. through the Bank of the South— 
as a plan resembling European integration along the lines of the  
European Union, the prestige press tended to criticize, either  
explicitly or tacitly, his attempts. Combining all three newspapers,  
almost one in three articles (31.3%) featured a variation of this  
Meddler-in-the-Region Frame, with the Washington Post using it most  
often (35.3%), followed by the Wall Street Journal (30.5%) and the New  
York Times (29.5%). The frame was much more prevalent between 2003 and  
2007.

In the summer of 2005, the New York Times wrote, "The Venezuelan  
government's commitment to stopping drugs has appeared to flag."[xxxi]  
Why is it that when a Latin American country publicly challenges the  
United States they are, in a diplomatic tit-for-tat dubbed  
uncooperative in the "War on Drugs"?

Chávez's efforts to foment a counterweight to the power of the U.S.  
was depicted as cunning, conniving calculation and that none of his  
foreign assistance—whether it be reduced oil prices or loans—came out  
of other, more altruistic, concerns. This is odd since Chávez has  
emphasized he's trying to carry out a Bolivarian project—named after  
South American leader Simón Bolívar—that improves the economic  
integration and geopolitical friendliness of Latin America. Chávez  
even went as far as moving to change the name of the country in its  
1999 Constitution, from the Republic of Venezuela to the Bolivarian  
Republic of Venezuela. He created numerous initiatives that eschewed  
the standard-issue profit-maximization impulse in favor of promoting  
Latin American solidarity, preferring cooperation rather than  
competition.

Nevertheless, Chávez's Bolivarian agenda was often disparaged in the  
prestige press. In the New York Times, Juan Forero described Chávez's  
internationalism as "spending billions of dollars of his country's oil  
windfall on pet projects abroad."[xxxii]The Wall Street Journal  
interpreted Chávez's cooperative efforts as cagey attempts to buy  
himself geopolitical buddies: "Mr. Chavez is using his oil billions to  
buy friends and influence nations, from the Caribbean basin to  
Patagonia. In the past year, Venezuela has emerged as a tropical  
version of the International Monetary Fund, offering cut-rate oil- 
supply deals and buying hundreds of millions of dollars of bonds from  
financially distressed countries such as Argentina and Ecuador.[xxxiii]

The opinion pages flaunted the frame more directly. Writing in the New  
York Times, Moises Naim, a former Venezuelan trade minister and  
current Chávez critic wrote, "Venezuela is no longer boring. It has  
become a nightmare for its people and a threat not just to its  
neighbors but to the United States and even Europe."[xxxiv] The  
Washington Post editorial board wrote that Chávez was "meddling in the  
affairs of his neighbors and spawning anti-democratic movements."[xxxv]

Undoubtedly one of those "anti-democratic movements" the Post was  
referring to wasthe about-to-be-democratically-elected president of  
Bolivia, Evo Morales, who ended up winning the December 2005 election.  
The prestige press was highly critical of Morales's rise to power and  
this had a lot to do with his high-profile connections to Chávez. For  
instance, in early 2006, the Wall Street Journal wrote, "Since Evo  
Morales took office as president here in January, the coca grower  
turned socialist politician has aligned his country so closely with  
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez that it is sometimes difficult to tell where  
one government begins and the other ends."[xxxvi]


The Next Demon du Jour?

In a 2005 Washington Post op-ed Jackson Diehl packed a powerful, four- 
frame punch: "In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez has responded to his  
victory in a controversial recall referendum by aggressively moving to  
eliminate the independence of the media and judiciary, criminalize  
opposition, and establish state control over the economy. He is also  
using his country's surging oil revenue to prop up the once- 
beleaguered Cuban dictatorship of Fidel Castro, sponsor anti- 
democratic movements in other Latin countries and buy influence around  
the region. Last week he literally declared war against privately  
owned farms, sending troops to occupy one of the country's largest  
cattle ranches."[xxxvii] Such media framing is anything but anomalous.  
And when news doesn't conform to the four dominant frames, journalists  
either revert to their go-to frames or simply ignore the information.

All this negative coverage of Chávez is reflected in public opinion  
polling in the United States. In 2007, the Pew Research Center  
released its 47-Nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey, which found that  
55% of those polled in the U.S. have little (17%) or no confidence  
(38%) in Chávez as a leader. Meanwhile only 18% reported having either  
some or a lot of confidence in him and 27% said they didn't know. 
[xxxviii] After a close look at U.S. media coverage of the Venezuelan  
president, these numbers should come as no surprise.

One-sided coverage that sandblasts away the edges of geopolitical  
complexity does not serve readers well. It leaves us vulnerable to  
dubious claims about the next demon du jour whose supposedly  
threatening actions "necessitate" U.S. military invasion in order to  
keep the world "safe for democracy."

[i] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/renewing_us_leadership_in_the.html
[ii] http://portal.gopconvention2008.com/speech/details.aspx?id=51
[iii] Mark Weisbrot, "Progressive Change in Venezuela and Latin  
America," The Nation online, 6 December 2007, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071224/weisbrot
[iv] Marc Lifsher, "Venezuela Wants Trading Company To Sell Oil in  
U.S. --- Deal Involving Jack Kemp And the Strategic Reserve Worries  
Some in Industry," Wall Street Journal, 2 June 2003, A13.

[v]Serge F. Kovaleski, "Former Coup Leader Leads Race for President of  
Venezuela," Washington Post, 20 September 1998, A27.
[vi] Larry Rohter, "In Latin America, the Strongman Stirs in His  
Grave," New York Times, 20 December 1998, p.4.
[vii] "Dial Joe-4-Chavez," Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2006, p.A14.
[viii]Mary Anastasia O'Grady, "Chavez's Law: The Beatings Will  
Continue Until Morale Improves," Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2003,  
p.A13.
[ix] Mary Anastasia O'Grady, "Read the Fine Print on the Chavez Charm  
Offensive," Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2003, p.A11.
[x] "Hugo Chavez and His Helpers," New York Times, 10 December 2005,  
p.A14.
[xi] These polls are available at PollingReport.com, http://www.pollingreport.com/cuba.htm 
.
[xii] Clifford Krauss, "New Chief to Battle Venezuela's ‘Cancer'," New  
York Times, 3 February 1999, p.A8.
[xiii] Larry Rohter, "Venezuela's New Leader: Democrat or Dictator?"  
New York Times, 10 April 1999, p.A3.
[xiv] See Ginger Thompson, "Gunfire Kills 2 in Venezuela as March  
Turns Into Street Fight," New York Times, 4 January 2003, p.A3.
[xv]Marc Lifsher, "As Nation Wobbles, Venezuelan Leader Tightens His  
Grip - Hugo Chavez Rules by Decree, Liberal Use of Television," Wall  
Street Journal, 12 June 2003, p.A1.
[xvi]Jackson Diehl, "The Façade of Latin American Democracy,"  
Washington Post, 6 June 2005, p.A19.
[xvii] Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval, "Update: the Venezuelan  
Economy in the Chavez Years," Center for Economic and Policy Research,  
February 2008, http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela_update_2008_02.pdf 
, p.13.
[xviii] Wilpert, Changing Venezuela By Taking Power, p.91.
[xix] Weisbrot and Sandoval, "Update," p.13.
[xx] Weisbrot and Sandoval, "Update," p.5.
[xxi] Weisbrot and Sandoval, "Update," p.12.
[xxii]Jose de Cordoba and Alexei Barrionuevo, "Venezuela Puts a Halt  
to Currency Trading - Capital Controls Will Follow The Five-Day  
Suspension; Court Rejects Feb. 2 Vote," Wall Street Journal, 23  
January 2003, p.A12.
[xxiii] Diana Jean Schemo, "Renegade Officer Favored in Venezuelan  
Election Today," New York Times, 6 December 1998, p.3.
[xxiv] Serge F. Kovaleski, "After the Storm, Venezuelans Turn Inland,"  
Washington Post, 24 February 2000, p.A13.
[xxv] Raul Gallegos, "Chavez's Agenda Takes Shape; ‘Co-Management'  
Helps to Advance Socialism in Venezuela,"Wall Street Journal, 27  
December 2005, p.A12.
[xxvi]Mary Anastasia O'Grady, "Oil Wells Refuse to Obey Chavez  
Commands," Wall Street Journal, 20 May 2005, p.A15.
[xxvii] Mary Anastasia O'Grady, "Why Fox's Outrage? Chavez's Meddling  
in Mexico," p.A17.
[xxviii] Mary Anastasia, O'Grady, "Axis of Evo," Wall Street Journal,  
27 January 2006, p.A9.
[xxix] David Luhnow, Bill Spindle, and Guy Chazan,"Could Weak Oil Cost  
Venezuela, Iran Clout?," Wall Street Journal,29 January 2007, p.A2.
[xxx] Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval, "Update," p.13.
[xxxi]Juan Forero, "U.S. Revokes Visas for 3 Top-Ranking Venezuelan  
Officers Suspected of Drug Trafficking," New York Times, 13 August  
2005, p.A6.
[xxxii] Juan Forero, "Chavez Uses Aid To Win Support In the Americas,"  
New York Times, 4 April 2006, p.A1.
[xxxiii]David Luhnow and Jose de Cordoba, "With Oil, Chavez Plays It  
Safe; Venezuela's President Pushes Foreign Companies Only So Far,"  
Wall Street Journal, 29 August 2005, p.A7.
[xxxiv] Naim, "Hugo Chavez and the Limits of Democracy," p.A23.
[xxxv] "Pat Robertson's Gift," Washington Post, 25 August 2005, p.A18.
[xxxvi] Jose de Cordoba and David Luhnow, "Left Face: New President  
Has Bolivia Marching To Chavez's Beat; Venezuelan Populist Pushes Anti- 
U.S. Latin Alliance; Has He Gone Too Far?; Cuban Doctors in the  
House," Wall Street Journal, 25 March 2006, p.A1.
[xxxvii] Jackson Diehl, "Trouble In Our Back Yard: In Latin America,  
Democracy Is Faltering," Washington Post 17 January 2005, p.A17.
[xxxviii]http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/256.pdf    pp. 65