Chavez celebrates 10 years leading Venezuela
Posted by John Malloy on 02/02/2009
Latin American leaders assembled Monday to mark the 10th anniversary of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s rise to power, a period described by state-run television as “a decade of successes.”
Chavez and representatives of the leftist group Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas, or ALBA, walked through the National Pantheon, a square on the edge of the old town of Caracas that holds the sarcophagus of Simon Bolivar, whom Chavez credits with inspiring him as “the father of the revolution.”
In 1819, Bolivar founded Gran Colombia, a federation of what is now Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador.
In attendance were presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Jose Manuel Zelaya of Honduras and Evo Morales of Bolivia; Roosevelt Skerrit, prime minister of Dominica; and Cuba’s first vice president, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura.
Chavez and his allies founded ALBA several years ago as a response to U.S. influence in Latin America. Chavez had a rocky relationship with former President George W. Bush, whom he once called “the devil.”
Dressed in a dark suit and red tie, Chavez stopped frequently to embrace and kiss children, some of whom chanted, “Chavez! Chavez! Chavez!”
As he held Bolivar’s jewel-encrusted sword in his white-gloved hand, Chavez reaffirmed his commitment to the leftist path that has guided him: “There is no other path to redemption for the human being than socialism,” he said.
With the day declared a national holiday, hundreds of people jammed the square to survey the pageantry.
The leaders were to discuss the world economic crisis.
Venezuela has been hit particularly hard by the recent drop in oil prices: Oil revenues account for about 90 percent of its export earnings, about half of federal budget revenues and some 30 percent of gross domestic product, according to the CIA Factbook….
www.cnn.com
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