AP Interview: Chavez Connects With Poor

[cal04]

The Toyota 4Runner pulled to a stop on the country road and a tinted window rolled down. Passers-by gawked, then broke into a run, screaming ``president!'' when they realized Hugo Chavez was at the wheel. ``I love you!'' cried a middle-aged woman with tears in her eyes, thrusting a fistful of flowers into the car.

The president clasped hands and planted kisses on cheeks, heads and hands of the people who turned out in the pouring rain to see him - an emotional connection that he called the driving force behind the socialist revolution that has pitted him against Washington.

``What hurts me most is poverty, and that's what made me a rebel,'' Chavez said during six hours of conversations with The Associated Press on Saturday during a road trip across the southern plains, a helicopter flight and a visit to a cattle ranch.

Throughout the trip, as he sipped coffee and sang folk songs, he stopped to talk with poor men and women of all ages who crowded around his car. Many asked Chavez for help - to build a home, to arrange medical care - and Chavez barked out instructions to his aides, who jotted them down.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6699483,00.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Totally amazing that this sympathetic portrait of Chavez is from AP!

I've seen nothing but untrustworthy corporate propaganda from AP about Chavez until now.

Do you think AP is reforming?

It's from an AP writer and published in the Guardian (a generally good news source with leftist analysis/opinion), but will it be picked up by our war profiteering corporate news monopolies? They print scads and scads of AP articles--and generally rely on it to do much of their footwork (--with their downsized newsrooms and corporate disinterest in real journalism). So they don't have much excuse--other than rightwing bias--not to print it. My prediction: nada. It won't be seen over here. I hope I'm wrong, and that responsible journalism is making a comeback. It's possible that McClatchey has got them all worried. (McClatchey didn't look very good, at first, when it gobbled up Knight-Ridder, but they seemed to have made a positive decision to rival the others by providing their readers with the real thing--tough investigative pieces; real, old-fashioned muckraking journalism.) (And they must be having a field day--there is SO MUCH muck to rake up!)

Anyway, we'll see about the others.

Imagine what a surprise it will be to most U.S. readers to find that Hugo Chavez is a human being!

[endarkenment]

2. bu buh buh

I thought Venezuela's stalinist regime was on the verge of collapse due to massive public outcry against the closing of RCTV?

[Cleita]

4. Seems that was staged by Chavez opposition.

http://www.counterpunch.org/maher06092007.html

[Judi Lynn]

3. A decent report from AP on Hugo Chavez. Better get the nets, a rogue reporter is loose!

What a surprise to see on a Monday morning, isn't it?

At first it hit me that maybe they are starting to see through what happened at RCTV and are feeling a bit sheepish, and have done this report as a peace-making overture.

Nah. They've had access to all the information all the way along, and they have deliberately spun the news so hard it was almost unrecognizable altogether. It would be premature to think they are starting to clean up their act.

However this article got out is a delight. What a change of pace.

I had no choice beyond feeling great respect for his position on remarriage at this stage of his life. Absolutely compassionate on his part to realize his wish for a companion could lead to far too much hardship for anyone he would choose right now. It's true.

We've seen too much history laid down at our feet for us to study by now concerning what happens to "leftist" leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean. They are in grave danger all the time due to the iron fisted control of these countries by right-wing oligarchies with total ties to the U.S. elites.

Easy to see why the populations want release from this oligarchy directed prison, and a big step forward into a fair chance at life for everyone, something more to hope for than a short, desperately hard trip from birth to the grave.



~ Chavez as he drove to the voting center in December, 2006 ~

[BornagainDUer]

5. "What hurts me most is poverty". Can you imagine our fascist

dictator saying that?

[Daveparts]

6. Viva Chavez!!

!!

[Vidar]

7. Bravo Chavez!