Spanish newspaper withdraws 'fake photo' of Hugo Chávez

Spain's influential El País newspaper has withdrawn what it says was a false photo of Hugo Chávez that it published in its online and print editions on Thursday.

The grainy photo that El País originally splashed on its front page, billed as a global exclusive, portrayed the head of a man lying down with a breathing tube in his mouth.

The Venezuelan president has cancer and has been undergoing medical treatment in Cuba, where he had surgery in December. He has not been seen publicly for six weeks.

El País, one of the biggest Spanish-language publications in the world and an institution both in Spain and in Latin America, said in a brief online statement that it had withdrawn the photo after ascertaining that the image was not of Chávez.

Venezuelan political opposition leaders have criticised government secrecy over Chávez's condition while his supporters have accused foreign media of being in league with the opposition to spread rumours that the president's medical condition is worse than it is.

Cancer-Stricken Chavez ‘Enters New Phase of Treatment’

Venezuela’s cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez is entering a new phase of treatment after finishing post-operative care, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said Sunday.

“The president’s condition and the functioning of all vital organs stabilize, he is conscious. He has more vital forces to enter the next phase of treatment, which will be officially announced,” Maduro told Venezuelan media.

After visiting Chavez in Havana on January 14, Maduro said the Venezuelan leader “is recovering from surgery” and "the entire infection phase has been controlled," referring to Chavez’s respiratory problem.

Univision channel said on Friday Chavez was transferred from the intensive care unit to a secret underground bunker-hospital in Havana, which was designed for emergency medical assistance to Fidel Castro.

Hundreds of security agents and physicians took part in the operation. This was made to avoid leakage of information about Chavez’s health and possibly start preparation for sending him to Caracas.

Top diplomats of Colombia, Venezuela meet for talks focused on ties, Colombian peace talks

Venezuelan's newly appointed foreign minister is meeting with the top diplomat of neighboring Colombia in talks that are expected to touch on peace negotiations between the Colombian government and leftist rebels.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua has said he hopes to deepen relations with Colombia's government during Friday's meeting with Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin.

Jaua also told the Colombian radio station Blu Radio on Thursday that Venezuela will continue to support the peace talks between Colombia's government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The talks have resumed in Havana this week after a holiday break.

Got sugar? Venezuela faces shortages of staple foods

The increased difficulty in finding basic consumer goods in Venezuela is raising concerns about the viability of Chávez's socialist economic policies at a time when the country is already on edge due to his prolonged absence.While President Hugo Chávez convalesces in Cuba following his fourth cancer operation, Venezuelans face a struggle of a different kind in the midst of shortages of basic food products. Consumers are having to scour markets for staples such as sugar, milk, chicken, and harina pan, a corn flour used to make arepas – corncakes that predominate the Venezuelan diet.

"We're replacing one product with another," says Rosa Garcia, a real estate agent who was on a three-day hunt for meat across various Caracas neighborhoods. "First there was no beef, now no chicken. Last night I made eggs for my family's dinner." Grocery shopping in Venezuela is rarely an easy task, with consumers often forced to deal with long lines and sporadic shortages at their local markets. But the increased difficulty in finding basic consumer goods in recent weeks is raising concerns about the viability of Mr. Chávez's socialist economic policies at a time when the country is already on edge due to his prolonged absence and the uncertainty of Venezuela's political future. Chávez has not been seen or heard from since early December.

Venezuelan VP active in Chavez's absence

 Venezuela's vice president stepped into the shoes of ailing President Hugo Chavez in a flurry of public events Friday, working to maintain an image of government continuity after more than five weeks of unprecedented silence from the normally garrulous president.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro and other Cabinet ministers have striven to assure a nervous public that Chavez's administration is firmly in charge even as the opposition challenges its legitimacy. Chavez has been out of sight in Cuba since undergoing cancer surgery on Dec. 11.

Among three televised events held nationwide on Friday, Maduro helped opened a school in Chavez's home state of Barinas alongside the president's elder brother, Adan, who is the state's governor.

"We're all Chavez. We have to feel that way," Maduro said during the school visit. "We all love Chavez from our hearts."

The vice president, whom Chavez designated last month as his chosen successor, also visited an agricultural training center in Lara state, where he insisted on the importance of "socialist efficiency." He then spoke to National Guard troops in western Zulia state, blaming materialistic values for exacerbating crime. A day earlier on Thursday, Maduro presided over the inauguration of a housing project in Caracas.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez gave an update on the government's efforts to build new public housing for the poor, saying more than 400,000 homes are currently under construction nationwide.

"All the programs of the revolution continue and will continue," Ramirez told reporters Friday. "The revolutionary government hasn't stopped, not one minute."

Opposition leaders have said the government violated the constitution by indefinitely postponing Chavez's swearing-in past Jan. 10, a stance that has been dismissed in a ruling by the Supreme Court.

Venezuela military to play central power broker

In a country riven by political strife, Venezuela's military often has served as the arbiter of power. It has launched coups and frustrated them and dispatched soldiers to guarantee stability, distributing food, fighting crime and securing oil fields.

Now with President Hugo Chavez battling for his life, the stance of the 134,000-strong armed forces again will be crucial.

Divisions within the military have clouded attempts to determine who it might support among Chavez loyalists or if it would side with the opposition. While the military's leadership is packed with Chavez supporters, the officer corps may not be so loyal. Much will depend on what Chavez's political heirs do in the coming weeks.

Experts and former military officers agree that the governing duo of Vice President Nicolas Maduro and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello has been unable to fill the leadership vacuum created by Chavez's five-week absence and silence. Without a commander in chief, there is no one to ensure unity or guarantee continued loyalty through promotions and retirements.

Retired army Gen. Antonio Rivero was one of the first to sound the alarm about the leadership gap when he told the Venezuelan news website Noticias24 that if Chavez didn't return from Cuba for his Jan. 10 swearing-in, the armed forces from that point on would "not have a commander in chief." He's since gone into hiding after state intelligence agents came to his house looking for him. He said in an interview that he had sparked government ire by accusing it of letting Cubans influence the military.

Venezuela publishes decree with Chavez signature

 Venezuela's government has published a decree signed by President Hugo Chavez, while his vice president said Wednesday that the ailing leader also sent a message of gratitude to the military for its loyalty.

It was the first time the president's signature has appeared in the Official Gazette since his latest cancer surgery in Cuba more than five weeks ago. The decree issued Tuesday and published in the government newspaper on Wednesday names former vice president Elias Jaua as Venezuela's new foreign minister. The signature is printed along with the presidential stamp.
Current Vice President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in charge of the country during Chavez's recovery, announced Jaua's appointment at a National Assembly session on Tuesday.
Chavez has not made any public comments since his operation last month, his fourth in 18 months. He has been fighting an unspecified type of pelvic cancer, and his silence has fed speculation about his medical condition.
Before the decree was published, the opposition had questioned the legality of the new foreign minister's appointment, citing a lack of publicly released documents with Chavez's signature.
The opposition has also been demanding more information about the president's condition.
"If the president of the republic can sign decrees, I call on him to appear, speak to Venezuela and talk about everything that's happening in that government," top opposition leader Henrique Capriles said Wednesday.
In a televised speech to soldiers, Maduro recalled meeting with Chavez in Havana earlier this week, saying the president was pleased with how his allies have been working together.
"We were with the commander in chief 48 hours ago, and yesterday we spoke with Minister Jorge Arreaza (Chavez's son-in-law), and he really feels great happiness to see, when we described how we've been interacting, the work we're doing constantly," Maduro said.

Meeting in Cuba Angers Venezuelan Opposition

 With the president absent and ailing, the country on edge and the government eager to portray a sturdy sense of continuity, there might be nothing unusual about the most powerful officials in Venezuela meeting over the weekend, except for the location they chose for the sit-down: Havana.


    Venezuela Warns Opposition Against Vocal Dissent (January 13, 2013)
    Caracas Journal: A Celebration That Accentuated an Absence (January 11, 2013)

It has been five weeks since President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela went to Cuba for his fourth cancer-related operation, and the normally garrulous leader has not been seen or heard from in public since — a closely guarded silence that underscores the extremely tight relationship between the two countries.

Venezuelan officials have worn a path between the two nations with frequent trips to Mr. Chávez’s bedside. But for opponents of Venezuela’s government, who have long warned of the extent of Cuba’s influence, the weekend meeting was simply too much.

The Cuban newspaper Granma reported that the officials met with Fidel and Raúl Castro to discuss “aspects of the strategic alliance between both countries.”

“The capital of Venezuela has moved to Havana,” said Leopoldo López, the leader of an opposition party, Popular Will.

Cuba has everything to lose from a change of leadership in Venezuela, a possibility if Mr. Chávez dies or is too sick to continue as president. For years, Venezuela has propped up Cuba’s limping economy with oil shipments on generous terms. Government opponents have long resented that arrangement, and now they fear that Cuba is seeking to influence events in Venezuela to keep the oil flowing.

Depending on the price of oil, Cuba sends goods or services to Venezuela as barter for 40 percent to 50 percent of the market value of the roughly 100,000 barrels of oil it receives a day, said Jorge R. Piñon, an expert at the University of Texas at Austin. Over the years that has included thousands of doctors and nurses, sports trainers and advisers to the armed forces and security services. The remainder, 50 percent to 60 percent of the shipments’ value, is treated as a loan, to be paid back over 25 years at 1 percent interest.

If that arrangement ended, Cuba would be forced to buy its oil on the open market, costing about $4 billion a year at current prices and probably pushing it into a recession, Mr. Piñon said. “The political impact for Cuba losing its Venezuelan support will be catastrophic,” he said. “The economic impact will be substantial.”

Venezuelan officials defend the oil shipments to Cuba and the closeness of the relationship by saying that the two countries have much in common, including a revolutionary ideology and an attitude of defiance toward the United States.

The most visible Cuban presence here is in the doctors who staff hundreds of small neighborhood clinics established by Mr. Chávez. But the Cuban barter comes in many forms, ranging from the reported training of intelligence officers, which was discussed in an American State Department cable made public by WikiLeaks, to the building of an ice cream factory.

On Tuesday, after returning from Havana, Vice President Nicolás Maduro shot back at critics of the relationship with Cuba.

“There are those who say that we are a colony of Cuba,” Mr. Maduro said during a televised government meeting. “Really, it’s an offense against Cuba and against Venezuela.” He said the two countries shared “the most profound brotherhood.”

He added that he had visited Mr. Chávez, who he said was “advancing” in his recovery. He said that they had discussed government issues and that Mr. Chávez had asked questions of his subordinates.

But opponents cite the presence of Cuban advisers in the military and other aspects of government as evidence of the Castros’ not-so-hidden hand.

Mr. Maduro, whom Mr. Chávez has picked as his successor if he cannot continue as president, is seen in particular as being very close to the Cubans. He leads a faction within Mr. Chávez’s movement that is deeply committed to Cuban-style revolution and establishing socialism in Venezuela, and he received political training in Cuba as a young man. The man seen as his main rival, Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Assembly, is believed to be less friendly to Cuba.

Demonstrators in Caracas focused on Cuba at a rally over the weekend that was called to protest a Supreme Court ruling allowing last Thursday’s scheduled swearing in of Mr. Chávez to be postponed indefinitely, letting him continue as president despite his prolonged absence. People in the crowd of a few hundred held signs denouncing Cuba and chanted, “Cubans, go away!”

“Never in 200 years of our history as a republic has the future of Venezuela been decided outside Venezuela,” María Corina Machado, an opposition legislator, told the crowd. “How can they talk today about independence? What independence? What independence? When in Venezuela we know that our security and intelligence agencies, our notaries and registries are totally infiltrated by people, officials and functionaries of the Cuban government.”

Venezuela struggles with sporadic food shortages

 Mireya Bustamante spent most of the day trying in vain to find flour to bake a birthday cake for her 4-year-old son.

Like most Venezuelans, the single, 33-year-old officer worker has periodically struggled with such food shortages for years, and, like many in the country, thinks they're getting worse. She blames price and currency controls imposed by the government, though authorities contend unscrupulous business owners are at fault.

"An odyssey that never seems to end" was how Bustamante described the everyday challenge of finding basic foodstuffs. "What good are the controls if it becomes so difficult to find basic products?" asked the mother of three. "It's the government's fault, not the owners of neighborhood grocery stores."

Venezuelans have long had to shop around to find scarce foods, and lately consumers have had particular trouble finding staples like chicken, cooking oil, sugar and coffee, as well as toilet paper and some medicines. The shortages are a potential political vulnerability for the government while President Hugo Chavez lies bedridden in Cuba, unheard from more than a month after his fourth cancer operation.

Such economic questions about his socialist model are adding to the political uncertainty sparked by Chavez's illness and long absence. However, there have been no signs so far that the political crisis is aggravating the economic one.

Chavez's government has sold cheap, subsidized staples at state-run markets for years to reinforce support among the poor. It says price controls, established in 2003, are essential to protect the poor by countering inflation while government-established exchange rates for foreign currencies are needed to prevent capital flight. Those currencies, chiefly the U.S. dollar, are used to pay for Venezuelan oil.

Many economists say the shortages stem from mismanagement of the economy through the price and currency controls. Official accusations of hoarding and price speculation aim to deflect blame for failed economic policy, government critics argue.

How Hugo Chavez brought Afghanistan to South America

Thursday was inauguration day in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez — who has dominated Venezuelan politics one way or another for 14 years — was again sworn in as President. Only this time, the authoritarian populist could not take the oath in person. He departed for cancer surgery in Cuba on Dec. 10, 2012, and has not been seen in public since. This latest surgery is his fourth round of treatment in Cuba. Few expect Chavez to serve out this next six-year presidential term.
The indispensable Caracas Chronicles blog described the day:
“The owner of the circus may not have been there, but there were clowns galore. There were chants of people pledging to give their life to Chavez — which may well happen, given Venezuela’s alarming homicide rates. There were TV stars and beauty queens … Military planes flew over, while no one — absolutely no one — mentioned the 11 people that died in a bus accident while being hauled to Caracas for the rally.”
One way to understand the homicide rate mentioned in the blog: Venezuela, with fewer people than Canada, suffers more murders than the United States. I visited Venezuela in early 2010. My tour began with a briefing by a security officer at the U.S. embassy. “You’ve been to Afghanistan? Iraq? Well congratulations, this is now the most dangerous place you’ve ever been.”
After a lecture at the university in Maracaibo, the head of one of the faculty departments drove me to lunch with a loaded pistol in his lap. To enter the restaurant, we passed a metal detector. On the bench outside waited the bodyguards of local business leaders, guns holstered to their shoulders.
The violence in Venezuela isn’t political, exactly. It is more a reflection of the general breakdown of law in a society where every institution of state has been corrupted and degraded.
The police had long since given up patrolling the poor neighborhoods on the hills surrounding central Caracas. Now they had ceased patrolling the high-rent districts, too — that is, when they were not actively in cahoots with the criminals who committed “express kidnappings”: jumping out at a motorist as he punched the keypad to the locked garage beneath his apartment building, putting a gun to his head, and abducting him for two hours. The ransoms were typically relatively small, a few thousand dollars. The kidnappers made their money on volume.
My host’s parents had abandoned their jewelry store after repeated robberies. But Venezuela’s biggest robberies are carried out by Chavez and his supporters, under the color of law. In 2008, the Venezuelan legislature opened investigations into claims that two of Chavez’s brothers acquired at least 17 ranches at knock-down prices, using front men and concealed names. The investigation was soon abandoned, however: The 2010 elections were boycotted by opposition parties to protest new rigged rules, and Chavez’s own party gained a super-majority that put an end to all awkward questioning.
Yet people around Chavez continued to amass fortunes from confiscated lands and enterprises — and from the opportunities for fees and other benefits in the state-controlled oil sector that sustains Venezuela’s otherwise dilapidated economy. It is this enriched inner circle that will attempt to sustain Chavez-style rule after Chavez’s demise.
For all the talk about Chavez’s “socialist revolution,” his regime rests, caudillo-style, on the backing of corrupt, drug-dealing generals. Henry Silva Rangel, appointed minister of defense in January 2012, was one of four senior Chavez associates named by the U.S. government in 2008 as Foreign Narcotics Kingpins (yes, that’s the actual title). In a 2010 interview, Rangel warned that the army would not allow the Chavez “revolution” to be voted out of office. Rangel maintains a tight working relationship with another Chavez brother, Adnan, who succeeded Chavez’s father as governor of the family’s home state of Barinas.
Despite vast oil wealth, the Venezuelan economy has tumbled into terrible straits. Inflation roars at 25%, unemployment exceeds 8%, the non-oil economy stagnates, electricity flickers on and off irregularly, and basic commodities such as rice and beans have become scarce in the marketplaces and must be obtained as rations from government-controlled stores.

Venezuela’s vice president is in Cuba’s capital to visit with ailing Hugo Chavez and family

Venezuela’s vice president flew to Cuba on Friday to visit the ailing Hugo Chavez and his family, while the leaders of Argentina and Peru also traveled to Havana saying they hoped to ask about the Venezuelan president’s condition.
The 58-year-old president is fighting a severe respiratory infection a month after he underwent cancer surgery in Havana, his government says.I’m leaving for Havana to continue that work of visiting the family, meeting with his medical team, visiting our commander president,” Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on television in Caracas.
Cuba’s nightly TV news show reported that Maduro had arrived, but did not say whether he made any comments. The Venezuelan was met at the airport by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, the show said.
Chavez hasn’t spoken publicly or been seen since before his Dec. 11 operation, his fourth cancer-related surgery since June 2011 for an undisclosed type of pelvic cancer.
The government revealed this week that Chavez is receiving treatment for “respiratory deficiency.” Medical experts say that might mean he is breathing with the help of a ventilator.
Maduro was making his second trip to Cuba since Chavez’s surgery. He said he would meet with Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, who also was visiting Havana, and hoped to meet with Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, who arrived Friday in the Cuban capital.
Fernandez arrived at the Hotel Nacional along Havana’s waterfront on Friday morning. Authorities have characterized the Argentine leader’s trip as a private visit and her foreign minister said Thursday that she intended to meet with Chavez.
She told The Associated Press in Friday afternoon that she would lunch with Cuban President Raul Castro and his retired brother Fidel. “And then surely I will meet with the family of my companion and dear friend Hugo Chavez,” Fernandez said.