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/ 6 December 2007
It was approaching midnight and something was wrong at Miraflores Palace. Thousands of people in red T-shirts were gathered outside the balcony waiting for Hugo Chávez, waiting for another victory, but the hours dragged by and he did not appear. This had been the scene of his every triumph since 1998. The president would appear on the balcony, salute the country and proclaim another leap forward in the revolution.
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/ 3 December 2007
"I’m tired, tired of Farc, tired of the people, tired of communal life. Tired of never having anything for myself. It would be worth it if we knew why we were fighting. But the truth is I don’t believe in this any more." So wrote Tanja Nijmeijer, a 29-year-old, middle-class Dutch woman who is among a handful of Europeans who joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
It is no longer a rainforest but a tree cemetery. As far as the eye can see there are uprooted, bare and broken trunks. The canopy, a roof of foliage so lush you could walk over it, is gone. The few remaining bits of green are no bigger than broccoli. This is the aftermath of Hurricane Felix along Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast. A smell of decay shrouds the landscape.
The fierce morning heat was a memory. The afternoon haze had come and gone. It was the cool of dusk, with shadows stretching as the sun dipped below the Andes. And Hugo Chávez was still talking. The clock showed it was just after 7pm. The Venezuelan president had started at 11am, more than eight hours earlier — a new record.
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/ 17 September 2007
A tropical sun rises over Havana and in the neighbourhood of Vedado, a maze of worn, bleached apartment blocks, a unique healthcare system limbers up for another day. In Parque Aguirre, a small plaza shaded by palms, two dozen pensioners form a semi-circle and perform a series of stretches and gentle exercises, responding to the commands of a spry septuagenarian.
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/ 4 September 2007
Raúl Castro has started to make cautious changes in Cuba, which could signal plans for political and economic reform. Since he took over from his brother Fidel, dozens of dissidents have been released, an olive branch has been extended to Washington and there is talk of easing communist controls on property and agricultural production.
A billboard of Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looms over a motorway in Venezuela, marking the entrance to a factory designed to produce three things: tractors, influence and angst. The tractors, lined up on the grounds of Veniran, a joint venture between Venezuela and Iran, are for peasants and socialist cooperatives across Latin America.
President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina will not seek a second consecutive term in office in order to let his wife, Cristina, run as the ruling party’s candidate in an election later this year, it was announced this week. Cristina Kirchner (54), a senator and veteran politician, is favoured to win the October poll and become one of the most powerful women in Latin America.
The trick is to look the barman in the eye and give a short, emphatic nod as you order a Coke. Discreetly, the rum tumbles in and discreetly you toast the barman, your accomplice in crime. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has banned alcohol in the week leading up to Easter to try to cut the number of drink-driving related accidents that soar during the holiday exodus for the beach.
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/ 22 January 2007
To sceptics they are naive Westerners seduced by hype who would not recognise communist tyranny if it expropriated their sandals. ”Malodorous, leftwing, US and European peace creeps armed with mom’s credit card and brand new Birkenstocks,” according to American Thinker, a right-wing magazine.