Dear Sir,
It is very disappointing that a magazine that likes to be perceived as serious, such as the NS, trivialises the reality of Venezuela and turns it into a caricature (in the footsteps of The Guardian?).
Resorting to superficial and unacceptable stereotypes (why refer to President Chavez as 'Latin lover'?), is a deplorable lowering of the quality of good journalism. Was it really necessary to exoticize Hugo Chavez so stereotypically?
Whoever wrote this shallow and intensely uninformed snippet shows very little knowledge of Venezuelan politics and of politics in general (are they aware that in 17 European countries there are no limits to the number of times presidents or prime ministers can be re-elected?).
And the assertion that President Chavez's stay in power augments "anxieties that his foreign policy might one day live up to his firebrand rhetoric" is both insulting and preposterous.
President Chavez's foreign policy has guaranteed an extraordinary improvement in the relations with Colombia, showing an exemplary statesmanship in the resolution of complex bilateral issues through peaceful and constructive dialogue.
Venezuela has excellent relations with France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, and many other European nations. The same is the case with Japan, South Korea, and other Asian nations. The same goes for India. Venezuela has established embassies in 14 African countries and has relations with 27 African nations (more than most Latin American countries) and it has been key to the holding of several highly productive Latin American-African summits.
Venezuela has excellent and fruitful relations with all the other countries of Latin America, and Chavez has been instrumental in bringing closer together English- and French-speaking Caribbean nations with Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America through initiatives such as PetroCaribe (I'd be very willing to explain to the writer what this is).
President Chavez foreign policy has also led to Operation Miracle (free operations to restore the eyesight to people blinded by cataracts) which in 7 years has benefited 1.7 million from the whole region -even the US-; 300,000 beneficiaries are poor people in Bolivia.
There have been 16 free and fair electoral processes in Venezuela -internationally recognised as such by the Organization of American States, EU observers, and the Carter Centre. There are dozens of anti-Chavez political parties in Venezuela that freely operate and field candidates in all elections; more than 7 million new voters have been registered since 1998, poverty has been more than halved (more than 2.7 people), illiteracy has been eradicated, over 20 million people now have access to free healthcare for the first time, etc. One could go on...

Yours very sincerely
Dr Francisco Dominguez
Secretary Venezuela Solidarity Campaign

lol, so does Venezuela have a Five Mao Brigade too now? Some of the above comments are so utterly ridiculous the people must have been paid to write them. And the telltale sign of a propagandist - saying that the BBC has a right-wing bias!

Having been to Venezuela (and Cuba, too) I can confirm that people commenting on this article are pretty damn ignorant. Caracus has an obscenely high murder rate, anti-Chavez union leaders regularly get murdered, poverty is still huge, and market traders are not allowed to sell at a profit so can't feed their families or keep a roof over them.

Chavez is a fake just like every other socialist leader in history.

Also, Chavez matters more than Lula or his successor? Let us not be silly now.

Remarks declaring that Hugo Chavez is intolerant of opposition suggest that the writer has little knowledge of the situation on the ground in Venezuela. On two separate visits to Venezuela I have witnessed the right wing opposition freely demonstrating in Caracas and last year a rural road block set up in protest at water cuts, due to the prolonged drought which the country has endured.

As Dr Dominguez has mentioned, there are many positive results from Chavez's outward looking foreign policy- help in such matters as health workers and electricity generation to poorer countries in the region such as Nicaragua and Bolivia in return for some of their agricultural products. I suggest the writer is passing off the prejudices of the elite in Venezuela as fact.

I'm Venezuelan and I invite all of you guys to my country. It has one of the highest murder-rates of the world, the delinquency is huge, the economy sucks, the poverty is going higher every year and everyone lives with panic and fear... Chavez has made a change? Yes, he has... He has divided the country (oposition vs. officialism) created hate and disrespected his own people. Again, I invite all of you guys to stay in my country, just for one month, so you can know how things REALLY are over here. Greetings to everyone.