CARACAS, Venezuela, May 30 (UPI) -- In an upscale neighborhood of eastern Caracas, demonstrators this week continued to congregate in Altamira Plaza to protest against President Hugo Chavez. A hotbed of Venezuela's political opposition during the opposition petroleum strike, the desolate plaza now looks a lot like an abandoned circus. But opposition leaders are just as agitated as they were at the height of the strike.
"He is a terrorist and a communist," says Gustavo Ramírez, 32, a student who showed up at the gathering. "He has people in the country going hungry and he wants to ensure that there's no freedom of expression."
While opposition sympathizers frequently levy similar accusations against their embattled left-wing president, Ramirez's condemnation was not aimed at the embattled Chavez, but rather at Cuban President Fidel Castro.
"President Chavez wants to turn Venezuela into another Cuba," says Ramirez, "but we can't let that happen."
Statements like these show how President Chavez's open admiration of Castro's communist revolution has infuriated Venezuela's conservative sectors and raised eyebrows in the international community. Even as the government and opposition on Thursday signed a cooperation agreement that could help ease the crisis, the opposition resentment over the Cuban issue remains high.
Since the arrival of Chavez, Venezuela has signed dozens of cooperation agreements with Cuba, increased cultural exchange and provided subsidized petroleum to the Caribbean nation -- much to the chagrin of Venezuelans already unnerved by what they see as Chavez's left-agenda. Government leaders defend the new cooperation with Cuba as a way of consolidating Venezuela's social reforms. But with Cuba once again in the eye of the international community, the relationship may prove costly for Chavez.
A former paratrooper turned populist president, Chavez became a household figure in Venezuela after leading a failed coup in 1992. Released from jail on a presidential pardon, Chavez swept elections in 1998 on an antipoverty, anticorruption platform dubbed the "Bolivarian Revolution" in honor of the Venezuelan founding father, Simon Bolivar. With a core constituency of Venezuela's burgeoning lower classes, Chavez has become a hero to the poor by promising to remake Venezuelan society. Although he has promised a peaceful revolution, Chavez often seems ideologically linked to the Latin American armed left. Faithful to his revolutionary roots, Chavez quickly increased diplomatic ties with Castro, a father figure for the Latin American left who in the 1960s sponsored Marxist guerrilla activity in Venezuela.
A year after taking office, the Chavez government signed an agreement to sell 53,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba at subsidized rates in exchange for medical treatment by Cuban doctors. Since then, the Venezuelan government has entered into numerous cooperation agreements with Cuba, covering everything from sports training programs to urban gardens overseen by Cubans. As a result, Venezuela has become Cuba's largest trading partner.
There was little initial backlash to the new cooperation during Chavez's first years in office, when he enjoyed popularity ratings as high as 80 percent. But his excessively confrontational manner, his willingness to insult his adversaries and his decision to legislate by decree led to a steady decline in his popularity during 2001.
Watching his approval slip, Chavez' adversaries pounced on his friendship with Castro, insisting that Chavez was trying to impose a model of "Castro-communism" in Venezuela. Although there is almost nothing about Chavez's economic policy that could be described as communist, his friendship with Castro has made it easy for his enemies to label him as such.
According to journalist and political commentator Clodosvaldo Hernandez, Venezuelans have such a primordial fear of communism that Chavez' flirtations with Cuba have greatly contributed to his decline in popularity.
"Chavez approaching Fidel has awakened Venezuelans terror of communism, which was successfully instilled during the era of guerrilla fighting in the 1960s," says Hernandez. "In addition, Venezuela is a very materialist society, which makes communism all the more threatening."
Hernandez points out that many poor Venezuelans, the president's core constituency, have moved away from Chavez for precisely this reason.
But government leaders such as pro-Chavez legislator Tarek William Saab say the opposition has exaggerated Venezuela's relationship with Cuba.
"We have similar cooperation agreements with dozens of other countries," says Saab, "but since it's Cuba, political leaders like to make it into an ideological issue. The issue has been magnified and exaggerated, in particular with the help of the anti-Castro lobby in Miami."
Miami, in the U.S. state of Florida, is a stronghold of anti-Castro Cuban émigrés.
Nonetheless, it's hard to describe the relationship as a simple commercial exchange. The two leaders clearly share an ideology, and Chavez's move toward Cuba is an open challenge to the U.S. embargo of the island. Indeed, while U.S. authorities in May were declaring Cuba a terrorist sympathizer and expelling Cuban diplomats, Venezuela was signing 15 new agreements with the communist island.
Many speculate that the fear of encroaching communism helped drive military leaders to oust Chavez on April 11 of 2002, when 19 people were killed as an opposition march approached the presidential palace. Businessman Pedro Carmona was installed as president, but Chavez was restored to power two days later by supporters and loyalist troops. During Carmona's government, opposition protestors surrounded the Cuban Embassy, cutting off the power and water to force hiding Chavez cohorts to leave the compound. The incident is frequently cited as one of the opposition's excesses, and served to strengthen ties between Castro and Chavez.
Government sympathizers such as Wilmar Perez, 42, a former taxi driver, have been drawn to the Chavez government through exchange programs with Cuba.
"The opposition criticizes Cuba because they don't know anything about it," says Perez, who was sent to Cuba for six months to receive medical attention for a gunshot wound he received on April 11. "They should continue the exchanges with Cuba, it is helping us to consolidate the revolution."
However, political analyst Alberto Garrido insists that popular approval or discontent is not the primary issue for Chavez.
"The real problem here is the armed forces," says Garrido. "Officers fear that Venezuela's armed forces are going to be turned into a revolutionary army. And you have to remember that many of these officers have been through the U.S. School of the Americas, they were trained to fight against communism."
Garrido adds that by embracing Castro too closely, Chavez also risks upsetting the United States, which buys most of Venezuela's oil exports.
"Staying tied to Castro is an enormous liability for Chavez," says Garrido. "It means confronting people that should be his allies. How far can he really take this?"
Widespread criticism of Cuba within Venezuela indicates that Garrido has a point. But Chavez shows no sign of distancing himself from Castro, even in the face of international condemnation of Cuba's recent human rights abuses. And Chavez, much like Castro, has never been afraid of a little healthy confrontation -- meaning the Cuban issue is unlikely to disappear from the Venezuelan horizon any time soon.
