It is January 2003, I'm in the Ecuadorian capital Quito, and my arm is aching. I am holding a tape recorder up to Hugo Chávez’s mouth and he won’t stop talking. Chávez is in town to attend the swearing-in of Ecuador’s new president, Lucio Gutiérrez, a man many expect to pursue the same radical leftist path as the Venezuelan leader (although, as it turns out, he doesn’t). Other Latin American leaders have come to Quito, but Chávez is by far the biggest draw. I am part of a scrum of journalists who surround him as he strides into the lobby of a smart hotel, smiling and sure of his own magnetism. I’m standing behind him, slightly to one side and I’d like to rest my arm by placing the tape … [Read more...] about The Chávez trap
Hugo Chavez
“Why don’t you shut up?”
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died on Tuesday at the age of 58, had a tense relationship with Spain. Most notoriously, during the 2007 Ibero-American summit in Chile, he repeatedly interrupted José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, telling him that his predecessor as Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar, was a "fascist" who had backed a 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela. Spain's King Juan Carlos grew increasingly irritated with Chávez's diatribe, eventually saying: "Por qué no te callas?" (Why don't you shut up?). … [Read more...] about “Why don’t you shut up?”
Friendship with Chávez “a necessary evil” for Portugal’s Sócrates
Former Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates found himself in a diplomatic quandary when Washington started pressuring him to take a tougher line on Hugo Chávez when the Venezuelan leader visited Lisbon. A series of US embassy cables from 2006 released recently by Wikileaks show how the US government had pushed the Sócrates government on numerous occasions to be more vocal over Chávez’s human rights record. But US diplomats in Lisbon expressed their frustration over Portugal’s hesitancy to take a lead in diplomatic initiatives against the Chávez government because the Sócrates government feared repercussions against the large Portuguese community in Venezuela. Sócrates saw Chávez’s … [Read more...] about Friendship with Chávez “a necessary evil” for Portugal’s Sócrates
Venezuela’s ETA haven tests limits of soft diplomacy
A characteristic of the current Spanish government’s foreign policy has been a softly-softly approach to potentially explosive issues. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez’s old nickname, ‘Bambi’, may now be out of date on the domestic front, but on the international stage, he still treads with the caution of a deer through the woods. Since angering George W. Bush by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq on taking office in 2004, Zapatero and his foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, have often gone to great lengths not to upset their counterparts –in Morocco, Cuba and France, to mention just three examples– through their soft diplomacy. Lately, however, their tolerance has been … [Read more...] about Venezuela’s ETA haven tests limits of soft diplomacy
FARC, ETA and Al Qaeda: the terror connection
When the US Drug Enforcement Administration announced in December that it had arrested three suspected Al Qaeda operatives in Ghana and brought them to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges, investigators unveiled some astonishing allegations. The defendants had offered to help rebels of South America’s oldest active guerrilla front, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), traffic cocaine into Spain using North African routes. While there had been speculation regarding such a connection in the past, this was the first time US law enforcement authorities had linked the dots between Islamic extremists and the FARC in a criminal indictment. Then in early March, … [Read more...] about FARC, ETA and Al Qaeda: the terror connection