Spreading the gospel according to
Chavez
19 September 2005The Globe and Mail
A1
English
NEW YORK -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez looked fully at home in the pulpit of Manhattan's Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew as he preached the gospel of social justice so widely embraced by North America's liberal Christians.
Fingering a crucifix that he had pulled from his breast pocket, Mr. Chavez assured his audience that he is no godless Communist, but an “authentic Christian” who is merely following the biblical injunction to serve the poor.
“I love my people more than anything. I am willing to give my life for my people,” he said, in a clear reference to the recent call from U.S. evangelist Pat Robertson for his assassination.
But Jesus Christ — whom Mr. Chavez so often invoked in his speech — did not have oil. Venezuela does, and its President scored a major propaganda coup this weekend by promising to supply some of the poorest communities in the United States with cheap heating oil this winter to offset record prices.
The populist Latin American leader has been engaged in an ongoing war of words with White House officials and U.S. conservatives, who accuse him of attempting to spread socialist revolution throughout the region.
He, on the other hand, accuses Washington of planning to invade his oil-rich country and assassinate him.
On the weekend, Mr. Chavez took his message directly to the American people, portraying himself as friend of the poor and downtrodden, even in the United States, while casting U.S. President George W. Bush as a defender of the rich and powerful.
On Saturday, Mr. Chavez toured the South Bronx, a depressed, violent neighbourhood populated mainly by blacks and Latinos — and was greeted like a rock star. In a meeting with community leaders, he outlined a plan to have subsidized heating oil delivered by Citgo Petroleum Corp., a Houston-based refiner and marketer that is wholly owned by the Venezuelan national oil company.
Citgo refines nearly 900,000 barrels of petroleum product a day in the United States, and owns 14,000 gas stations.
Mr. Chavez said the company could deliver directly to schools, hospitals, community centres and seniors residences, cutting costs by “avoiding the middle man.”
Mr. Chavez, whose government provides subsidized fuel to the poor in his own country and in some Caribbean countries, including Cuba, said he would like to see three projects running by winter to deliver subsidized fuel to neighbourhoods in New York, Chicago and Boston.
The populist President was in New York for the summit of world leaders at the United Nations, an exercise he denounced as being hijacked by the United States and its powerful allies. He appeared on ABC's Nightline, where he accused the Bush administration of planning an invasion of Venezuela, and sat for interviews with the New York Daily News and Newsweek.
On Saturday night, he addressed a boisterous, packed house at a United Methodist church in the affluent and liberal Upper West Side. The 1,000-strong audience was a mélange of blacks, Latinos and whites; front pews were populated by union bosses and church leaders from various congregations.
Mr. Chavez arrived on the arm of U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, who spoke later, slamming the Bush administration for failing the poor of New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and praising Mr. Chavez's “hand of friendship.”
The Venezuelan leader was preceded in the pulpit by a United Methodist minister and a Roman Catholic priest, who recounted Mr. Chavez' s efforts to deliver literacy programs, health care and basic necessities to the poor, and the United States's historic support of brutal right-wing dictators in the region.
The stocky, 51-year-old leader then continued his wooing of the American people, and New Yorkers in particular.
“Starting today, you know that I fell in love. I fell in love with the Bronx, and with New York,” he told his rapturous audience. “For the first time, I have met the soul of the American people.”
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