Chavez: Smiles, handshakes don’t change view of ‘imperialist’ U.S.

(CNN) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday he appreciated U.S. President Barack Obama’s friendly gestures at last weekend’s Summit of the Americas, but said they don’t change his view of the United States as an imperialist nation.

Hugo Chavez had handshakes and smiles for President Obama at the Summit of the Americas last weekend.

Chavez’s fiery diatribes against the United States have included referring to former President George W. Bush as the devil.

He was photographed with Obama at least twice at the summit — once when Obama shook hands with him and other leaders, and again when he approached Obama to give him a book.

“The hand[shake], yes. And the smile, yes — one time and a second time and a third time and a fourth time,” Chavez said during a televised address. “But nobody should be mistaken. The empire is there, alive and kicking.”

The book Chavez presented to Obama as cameras rolled is titled “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.” The book chronicles Europe’s and the United States’ role in “the effects and causes of capitalist underdevelopment in Latin America,” according to one reviewer.

As he has in the past, Chavez noted Obama’s historic role as the first black U.S. president.

“I hope Obama, for the dignity of his race, may be the last president of an imperialist United States,” he said.

U.S. warm to Venezuelan overture to return ambassadors

(CNN) — Venezuela President Hugo Chavez is considering naming an ambassador to the United States, signaling a shift in the historically tense relations between the two nations — one that the Obama administration welcomed. Venezuela President Hugo Chavez says favorable inroads with Barack Obama have led him to try to mend relations. Venezuela President Hugo Chavez says favorable inroads with Barack Obama have led him to try to mend relations. Click to view previous image “It is possible we will begin evaluating the designation of an ambassador in the United States,” Chavez said in a statement Saturday after the meeting of leaders and representatives from 34 countries at the the fifth Summit of the Americas. “We want to move in that direction.” A senior Obama administration official told CNN late Saturday that Chavez had approached Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discuss returning ambassadors to posts in Caracas and Washington. “This is a positive development that will help advance U.S. interests,” the official said. “And, the State Department will now work to further this shared goal.” Earlier, another administration official told CNN, “We don’t know yet if Chavez is serious. … We’re not rushing into this.” The welcoming attitude from both sides contrasts with the mood during the Bush administration, during which Chavez expelled the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela in September. The United States responded by expelling Venezuela’s ambassador, heightening tensions between the two nations. Chavez — whose anti-U.S. rhetoric has included calling former President George W. Bush the devil — made the announcement Saturday after President Obama presented a different approach to the United States’ neighbors, offering “favorable prospects” for the future, a White House economic adviser said. Don’t Miss * Chavez’s gesture turns obscure book into bestseller “We take Obama at his word, with the one difference we have: We [Venezuelans] are socialists,” Chavez said. Chavez told CNN affiliate GloboVision that he has tapped Roy Chaderton, Venezuela’s ambassador to the Organization of American States, as his candidate for the post. “Now we have to wait for Washington to give the authorization so he can take office,” he said. (c n n)

Chavez orders nationalization of Cargill

(CNN) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday he had ordered the nationalization of at least some of the operations of the U.S.-based food giant Cargill and threatened to do the same with the Caracas-based food maker Polar.

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez accused Cargill of growing specialized rice to evade price controls.

“Begin the expropriation process with Cargill,” he said in a nationally televised speech in which he accused the company of growing specialized forms of rice in an attempt to evade price controls.

The leftist president called the company’s practices “a flagrant violation of everything that we have been doing.”

Mark Klein, a spokesman for Cargill, said the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company “is committed to the production of food in Venezuela that complies with all laws and regulations.”

He said a rice mill cited by Chavez “was designed exclusively to manufacture parboiled rice, which the company has done at this site for the last seven years and elsewhere in the country for 13 years.”

Klein added, “Cargill expects the opportunity to clarify the situation with the government and is respectful of the Venezuelan government decision.”

Cargill, which is privately owned, has been doing business since 1986 in Venezuela, where its operations include oilseed processing, grain and oilseeds trading, animal feed, salt, and financial and risk management.

It has 2,000 employees in 22 locations in Venezuela, according to its Web site.

About Polar, which is led by Lorenzo Mendoza, Chavez said, “We can expropriate all the plants of Polar. Mr. Mendoza, be alert. Because then you will go out and order your pricey lawyers and I don’t know what to say that this is a violation of the constitution. Well, fine. If you want to fight with the government, brother, there you go. It’s not with the government, it’s with the law!”

In August, Chavez also ordered the nationalization of the Banco de Venezuela “to put it at the service of Venezuela.”

Food, farms the new target for Venezuela’s Chavez

By Frank Jack Daniel – Analysis

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has put food and farms at the center of his socialist revolution, tightening the government’s grip on supplies of staples in a strategy that risks sparking social unrest.

Chavez nationalized a local unit of U.S. food giant Cargill on Wednesday and threatened to take over the South American country’s top food producer, Empresas Polar.

Since winning a referendum vote three weeks ago that allows him to run again for re-election in 2012, Chavez has moved against food companies, imposing output quotas and sending troops to grain mills.

Chavez risks disrupting the supply chain with the aggressive steps, but the former paratrooper is gambling he can rein in soaring prices for staples and at the same time maintain production with a renewed focus on farming.

If he fails, he will anger Venezuelans. Sporadic food shortages in the past dented his popularity and attempts to boost farm output via land reform led to rural violence.

This week, he imposed tough new quotas forcing companies to direct most of their output to products with price caps. He took over Cargill’s rice plant for producing only parboiled rice, which is exempt from the price controls.

The government also announced it will issue $1.9 billion in local currency bonds to finance soft loans to peasant farmers.

Chavez, who grew up in the countryside, has even bigger long-term plans, including doubling the amount of land under cultivation in the vast South American country.

“The land is not private, it’s social property. If you put up a fence, or farm it, or have some barns, well these things are private, but the land belongs to nobody in particular, it’s everybody’s,” Chavez said at the weekend.

In the past he has taken over big farms deemed idle and given them to small farmers. The land reform sparked violence, with dozens of peasant farmers murdered in the last few years.

On Wednesday, Agriculture Minster Elias Jaua warned big companies they would lose their land if harvests fell.

“If we start to see a decline in plantings, we will occupy the land and the Venezuelan state will plant it” he said.

Venezuela is South America’s largest oil exporter and its fertile plains and hills were abandoned when the booming oil industry crowded out coffee and cocoa farms in the 1920s.

The OPEC member is now one of Latin America’s few net food importers. Oil contributes to a strong currency, meaning it is often cheaper to import food than produce it domestically.

Cheap fertilizer and new irrigation systems have helped Venezuela increase production of some crops in recent years, but output has not kept pace with soaring demand during several years of an oil-funded economic boom.

RISKY STRATEGY

Over the last two years, Chavez leveraged record oil prices to put large chunks of the economy under state control, first taking over oil, power and telecommunications companies, and then moving on the nation’s steel and cement industries.

But crude prices are now at less than a third of their peak last year, ending the spending spree.

Despite the lower income, his referendum victory last month has given Chavez the political capital needed to push on with his plan to bring most of the economy into hands of the government or state-backed groups such as cooperatives.

But the plan is risky in agriculture as government intervention has discouraged investment and been a factor in sporadic shortages of products like milk and chicken.

“The capacity of the government to produce and distribute food on its own, without the private sector, is nil,” said political analyst Luis Vicente Leon.

The shortages damaged Chavez’s popularity and helped the opposition beat him in a referendum vote in late 2007, his only defeat at the ballot box.

Chavez fixed the problem last year by increasing imports and setting up a food distribution network run by the state.

But lower oil income could force the government to devalue the bolivar currency. If that happens the cost of imports will shoot up and shortages could resurface as a political issue.

A weaker currency would help farmers compete, but Venezuela is still a long way from being self sufficient in food.

(Additional reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel)

Venezuela ousts EU politician for insulting Chavez

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) — Venezuela on Friday expelled a Spanish member of the European Parliament after he called President Hugo Chavez a dictator and criticized Chavez’s handling of a referendum on term limits that the lawmaker had been set to observe.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, center, is flanked by Bolivia’s Evo Morales, right, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.

In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said it had invited Luis Herrero, who represents the right-wing Partido Popular (Popular Party) in the European Parliament, to leave the country to preserve a “peaceful climate” before the Sunday referendum.

An opposition party, staunchly against Chavez, had asked Herrero to observe the referendum on a change to the constitution that would allow unlimited terms for elected officials.

Venezuela’s Globovision television reported that Herrero was escorted to the Maiquetia airport on Friday by what appeared to be members of the national guard.

“Following his comments, in a sequestering operation, they took him by force from the hotel without even allowing him to take his personal belongings and his passport,” opposition member Luis Ignacio Planas told Globovision.

About 10 p.m., after a discussion with other European parliamentarians, officials from Venezuela‘s national intelligence agency went to Herrero’s room and asked him to leave, police officials told Globovision.

The Spanish Foreign Ministry will express its dissatisfaction with Venezuela’s treatment of Herrero in a letter to the Venezuelan foreign minister, said Joaquin Duran, a ministry spokesman.

Duran did not say the Foreign Ministry was upset with Herrero’s deportation. He said it was dissatisfied with how the expulsion was carried out.

During a news conference that aired Thursday on Globovision, Herrero harshly criticized Chavez‘s handling of the referendum, implying the Venezuelan president was trying to manipulate the polling schedule to his benefit. Herrero called for Venezuelans to “vote freely.”

“Don’t ever let fear obstruct your vote, as a dictator has premeditated,” he said.

Herrero’s father, Fernando Herrero Tejedor, held posts as regional governor and as the secretary-general of the National Movement, the political, social and labor organization of Spanish right-wing dictator Gen. Francisco Franco, who died in 1975.

In September, Jose Miguel Vivanco, Human Rights Watch executive director for the Americas, was also expelled for criticizing Chavez’s policies

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