Speakout: Picture of Venezuela's Chavez twisted

[bemildred]

While I was watching a huge rally in support of the
current Venezuelan government, President Hugo
Chavez passed through the crowd on the back of a
truck. A stranger nearby commented: "Look at the
eyes of the men. They're crying." They were - a
reaction few presidents could provoke.

I have lived in Venezuela for most of the past 19 years.
As a Catholic missionary priest, I spent eight of those
years in a cardboard-and-tin shack with mice, rats and
cockroaches, surrounded by human and animal
excrement. It was part of a public housing project
constructed during the first presidency of Carlos
Andres Perez (1974-1978) when oil money was
pouring into the country.

n 1989, a few months before the happenings in
Tiananmen Square, I witnessed the Caracas massacre
when hundreds were shot down in the streets. I saw
naked bodies strewn on the floor of a hospital morgue.

A year later I slept in the cemetery several nights
when bodies that the government had buried in black
garbage bags were being excavated from a pit that it
denied ever existed.

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[blindpig]

1. thanks!

This needs to be read by all of those around here who vilify Chavez at the drop of the hat.