Christine ToomeyThe Sunday Times March 11, 2007People
who know him say he's a power-crazed narcissist. He even left the head
of a dead donkey at the door of a girl who spurned him. Others say he's
the rightful heir to Bolivar and Castro. So who is the real President
Chavez of Venezuela, and why is he snapping at the heels of the White
House? Late at night, Doña Elena Frias de Chavez
invites me to follow her into her bedroom in the hacienda-style
governor's mansion on the outskirts of Barinas, a remote regional
capital in Venezuela's central high savanna. Skirting round her unmade
bed, past photographs hung with rosaries of her controversial son, the
Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, she signals to me to stop. I turn to
see a makeshift altar set into an alcove crammed with candles, statues
of the Virgin Mary, saints and dusty artificial flowers around a large
hologram of Jesus Christ, the eyes of which appear open or closed
depending on where you stand.Ver artículo completo en sección Política Internacional
