Source: Paul Dobson in Venezuela

"The U.S. intervention in Venezuelan internal affairs in recent months, and particularly during the election campaign, has been brutal, vulgar" denounced President Maduro this week, in response to interventionary statements from the White House, from the US sponsored Human Rights Watch, and from private US media outlets which openly called for a coup d'état against the democratically elected President.

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine - Leer el artículo en español aquí.

The guy in the cheap brown windbreaker walking up the dirty tenement steps to my New York office looked like a bus driver.

Hi All,

As signalled, before the elections, the right-wing opposition are engaging in activities similar to those that laid the ground for the short-lived coup in 2002. Here's an update:

  Source: Manuel Larrabure, The Bullet

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has prompted the international left to acknowledge two key features about him and Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution. The first is Chávez's commitment to fighting for the poor and oppressed. Plenty of statistics demonstrate this. Literally millions have been lifted out of poverty and given new opportunities to improve their lives. Examples from daily life abound. I remember speaking to an upper class anti-Chavista once who was complaining about how, since Chávez came to power, it had become difficult to find maids. Many of the poor women she used to hire, she explained, had enrolled in a free education program provided by the government, one of the highly successful ‘missions.' Another time, an empanada maker who lived with his son in the same 10-foot by six-foot stand he cooked out of told me how, since Chávez arrived, his community became emboldened to organize themselves into a cooperative with the mission of fighting the hotel and restaurant chains in the area, and create a community controlled tourist zone.

By Andy Robinson, La Vanguardia

If the final outcome of Hugo Chavez's life was the chronicle of a death foretold, the socio-economic history of his 14 years in power (legitimised, by the way, through an annual consultation process (do they mean referendum??) which saw Chavez win on 13 occasions) is the story of a crash foretold. Year after year. Month after month. Except that in this case, after almost three years of growth and a strong increase in GDP (check PIB 2012 - he says it's 4% in another part of this item) of 5.7% in 2012, the patient persisted in showing vital signs despite the prognosis.

Source: Andy Robinson, La Vanguardia

If the final outcome of Hugo Chavez's life was the chronicle of a death foretold, the socio-economic history of his 14 years in power (legitimised, by the way, through an annual consultation process (do they mean referendum??) which saw Chavez win on 13 occasions) is the story of a crash foretold. Year after year. Month after month. Except that in this case, after almost three years of growth and a strong increase in GDP (check PIB 2012 - he says it's 4% in another part of this item) of 5.7% in 2012, the patient persisted in showing vital signs despite the prognosis.

   Source: Mark Weisbrot for Al Jazeera

People don't know the unique role Chavez played in bringing about the unity and second independence of Latin America.

Commentators have been preparing obituaries for Hugo Chávez ever since the announcement of his cancer diagnosis in July 2011. There were peaks and troughs of activity, Christmas 2012 being a time of frenzied speculation after no word or tweet emanated from the ebullient president after he departed for Havana and a fourth round of treatment.

Official pronouncements over the passing weeks provided optimism that Chávez would be able to assume the fourth term that he had won in the October 2012 presidential election. Opinion polls showed that a majority of Venezuelans were confident Chávez would be back in Miraflores Palace and were supportive of the delay of his January 10th inauguration. There was consequently a stunned popular reaction to the tearfully delivered message from Vice President Nicolas Maduro that Chávez had died on March 5th.