Hugo! (44 page)

After meeting with Chávez, Indonesia's President Abdurrahman
Wahid said he now planned to visit Iraq, too, and he also believed the
embargo should be lifted. They joined other high-profile critics of the
trade sanctions, including the Vatican and former weapons inspector
Scott Ritter. Ritter contended Iraq was essentially disarmed and had no
weapons of mass destruction. That fact would be borne out after the
United States invaded Iraq in 2003 to destroy Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction — and couldn't find any.

Despite the controversy over the Iraq visit, many observers saw Chávez's
trip as a major international political success. He visited ten countries
in as many days, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United
Arab Emirates, Libya, Nigeria, and Algeria. He convinced all the
OPEC nations to send representatives to Caracas, although Hussein and
Libya's Moammar Gadhafi had to dispatch stand-ins because of fears
their enemies might infiltrate Venezuela and try to kill the two leaders.
Chávez had taken a major step toward revitalizing OPEC. His country
had already been rewarded for its renewed leadership by members who
gave Venezuela the presidency. One US political scientist commented
that "in geopolitical terms, the OPEC tour was masterful. It demonstrated
that Venezuela was not just a Latin American backwater." Despite the
State Department complaints, "more people in the Third World now
know about Chávez than they do about any other Latin American leader
except Fidel Castro."

That September the
summit gripped Caracas for three days. In a scene
reminiscent of Carlos Andrés Pérez's "coronation" in 1989, princes, presidents,
and sheiks descended on the city from around the world. Central
Caracas, notorious for its chaotic traffic jams, fell quiet. Authorities closed
off streets around the glittering Teresa Carreño Theater and removed
street vendors. Some three thousand soldiers and police patrolled the
capital and the winding mountain highway that connects Caracas and
the international airport on the Caribbean coast. Helicopters and motorcades
ferried delegates back and forth from the theater to their hotels.

The Iranian delegation rented out three floors of the elegant
Eurobuilding hotel. They left two empty as a security precaution. Some
guests and journalists complained of half-hour delays at metal detectors,
but they all gawked as President
Mohammad Khatami walked by. He
wore a flowing robe, a black cape, and a black turban that signified his
descent from Islam's seventh-century prophet Muhammad. Saudi Arabia
had the largest delegation, with 380 people. They took over the entire
sprawling Melia Hotel.

Intelligence agents with bomb-sniffing German shepherds combed
hotel hallways. OPEC had been obsessed with security ever since its oil
ministers were kidnapped at the first and only previous summit in 1975
in Vienna, Austria. The kidnapping was orchestrated by Carlos the
Jackal, the Venezuelan-born international terrorist Chávez had written
to in 1999 as he sat in a Paris prison.

The Venezuelans took pains to make the visitors feel at home. For
those from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim nations, they rearranged
hotel furniture, shifting beds to face away from Mecca, the holy
city in Saudi Arabia that Muslims face in prayer five times a day; some
observant Muslims never let their feet face Mecca when they sleep.
The hotels also prepared food according to Muslim guidelines. The
Tamanaco Inter-Continental Hotel offered up an "Arabian Nights"
theme in its Cacique restaurant. At night, the government lit up the sky
with fireworks to celebrate the historic meeting.

At the summit itself delegates debated the rising oil prices. They
blamed taxes, middlemen, and bottlenecks, although
OPEC cutbacks in
production were also a major factor in the tripling of prices in the past
fourteen months or so. The more militant Muslim nations, including Iran,
Iraq, and Libya, favored keeping production down and prices up. Pro-US
Saudi Arabia advocated the opposite. Chávez stepped into the debate,
promoting a "band system" in which prices would be allowed to oscillate
between $22 and $28 a barrel but remain relatively stable. Producers
would increase or scale back output to keep prices within the band.

Chávez defended the prices set in the band, saying, "What we are
asking for is justice." As Arab sheiks, princes, and presidents listened
patiently, Chávez, the cartel's only leader of a non-Muslim nation, elaborated
on the relationship between oil producers and industrialized
nations. "What would they do without oil?" he said. "Where would they
be?" The delegates' patience turned to smiles and applause. Chávez
pushed on, comparing the cost of various
consumer goods including
suntan lotion and shampoo with oil. "A barrel of Coca-Cola: $78.80.
Milk: $150. Ice: $1,105. Good wine: $1,370." Many of the heads of state
nodded and laughed approvingly at the comparison. Several were still
chattering about it as they filed out of the auditorium. Days earlier,
Chávez told listeners to his call-in radio show, "How nice it would be if
they also lowered prices for the things they sell us — computers, medicine,
cars, and the interest on foreign debt."

Chávez was working his rhetorical magic on the OPEC delegates,
just as he did with Wall Street financiers, shantytown dwellers and
anyone else he corralled. But his proposals went beyond a price band
for oil. He had a larger
vision for OPEC. He wanted the organization to
address global poverty, foreign debt, terms of trade, and other issues
facing developing nations. He proposed establishing an OPEC bank as a
substitute for the IMF. A
"Declaration of Caracas" drafted by the delegates
urged "developed nations to recognize that the greatest environmental
tragedy confronting the world is human
poverty."

While some of Chávez's detractors dismissed the summit as little
more than talk, many people viewed it as a major success in solidifying an
organization that two years earlier seemed on the verge of collapse amid
rock-bottom oil prices. The day after it concluded, Iran's president met
with Iraq's vice president in the Iranian leader's suite at the Eurobuilding
to try to repair frayed relations dating from their 1980-1988 war. It was the
highest-level meeting between the two countries since 1997.

To some, Chávez emerged from the summit with enhanced status on
the world stage. The Parisian daily
Le Monde
wrote that he passed from
being an advocate of "a peaceful revolution against his nation's oligarchy
and corrupt political class to the main spokesman for an offensive — this
time at the planetary level — against savage capitalism." Days before the
summit, rising oil prices forced the United States to tap its strategic reserves
for only the third time in its twenty-five-year history. It was preparing to
release another one million barrels a day starting in November.

Back in March, President Clinton called Chávez from
Air Force
One
while en route to India to ask the Venezuelan leader to
increase
output. Besides the fact that half of Venezuela's production went to the
United States, it was tacit acknowledgment that Chávez was a driving
force behind the resurgence of the cartel, which produced 40 percent of
the world's crude oil.

His relations with the United States, though, would never be the
same after his visit to Iraq. It was the beginning of the end of the US
policy of flexibility and constructive engagement. The same month
Chávez met with Saddam Hussein, the US ambassador to Venezuela
and the chief proponent of the engagement policy, John Maisto, ended
his tenure. He was replaced by hard-liner
Donna Hrinak, the former
ambassador to Brazil. Then, barely a month after the OPEC summit
ended, Chávez gave the United States more reason for worry. Another
world leader paid a visit to Venezuela.

It was Chávez's budding mentor,
Fidel Castro.

Castro had attended Chávez's inauguration in February 1999, but he
was among scores of foreign dignitaries traveling to Venezuela for that
event. This was to be an official
state visit, his first to Venezuela in forty
years. The last one he made was in 1959, shortly after the triumph of his
revolutionary battle to overthrow Fulgencio Batista. Castro would have
Chávez to himself this time, one-on-one. A friendship that began with
Chávez's visit to Cuba in December 1994 after his release from prison
and deepened with their unforgettable baseball match in November
1999 would be cemented during five days in which the men did everything
from play baseball again to sign a crucial oil deal. Chávez said he
hoped to "give oxygen to Cuba" with the pact.

Castro arrived on October 26 to a hero's welcome. He and Chávez
visited Simón Bolívar's tomb near the San Carlos jail where Chávez had
been briefly imprisoned in 1994. Castro also received the keys to the city,
and visited a home used by Cuba independence hero José Martí in 1881.
Hundreds of admirers waved Cuban and Venezuelan flags and shouted
"Welcome Fidel!"

The pair set off for the
llanos, lunching with Chávez's father in
Barinas and traveling to Chávez's hometown of Sabaneta. Castro visited
the small blue-and-white concrete home where Chávez had lived with his
grandmother Rosa Inés after they'd eventually moved out of the mud hut
across the street. The two leaders walked down the block to Bolívar Plaza,
where Castro mounted a stage draped with a banner portraying Cuba revolutionary
hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara. He called Sabaneta the "cradle
of the Bolivarian revolution" and told a cheering crowd of three thousand
that "just like people go to Caracas to visit the house of Bolívar, one day
people will come to visit Sabaneta, where Chávez was born."

On a trip to nearby Guanare, Castro impressed farmers with his
questions about the minutiae of potash fertilizer and soil ratings. That
night, a Saturday, he and Chávez arranged a rematch of their baseball
game in Havana, this time in the city of Barquísimeto. Chávez played
first base for Venezuela. Castro managed the Cuban squad of retired
players until inserting himself as a pinch hitter in the last inning. Oddly
dressed in sneakers, a red helmet, and a blue warm-up jacket with his
military fatigues underneath, Castro managed a three-and-two count.
When the umpire called a third strike, he disputed the call and simply
walked to first base. No one argued. Cuba won seventeen to six.

The two spent Sunday on Chávez's radio program
Alo Presidente
.
To mark the occasion, producers added an
-s
to the name. The men
gabbed for five hours and even sang a song together. They showed signs
they would have gone on all day if not for other commitments. Castro
praised Chávez for helping to revive OPEC. He also offered indications
he viewed the younger leader as his ideological and spiritual heir. "I
have
confidence in you," Castro said. "At this moment, in this country,
there is no one who can substitute for you." He gave Chávez some
advice on governing, suggesting that the thousands of Venezuelans
who pressed notes into his hands or sent him letters could not look to
him to personally solve each of their problems. He had to delegate.
"Chávez can't be the mayor of all of Venezuela," Castro said.

He'd given Chávez more advice when he'd addressed the National
Assembly a couple of days earlier, urging the younger man to protect
himself. "There is no doubt that his enemies here and abroad
will try to eliminate him," Castro said. He knew something about the
topic. He'd been the target of numerous assassination attempts, most
launched by the CIA
and Cuban exiles in Miami.

The highlight of the trip in terms of concrete actions came on
the final day, when they signed an
energy accord. Venezuela agreed
to provide Cuba with fifty-three thousand barrels of oil a day on favorable
terms. Cuba would be allowed to pay with a mixture of money,
goods, and services. It already had 450 doctors living and working in
the mudslide disaster zone of Vargas. That would be extended nationwide
and turned into one of the hallmarks of Chávez's presidency,
Mision Barrio Adentro
(Inside the Neighborhood). It entailed placing
doctors in urban shantytowns and rural villages where few Venezuelan
doctors would dare tread. To many poor Venezuelans, that was a revolution
in itself.

Cuba could also pay for the
oil by treating Venezuelan patients in
Cuba, providing vaccines, medical equipment, and aid in producing
medicines, and exporting physical education teachers, sports coaches,
tourism advisers, and agricultural experts to Venezuela. Or it could pay
for some of it with cash, and up to a quarter of it under preferential
financing terms. It had fifteen years to pay, with a two-year grace period,
a 2 percent interest rate, and prices as low as $20 a barrel — significantly
better than the $30 current at the time. The entire deal was worth about
$500 million a year. It would supply Cuba with a third of its oil needs. It
was a lifesaver for the embattled Cuban regime.

Critics called it a giveaway — and to a human rights abuser, no
less. They said the money could be better used building schools,
repairing roads, investing in decrepit public hospitals, and paying off
the foreign debt. But Venezuela had just re-signed similar agreements
with twelve other Caribbean and Central American countries. The
pacts dated back to the 1980s when oil giants Mexico and Venezuela
offered their poorer neighbors
cut-rate oil deals.

Ten months after
Castro's visit, he decided to mark the historic occasion
of his seventy-fifth birthday not in Cuba but in Venezuela, alongside
Chávez. When he landed in Caracas on August 11, 2001, he
declared that he "wanted to celebrate my seventy-five years in the land
of the Liberator." A beaming Chávez draped his arm around Castro
and said, "We welcome our brother, we welcome our friend, we welcome
our revolutionary soldier who has been an example of dignity
for all the continent."