Reply #48: Sounds like the work of a few low-level hoodlums and zealots

[Selatius]

And that implicates Chavez directly how? You're more likely to implicate local thugs who only claim to speak for Chavez for their own personal gain than you would Chavez or his inner circle directly. Most of the Venezuelans I've met were solidly middle to upper class and very anti-Chavez. If I listened to just them, I'd get the picture that he is a brutal communist dictator.

When I look at the demographics in Venezuela, something like 60 percent of the country lived below the poverty line. The next third were middle class, and the top 1 percent owned everything, including the news media, which they used to spread propaganda to cover the illegal, brutal coup against Chavez in 2002.

The simple fact of the matter is that the majority of Venezuelans I've met were anti-Chavez because they were rich enough to travel. That's not the same with Chavez supporters, who are largely very poor and the product of three decades of neglect by a corrupt government that spent big on big business interests but pennies for the people who needed it most. I haven't spoken to them because for them buying a plane ticket to where I live would cost them a year's worth of their own salary. It got that bad before Chavez came. It's still very bad on the ground in many of the poorest neighborhoods, but there are social programs being implemented now to fight poverty and eliminate things like illiteracy.