Chavez Suggests Bill Clinton for U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela

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Hugo has a list of people he would welcome to Venezuela as the new ambassador. His list includes Bill Clinton, Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone or Sean Penn.



Hugo Chávez and Hillary Clinton during Brazilian president-elect Dilma Rousseff's inauguration on New Year's Day. Photograph: Marcelo Garcia/AFP/Getty Images

Get me Bill Clinton, says Hugo Chávez after vetoing US ambassador

In a televised speech on Tuesday, Venezuela's president said he had come up with a solution. "I hope they name Oliver Stone. I'll suggest a candidate ... Sean Penn or Chomsky. We have a lot of friends there. Bill Clinton."

Stone visited Caracas in May for the local premiere of his documentary South of the Border, which profiles Latin America's leftist leaders. He told reporters he admired Chávez and his record since coming to power in 1999.

Chávez recounted how he briefly met Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, on the sidelines of Dilma Rousseff's inauguration ceremony as president of Brazil on Saturday.

"I said to Señora Clinton 'How is your husband?'" he said. "But I made a mistake because I speak very bad English and I said 'How is your wife?' She laughed, then I said husband."

Good choices, he's a smart man ~

Chavez recently attended the premier of Oliver Stone's documentary 'South of the Border' at the Venice Film Festival, a documentary which started out as a film about Chavez and Venezuela but expanded into a much bigger venture when he ended up visiting several other South American countries and interviewing the leaders of all those countries also.

Oliver Stone has made other films about South and Central America such as "Salvador" starring James Woods which dealt with the U.S. backed death squads there. Another of his films, Comandante which dealt with Fidel Castro's Cuba, but, he says, he has had trouble getting these films distributed in North America. Censorship really needs to stop in this country.

Stone believes that Chavez has been very unfairly portrayed in the U.S. media, and 'was definitely on the hit list' during the Bush administration, he says. He believes that if Iraq had gone well, the Bush administration would have focused its attention on Venezuela next. I don't think many people doubt that. South America thrived while Bush was busy in the Middle East, so something good came of the horror that is the War in Iraq.

Video of interviews with Chavez and Stone: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2009/sep/08/hugo-chavez-oliver-stone



South of the Border … Oliver Stone with President Hugo Chavez. Photograph: Jose Ibanez

Oliver Stone: The Truth About Hugo Chavez

I was invited to Venezuela to meet President Hugo Chávez for the first time during his aborted rescue mission of Colombian hostages, held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), during Christmas of 2007.

As is often the case, the man I met was not the man I'd read and heard about in the US media. I was able to return in January 2009 to interview President Chávez in more depth. Was Hugo Chávez really the anti–American force we've been told he is? Once we began our journey, we found ourselves going beyond Venezuela to several other countries, and interviewing seven presidents in the region, telling a larger and even more compelling story, which has now become South of the Border. Leader after leader seemed to be saying the same thing. They wanted to control their own resources, strengthen regional ties, be treated as equals with the US, and become financially independent of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Stone says that we need to be cautious about the demonising of leaders of foreign countries, reminding us of the propaganda that led to the disaster in Iraq. He hopes his film will give people a chance to see' a different side of the 'official' U.S. view of Chavez'.