Havana – Venezuela’s president was honored Friday with a U.N. prize named for a Cuban independence hero, a day after the Bush administration likened Hugo Chavez to Hitler.
Chavez was visiting Havana amid an intensifying propaganda war between Washington and Latin America’s leftist leaders. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld compared Chavez to the Nazi leader and warned Thursday about populist leadership in Bolivia and Cuba.
Venezuela’s vice president fired back Friday by comparing the Bush administration to the Third Reich, while Cuban President Fidel Castro said “more dangerous are those who possess dozens of thousands of nuclear weapons,” referring to the U.S. government.
Some 200,000 Cubans crowded Revolution Plaza for Friday night’s ceremony granting Chavez UNESCO’s 2005 Jose Marti International Prize. Castro himself handed over the framed certificate to Chavez, a close ally.
The forum gave Castro and Chavez a chance to pat each other on the back and promote regional solidarity while bashing the U.S. government. Thousands of young Venezuelans, Bolivians and other Latin Americans studying medicine for free in Cuba attended the ceremony, screaming their support for both leaders.
Marti, who died in 1895 during Cuba’s war of independence with Spain, has been glorified in Cuba as the ultimate anti-imperialist, a label both Chavez and Castro have embraced for themselves in their struggles with the United States.
Far from regional heroes, the U.S. government considers Chavez and Castro to be populists who threaten individual rights.
Rumsfeld expressed the same fears about Bolivia’s new leftist president, Evo Morales, during a National Press Club appearance Thursday. “We’ve seen some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries. And elections like Evo Morales in Bolivia take place that clearly are worrisome.” “I mean, we’ve got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money.
He’s a person who was elected legally – just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally – and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others.” Castro rejected Rumsfeld’s comments, defending Morales and populism in his hour-long speech before Chavez took to the podium.
“Populist leaders are those who concern themselves with their people, with health, with education,” the Cuban leader said.
Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel Friday called President Bush “the North American Hitler.” Rangel compared Bush’s administration to that of the Third Reich, accusing Vice President Dick Cheney of “trafficking in war” and calling Rumsfeld a “delinquent” and an “arms dealer.” “The unacceptable comparison of President Chavez with Hitler is a concrete indication of the desperation that reigns at this moment in the governing circles of Washington,” said Rangel.
Chavez himself did not appear to mention Rumsfeld’s comments upon arrival to Cuba early Friday, when he was received at the Havana airport by Castro. Front-page photographs in the island’s newspapers showed the two with broad grins. Chavez told Cuban reporters, “A kiss for Cuba, which I love.” Before the award ceremony, Chavez inaugurated an international book fair dedicated to Venezuela, calling Cuba “a nation of people I love as my own.” “Every day, I love Cuba more,” he said.
Many speculated he would swing by the open-air Anti-Imperialist Plaza, where the Cuban government has launched a mysterious building project directly in front of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.
The project, which included dozens of tall flag poles, appears to be an attempt to block a gigantic electric sign put up by American officials in January with streaming text of sayings about freedom and excerpts from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Marti prize was created by UNESCO in 1994 on the initiative of Cuba to recognize an individual or institution contributing to the unity and integration of countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is awarded on the recommendation of a seven-member international jury that includes Nadine Gordimer, the South African Nobel Prize for Literature laureate. Earlier recipients of the $5,000 prize include the Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and the Ecuadorean painter Oswaldo Guayasamin.
