US to grant refugee status to some children

WASHINGTON-The U.S. government will launch a program in December to grant refugee status to some people under the age of 21 who live in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and whose parents legally reside in the United States.

U.S. officials say parents can ask authorities free of charge for refugee status for their children in the Central American countries, which are plagued by poverty and vicious gang violence. The program does not apply to minors who have arrived in the U.S. illegally.

Vice President Joe Biden announced the program Friday at the Inter-American Development Bank, where the presidents of the three Central American countries will present a plan to stem child migration from their countries.

U.S. officials said that children deemed refugees will be able to work immediately upon arrival in the U.S., opt for permanent residency the following year and for naturalization five years later. They did not say how long the process of receiving refugee status will take.

Central American children who meet the requirements will be part of a quota of 4,000 people from Latin America receiving refugee status each fiscal year, officials said. The U.S. quota of Latin America refugees currently consists of Cubans and Colombians.

Applicants who don't meet the requirements will be evaluated to see if they can be admitted conditionally under a non-permanent migratory status that allows them to work temporarily in the U.S.

Biden's announcement comes as President Barack Obama is poised to unveil a series of executive actions on immigration that will shield possibly around 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally from deportation, according to advocates in touch with the White House.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., criticized the plan, which he described as "government-sanctioned border surge" if Obama acts as expected.

"The policy announced today could open Pandora's box, allowing potentially even more people to come to the United States. This is bad policy and undermines the integrity of our immigration system," Goodlatte said in a news release.

The program aims to be a legal and safe alternative to the long and dangerous journey some Central American children take north to reach the U.S. and to reunite with their parents in the U.S. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied child and teenage migrants showed up at the U.S. border earlier this year.

On Wednesday, Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez said the plan includes measures to stimulate economic growth, improve public safety, improve government agencies and provide better education and training opportunities.

Obama shakes hands with Cuba's Raul Castro

By PETER ORSI

Associated Press

It was the briefest of moments, just seconds, two presidents shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries amid a gaggle of world leaders together to honor the late Nelson Mandela.

It would hardly have been noteworthy, except the men locking hands in Johannesburg were Barack Obama and Raul Castro, whose nations have been mired in Cold War antagonism for more than five decades.

A single, cordial gesture is unlikely to wash away bad blood dating back to the Eisenhower administration. But in a year that has seen both sides take small steps at improving the relationship, the handshake stoked talk of further rapprochement.

"On the one hand you shouldn't make too much of this. Relations between Cuba and the United States are not changing tomorrow because they shook hands," said Geoff Thale, a Cuba analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a U.S.-based think tank.

He contrasted the moment to a 2002 development summit where then-Mexican President Vicente Fox asked Fidel Castro to leave to avoid having him in the same room as U.S. President George W. Bush.

"What's really striking here is the contrast," Thale said. "It's a modestly hopeful sign, and it builds on the small steps that they're taking."

Not everyone was so happy about it.

"Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raul Castro, it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American congresswoman from Florida who until January 2013 was chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Obama and Castro's encounter was the first of its kind between sitting U.S. and Cuban presidents since Bill Clinton and Fidel shook hands at the U.N. in 2000.

It came as Obama greeted a line of world leaders on his way to the podium for a speech at the memorial.

Obama also had a cheek-kiss for Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The two have clashed over reports the National Security Agency monitored her communications, leading the Brazilian leader to shelve a state trip to the U.S. earlier this year.

In another potentially uneasy exchange, Obama briefly greeted Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose refusal to sign a security agreement with the U.S. before year's end has irritated the administration.

Obama adviser Ben Rhodes said the handshakes were not planned in advance and didn't involve any substantive discussion. "The president didn't see this as a venue to do business," he told reporters traveling back to Washington aboard Air Force One.

By shaking Castro's hand, Obama sent a message of openness that echoes a speech he gave at a Democratic fundraiser in Miami last month.

"We have to continue to update our policies," he said then. "Keep in mind that when (Fidel) Castro came to power, I was just born. So the notion that the same policies that we put in place in 1961 would somehow still be as effective as they are today in the age of the Internet and Google and world travel doesn't make sense."

As president, Obama has lifted limits on how often Cuban-Americans can visit family back on the island, and how much they can send home in remittances. He also reinstated "people-to-people" cultural exchange tours to Cuba. The result is more than a half-million U.S. visitors to the island each year.

Cultural, sports and academic exchanges have become commonplace. Just Monday, a huge ship docked in Havana carrying hundreds of Semester at Sea students under a U.S. government license.

But Obama has also argued that Washington's 51-year economic embargo on Cuba should remain in force, and his administration has imposed tens of millions of dollars in fines on international companies for violating the sanctions.

Cuba's imprisonment in 2009 of U.S. government development subcontractor Alan Gross put relations back in a deep freeze. Gross remains jailed, but this year Washington decided it would no longer let the case stand in the way on areas of common interest.

The U.S. and Cuba have held multiple rounds of talks on restoring direct mail service and immigration issues, with more scheduled for January. Diplomats on both sides report cordial relations and call each other at home. The two nations' coast guards reportedly work well together on things like drug interdiction.

Perhaps most surprising, each government has dodged developments that could easily have poisoned the waters.

When several Latin American presidents critical of Washington were practically tripping over each other to offer asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Raul Castro was notably silent.

And when Cuban weapons were found hidden underneath a shipment of sugar on a boat bound for North Korea, in possible violation of U.N. sanctions, Washington made clear it would not turn it into a bilateral issue.

Cuban state television broadcast images of Tuesday's historic handshake, as well as a snippet of Obama's speech. It did not, however, include his implicit criticism of governments like Havana's. "There are too many who claim solidarity with (Mandela's) struggle for freedom but do not tolerate dissent from their own people," Obama said.

Obama made waves in 2009 when he shook hands with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a strident critic of the United States, at the Summit of the Americas. That ultimately did little to improve relations, and Venezuela and the United States are without ambassadors in each other's capitals.

Washington and Havana are still far apart on many issues, among them Gross, four Cuban agents jailed in the United States, the embargo, the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo and Cuba's record on human rights and democracy.

But some in Havana were optimistic the handshake may point to a future Cuba-U.S. reboot.

"As a Cuban I'm shocked," said Ana Lidia Aguila, a 42-year-old employee of the City Historian's Office. "I hope that relations grow closer.

Clinton announces Latin America initiative

By DEEPTI HAJELA

Associated Press

The Clinton Global Initiative is taking its formula of a powerhouse gathering of global leaders to a new part of the world.

Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that the first Clinton Global Initiative Latin America is scheduled for December 8-10 in Rio de Janeiro. He made the announcement in New York City, at the mid-year meeting for his annual September conference, which brings together leaders in politics, business and philanthropy to tackle the world's biggest problems.

He was joined by the Brazilian city's mayor, Eduardo Paes, along with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the start of a session discussing climate change and how cities can deal with it.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a CGI commitment that a group of the world's cities would be taking: The creation of an assessment framework for evaluating risks from climate change.

The framework from the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group would allow for a common standard that could be used by cities all over the world as they try to figure out what actions to prioritize in trying to mitigate climate change, Bloomberg said in introducing the commitment.

"Cities can't afford to close their eyes and hope for the best," he said. "In many cases, we've already caught a glimpse of what the future may hold."

He added, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."

Bloomberg is the current chairman of C40, which was started in 2005 and is a network of cities around the world looking to implement local actions that can impact climate change.

Argentine Jorge Bergoglio elected Pope Francis

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

 

From "the end of the earth," the Catholic Church found a surprising new leader Wednesday, a pioneer pope from Argentina who took the name Francis, a pastor rather than a manager to resurrect a church and faith in crisis. He is the first pontiff from the New World and the first non-European since the Middle Ages.

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires who has spent nearly his entire career in Argentina, was a fast and fitting choice for the most unpredictable papal succession - start to finish - in at least six centuries.

He is the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit and the first named Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, the humble friar who dedicated his life to helping the poor. The last non-European pope was Syria's Gregory III from 731-41.

"You know that the work of the conclave is to give a bishop to Rome," the new pontiff said as he waved shyly to the tens of thousands who braved a cold rain in St. Peter's Square. "It seems as if my brother cardinals went to find him from the end of the earth, but here we are. Thank you for the welcome."

The 76-year-old Bergoglio, said to have finished second when Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, was chosen on just the fifth ballot to replace the first pontiff to resign in 600 years. In the past century, only Benedict, John Paul I in 1978 and Pius XII in 1939 were faster.
Francis' election elated Latin Americans, who number 40 percent of the world's Catholics but have long been underrepresented in the church leadership. On Wednesday, drivers honked their horns in the streets of Buenos Aires and television announcers screamed with elation at the news.
"It's a huge gift for all of Latin America. We waited 20 centuries. It was worth the wait," said Jose Antonio Cruz, a Franciscan friar at the St. Francis of Assisi church in the colonial Old San Juan district in Puerto Rico. "Everyone from Canada down to Patagonia is going to feel blessed."
The new pontiff brings a common touch. The son of middle-class Italian immigrants, he denied himself the luxuries that previous cardinals in Buenos Aires enjoyed. He lived in a simple apartment, often rode the bus to work, cooked his own meals and regularly visited slums that ring Argentina's capital.

He considers social outreach, rather than doctrinal battles, to be the essential business of the church.
"As a champion of the poor and the most vulnerable among us, he carries forth the message of love and compassion that has inspired the world for more than 2,000 years - that in each other, we see the face of God," President Barack Obama said in a statement.
As the 266th pope, Francis inherits a Catholic church in turmoil, beset by the clerical sex abuse scandal, internal divisions and dwindling numbers in parts of the world where Christianity had been strong for centuries.

While Latin America still boasts the largest bloc of Catholics on a single continent, it has faced competition from aggressive evangelical churches that have chipped away at strongholds like Brazil, where the number of Catholics has dropped from 74 percent of the population in 2000 to 65 percent today.

Francis is sure to bring the church closer to the poverty-wracked region, while also introducing the world to a very different type of pope, whose first words were a simple, "Brothers and sisters, good evening."

He asked for prayers for himself, and for Benedict, whose stunning resignation paved the way for his election.

"I want you to bless me," Francis said in his first appearance from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, asking the faithful to bow their heads in silent prayer.

Francis spoke by phone with Benedict, who has been living at the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, and told cardinals he plans to visit the retired pontiff on Friday, according to U.S. Cardinal Timothy Dolan. The visit was significant because Benedict's resignation has raised concerns about potential power conflicts emerging from the peculiar situation of having a reigning pope and a retired one.
Earlier Wednesday, shouts of joy went up from the throng huddled under a sea of umbrellas when plumes of white smoke poured out of the copper chimney atop the Sistine Chapel a few minutes past 7 p.m. "Habemus Papam!" - "We have a pope!" - they chanted as the bells pealed in St. Peter's Basilica and churches across Rome.

After what seemed like an endless wait of more than an hour, they cheered again when the doors to the loggia opened and a cardinal stepped out and revealed the identity of the new pontiff, using his Latin name, then announced he would be called Francis.

In choosing to call himself Francis, the new pope was associating himself with the much-loved Italian saint from Assisi known as a symbol of peace, poverty and simplicity. St. Francis was born to a wealthy family but renounced his wealth and founded the Franciscan order of friars; he wandered about the countryside preaching to the people in very simple language.

He was so famed for his sanctity that he was canonized just two years after his death in 1226.
St. Francis Xavier is another important namesake. One of the 16th-century founders of the Jesuit order, Francis Xavier was a legendary missionary who spread the faith as far as India and Japan - giving the new pope's name further resonance in an age when the church is struggling to maintain its numbers.

In choosing Francis, the cardinals clearly decided that they didn't need a vigorous, young pope who would reign for decades but rather a seasoned, popular and humble pastor who would draw followers to the faith and help rebuild a church stained by scandal.

Catholics are still buzzing over his speech last year accusing fellow church officials of hypocrisy for forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes.

In a lifetime of teaching and leading priests in Latin America, Bergoglio has also shown a keen political sensibility as well as the kind of self-effacing humility that fellow cardinals value highly, according to his official biographer, Sergio Rubin.

Bergoglio's legacy includes his efforts to repair the reputation of a church that lost many followers by failing to openly challenge Argentina's murderous 1976-83 dictatorship. His own record as the head of the Jesuit order in Argentina at the time has been tarnished as well.
Many Argentines remain angry over the church's acknowledged failure to openly confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate "subversive elements" in society. It's one reason why more than two-thirds of Argentines describe themselves as Catholic, but fewer than 10 percent regularly attend Mass.

Under Bergoglio's leadership, Argentina's bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church's failures to protect its flock. But the statement blamed the era's violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies.

"Bergoglio has been very critical of human rights violations during the dictatorship, but he has always also criticized the leftist guerrillas; he doesn't forget that side," Rubin said.
Bergoglio's own role in the so-called Dirty War has been the subject of controversy.
At least two court cases directly involved Bergoglio. One examined the torture of two of his Jesuit priests who were kidnapped in 1976 from the slums where they advocated liberation theology. One accused Bergoglio of effectively handing him over to the junta.

Both men were freed after Bergoglio took extraordinary, behind-the-scenes action to save them - including persuading dictator Jorge Videla's family priest to call in sick so that Bergoglio himself could say Mass in the junta leader's home, where he privately appealed for mercy. His intervention likely saved their lives, but Bergoglio never shared the details until Rubin interviewed him for a 2010 biography.

Rubin said failing to challenge the dictators was simply pragmatic at a time when so many people were getting killed, and attributed Bergoglio's later reluctance to share his side of the story as a reflection of his humility.

Francis will celebrate his first Mass as pope in the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, and will be installed officially on Tuesday, according to the Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi.
One of his first foreign trips is expected to be World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in July, an event that will likely energize the continent given their native son will be presiding.

Lombardi, also a Jesuit, said he was particularly stunned by the election given that Jesuits typically shun positions of authority in the church, instead offering their work in service to those in power.
But Lombardi said that in accepting the election, Francis must have felt it "a strong call to service," an antidote to all those who speculated that the papacy was about a search for power.

New York Cardinal Dolan gave an inside glimpse into the drama of the conclave, saying that when the tally reached the necessary 77 votes to make Bergoglio pope, the cardinals erupted in applause. And when he accepted the momentous responsibility thrust upon him, "there wasn't a dry eye in the place," the American cardinal recounted.

After the princes of the church had congratulated the new pope one by one, other Vatican officials wanted to do the same, but Francis preferred to go outside and greet the throngs of faithful. "Maybe we should go to the balcony first," Dolan recalled the pope as saying.

Later, the new pope shunned a special car and security detail provided to transport him to the Vatican hotel. He decided to stay with the cardinals.

"'I'll just go with the guys on the bus,'" Dolan quoted him as saying.

Hugo Chavez, fiery Venezuelan leader, dies at 58

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez was a fighter. The former paratroop commander and fiery populist waged continual battle for his socialist ideals and outsmarted his rivals time and again, defeating a coup attempt, winning re-election three times and using his country's vast oil wealth to his political advantage.

 

A self-described "subversive," Chavez fashioned himself after the 19th Century independence leader Simon Bolivar and renamed his country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
He called himself a "humble soldier" in a battle for socialism and against U.S. hegemony. He thrived on confrontation with Washington and his political opponents at home, and used those conflicts to rally his followers.

Almost the only adversary it seemed he couldn't beat was cancer.
During more than 14 years in office, his leftist politics and grandiose style polarized Venezuelans. The barrel-chested leader electrified crowds with his booming voice, and won admiration among the poor with government social programs and a folksy, nationalistic style.

His opponents seethed at the larger-than-life character who demonized them on television and ordered the expropriation of farms and businesses. Many in the middle class cringed at his bombast and complained about rising crime, soaring inflation and government economic controls.
Before his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily, frequently speaking for hours and breaking into song or philosophical discourse. He often wore the bright red of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or the fatigues and red beret of his army days. He had donned the same uniform in 1992 while leading an ill-fated coup attempt that first landed him in jail and then launched his political career.

The rest of the world watched as the country with the world's biggest proven oil reserves took a turn to the left under its unconventional leader, who considered himself above all else a revolutionary.
"I'm still a subversive," the president told The Associated Press in a 2007 interview, recalling his days as a rebel soldier. "I think the entire world has to be subverted."

Chavez was a master communicator and savvy political strategist, and managed to turn his struggle against cancer into a rallying cry, until the illness finally defeated him.
He died Tuesday in Caracas at 4:25 local time after his prolonged illness.
From the start, Chavez billed himself as the heir of Simon Bolivar, who led much of South America to independence. He often spoke beneath a portrait of Bolivar and presented replicas of the liberator's sword to allies. He built a soaring mausoleum in Caracas to house the remains of "El Libertador."
Chavez also was inspired by his mentor Fidel Castro and took on the Cuban leader's role as Washington's chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere after the ailing Castro turned over the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006. Like Castro, Chavez vilified U.S.-style capitalism while forming alliances throughout Latin America and with distant powers such as Russia, China and Iran.
Supporters eagerly raised Chavez to the pantheon of revolutionary legends ranging from Castro to Argentine-born rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Chavez nurtured that cult of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long stretches fighting cancer, his out-sized image appeared on buildings and billboard throughout Venezuela. The airwaves boomed with his baritone mantra: "I am a nation." Supporters carried posters and wore masks of his eyes, chanting, "I am Chavez."
In the battles Chavez waged at home and abroad, he captivated his base by championing his country's poor.

"This is the path: the hard, long path, filled with doubts, filled with errors, filled with bitterness, but this is the path," Chavez told his backers in 2011. "The path is this: socialism."
He invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. Chavez also organized poor neighborhoods into community councils that aided his party's political machine.
Official statistics showed poverty rates declined from 50 percent at the beginning of Chavez's first term in 1999 to 32 percent in the second half of 2011.

Chavez also won support through sheer charisma and a flair for drama.
He ordered Bolivar's sword removed from the Central Bank to unsheathe at key moments, and once raised it before militia troops urging them to be ready to "give your lives, if you have to, for the Bolivarian Revolution!"

On television, he would lambast his opponents as "oligarchs," scold his aides, tell jokes, reminisce about his childhood, lecture Venezuelans on socialism and make sudden announcements, such as expelling the U.S. ambassador or ordering tanks to Venezuela's border with Colombia. Sometimes he would burst into baritone renditions of folk songs.

Chavez carried his in-your-face style to the world stage as well. In a 2006 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he called President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after the U.S. president's address.

At a summit in 2007, he repeatedly called Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist, prompting Spain's King Juan Carlos to snap at Chavez, "Why don't you shut up?"
Critics saw Chavez as a typical Latin American caudillo, a strongman who ruled through force of personality and showed disdain for democratic rules. Chavez concentrated power in his hands as his allies dominated the congress and justices seen as doing his bidding controlled the Supreme Court.
Chavez insisted Venezuela remained a vibrant democracy and denied trying to restrict free speech. But some opponents faced criminal charges and were driven into exile. Chavez's government forced one opposition-aligned television channel, RCTV, off the air by refusing to renew its license.
While Chavez trumpeted plans for communes and an egalitarian society, his rhetoric regularly conflicted with reality. Despite government seizures of companies and farmland, the balance between Venezuela's public and private sectors changed little during his presidency. And even as the poor saw their incomes rise, those gains were blunted while the country's currency weakened amid the economic controls he imposed.

Nonetheless, Chavez maintained a core of supporters who stayed loyal to their "comandante" until the end.

"Chavez masterfully exploits the disenchantment of people who feel excluded ... and he feeds on controversy whenever he can," Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka wrote in their book "Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President."
Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of Sabaneta in Venezuela's western plains. He was the son of a schoolteacher father and was the second of six brothers. His mother was also a schoolteacher who met her husband at age 16.
Hugo and his older brother Adan grew up with their grandmother, Rosa Ines, in a home with a dirt floor, mud walls and a roof made of palm fronds.
Chavez was a fine baseball player and hoped he might on
e day pitch in the U.S. major leagues. When he joined the military at age 17, he aimed to keep honing his baseball skills in the capital.
But between his army duties and drills, the young soldier immersed himself in the history of Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes who had overthrown Spanish rule, and his political ideas began to take shape.
Chavez burst into public view in 1992 as a paratroop commander leading a military rebellion that brought tanks to the presidential palace. The coup collapsed and the plotters were imprisoned.
When Chavez was allowed to speak on television, he said his movement had only failed "for now." Chavez's short speech, and especially those two defiant words, seared him into the memory of Venezuelans and became a springboard for his career.

President Rafael Caldera, long an advocate of political reconciliation, dropped charges against Chavez and other coup plotters in 1994 and released them from prison.
Chavez then organized a new political party and ran for president in 1998, pledging to clean up Venezuela's entrenched corruption and shatter its traditional two-party system. At age 44, he became the country's youngest president in four decades of democracy with 56 percent of the vote.
After he took office on Feb. 2, 1999, Chavez called for a new constitution, and an assembly filled with his allies drafted the document. Among various changes, it lengthened presidential terms from five years to six and changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Chavez was re-elected in 2000 in an election called under the new constitution. His increasingly confrontational style and close ties to Cuba, however, disenchanted many of the middle-class supporters who had voted for him, and the next several years saw bold attempts by opponents to dislodge him from power.

In 2002, he survived a short-lived coup, which began after large anti-Chavez street protests ended in shootings and bloodshed. Dissident military officers alarmed by Chavez's growing ties to Cuba detained the president and announced he had resigned. But within two days, he returned to power with the help of military loyalists amid massive protests by his supporters.
Chavez emerged a stronger president. He defeated an opposition-led strike that paralyzed the country's oil industry and fired thousands of state oil company employees.
The coup also turned Chavez more decidedly against the U.S. government, which had swiftly recognized the provisional leader who briefly replaced him. He created political and trade alliances that excluded the U.S., and he cozied up to Iran and Syria in large part, it seemed, due to their shared antagonism toward the U.S. government.
Despite the souring relationship, Chavez kept selling the bulk of Venezuela's oil to the United States.
By 2005, Chavez was espousing a new, vaguely defined "21st-century socialism." Yet the agenda didn't involve a sudden overhaul to the country's economic order, and some businesspeople continued to prosper. Those with lucrative ties to the government came to be known as the "Bolivarian bourgeoisie."

After easily winning re-election in 2006, Chavez began calling for a "multi-polar world" free of U.S. domination, part of an expanded international agenda. He boosted oil shipments to China, set up joint factories with Iran to produce tractors and cars, and sealed arms deals with Russia for assault rifles, helicopters and fighter jets. He focused on building alliances throughout Latin America and injected new energy into the region's left. Allies were elected in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and other countries.

Chavez also cemented relationships with island countries in the Caribbean by selling them oil on preferential terms while severing ties with Israel, supporting the Palestinian cause and backing Iran's right to a nuclear energy program.
All the while, Chavez emphasized that it was necessary to prepare for any potential conflict with the "empire," his term for the United States.
He told the AP in 2007 that he loved the movie "Gladiator."
"It's confronting the empire, and confronting evil. ... And you end up relating to that gladiator," Chavez said as he drove across Venezuela's southern plains.
He said he felt a deep connection to those plains where he grew up, and that when died he hoped to be buried in the savanna.

"A man from the plains, from these great open spaces ... tends to be a nomad, tends not to see barriers. You don't see barriers from childhood on. What you see is the horizon," Chavez said.
Chavez wasn't shy about flaunting his government's achievements, such as free health clinics staffed by Cuban doctors, new public housing and laptops for needy children.

But even Chavez acknowledged in 2011 that one of his government's greatest weaknesses was a "lack of efficiency." He called it "a big error that many times has put in danger the government's policies."
Running a revolution ultimately left little time for a personal life. His second marriage, to journalist Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency, and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines, Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before he ran for office. His daughters Maria and Rosa often appeared at his side at official events and during his trips.

Chavez acknowledged after he was diagnosed with cancer in June 2011 that he had recklessly neglected his health. He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of coffee a day. He regularly summoned his Cabinet ministers to the presidential palace late at night.
Even as he appeared with head shaved while undergoing chemotherapy, he never revealed the exact location of tumors that were removed from his pelvic region, or the exact type of cancer.
Chavez exerted himself for one final election campaign in 2012 after saying tests showed he was cancer-free, and defeated younger challenger Henrique Capriles. With another six-year term in hand, he promised to keep pressing for revolutionary changes.

But two months later, he went to Cuba for a fourth cancer-related surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane.

After a 10-week absence, the government announced that Chavez had returned to Venezuela and was being treated at a military hospital in Caracas. He was never seen again in public.
In his final years, Chavez frequently said Venezuela was well on its way toward socialism, and at least in his mind, there was no turning back.

His political movement, however, was mostly a one-man phenomenon. Only three days before his final surgery, Chavez named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his chosen successor.
Now, it will be up to Venezuelans to determine whether the Chavismo movement can survive, and how it will evolve, without the leader who inspired it.