President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela Pays Historic Visit to Dominica

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Volume No. 1 Issue No. 90 - Friday February 16, 2007
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela Pays Historic Visit to Dominica
TheDominican.net

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez paid a historic visit to Dominica on Friday. This was only the second time that a non-Caribbean leader visited Dominica. Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez visited in 1989 at the invitation of Prime Minister Eugenia Charles.

Dressed in red and black, Chavez arrived at the Melville Hall Airport where he was greeted by Prime Minister Skeritt and his Cabinet as well as hundreds of well wishers.

From Melville Hall, he was flown to the Canefield airport where he was greeted by school children of the Massacre government school. A highlight of the event was when he was greeted by scores of Cubans holding Venezuelan, Cuban and Dominica flags.

The Cubans began chanting �...Hugo........ .Hugo....� at which point the Venezuelan president broke away from his security detail to greet the screaming Cubans. They were quickly joined by scores of chanting Dominicans eager to greet and touch the Venezuelan leader.

He was then driven to Roseau, where people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the Venezuelan leader as he entered the Nation�s capital.

While in Roseau, he signed a series of protocols with the Dominican government covering tourism, housing and economic development.

Chavez first came to prominence in February 1992 when he led an attempt to overthrow the government of President Carlos Andres Perez amid growing anger at economic austerity measures.

But the foundations for that failed coup had been laid a decade earlier, when Chavez and a group of fellow military officers founded a secret movement named after the father of South American independence leader, Simon Bolivar.

The February revolt by members of the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement claimed 18 lives and left 60 injured before Colonel Chavez gave himself up.

He was languishing in a military jail when his associates tried again to seize power nine months later.

That second coup attempt in November 1992 was crushed as well, but only after the rebels had captured a TV station and broadcast a videotape of Colonel Chavez announcing the fall of the government.

Chavez spent two years in prison before being granted a pardon.

He then relaunched his party as the Movement of the Fifth Republic and made the transition from soldier to politician.

In 1998 he won a landslide election in Venezuela�s presidential elections.



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