The world according to Ch=E1vez
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1775629,00.html
He's the new hero of the left - a socialist leader who is tackling
poverty in Venezuela while leading the Latin American backlash against
'the empire' of George Bush. But what is Hugo Ch=E1vez really like? And
how does he feel about being portrayed as a dictator by much of the
British press? Jonathan Steele and Duncan Campbell meet him
Tuesday May 16, 2006
The Guardian
Hugo Ch=E1vez, Venezuela's socialist president, remembers "with great
affection" the day he went to see Queen Elizabeth II in 2001. "There's
something I'll never forget. When I got out of the car at the entrance
to the palace, I spotted a coin lying on the ground and picked it up,
and saw it had her face on one side. So I took the coin," he says. Once
inside, he presented the Queen with his official gift, a glass model of
waterfalls and forests in Venezuela and a multi-coloured bird. Then he
took out the coin and handed it to her. "She kept it," he laughs, as he
recounts the story in an interview with the Guardian yesterday, sitting
beneath a portrait of 19th-century South American would-be liberator,
Sim=F3n Bol=EDvar - he ordered his staff to put up the picture - in his
suite at London's Savoy hotel.
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