The decision was a blow to a program that President Hugo Chávez has hailed as a cornerstone of his professed ''revolution'' for Venezuela's poor majority. The program is one of several initiatives into which the government has poured millions of dollars ahead of a possible recall referendum on Chávez's rule next year.
The ruling was a victory for Venezuela's medical establishment, which argues the so-called ''Inside the Slum'' program violates laws requiring foreign doctors to pass equivalency exams before practicing here. Chávez's political foes claim the program seeks to indoctrinate the poor with socialist ideals, charges the government denies.
Former Health Minister María Urbaneja and Freddy Bernal, the mayor of the Caracas district where most of the Cuban doctors work, had challenged the lower court's Aug. 21 decision to suspend the program until about 1,000 Cuban doctors working in Caracas take equivalency exams.
The Supreme Court declined to hear their appeal, arguing neither official was qualified to file cases in representation of collective interests, according to a statement released by the Supreme Court. [end]
More than a year later, experts on Latin America tell this magazine that Washington's soft line on Chavez in Venezuela adversely is affecting U.S. security and the stability of the entire region. This hands-off policy toward Chavez seems to originate from the highest levels of the Bush administration, these foreign-policy specialists say, and has evolved to the point of negligence of a crisis that already constitutes the greatest threat to regional stability since Castro took power in Cuba in 1959. Indeed, even as Congress has been intent upon removing travel restrictions to Castro's island prison, say these regional specialists, the Cuban leader is working with Chavez to destabilize governments in the region.
A senior U.S. official who worked in Venezuela during the rise of Chavez speaks with grudging admiration of the Venezuelan leader's classic Marxist-Leninist approach to expanding power: two steps forward, one step back. "Chavez is constantly underestimated by people who do not understand his patient, methodical approach to recruiting and strategy," says this retired Army officer. "Chavez never provokes the U.S. or other nations, but instead works obliquely to erode the position of his enemies."
As an example of Chavez's successful approach, the official cites U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) John Maisto, a former ambassador to Venezuela and Nicaragua. He reports that Maisto was the chief exponent of what the source calls the absurd argument that Chavez is a democrat at heart and that the United States should not "push" Chavez into the arms of Castro. "Maisto did the same thing in Nicaragua," says the official, "until Washington lit a fire under him." In fact, this observer says, Chavez has been a radical all his life, influenced by Marxist and authoritarian political theorists, and has been expanding his influence in the region using his links to Cuba and terrorist groups in the Middle East [see "Fidel May Be Part of Terror Campaign," Dec. 3, 2001, and "Fidel's Successor in Latin America," April 30, 2001]. ***