Posted on 04/18/2002 4:23:51 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela - Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque made a quick visit to Caracas on Wednesday to meet with Cuban Embassy officials and congratulate them standing firm when their mission was attacked during the uprising against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
About 500 Venezuelans demonstrated outside the embassy on Friday, angered by Cuban leader Fidel Castro's support of Chavez and claiming that Chavez's lieutenants were hiding inside.
The protesters also reportedly cut telephone and electrical wires leading to the embassy. The protests ended after Chavez was reinstated on Sunday.
Cuban officials said seven embassy vehicles were destroyed, firebombs were lobbed at the embassy and shots were fired through the windows of the ambassador's residence before order was restored.
"I've come to support our staff and to tell them we are proud of their actions while defending the installation," Perez Roque said.
Perez Roque had denied that any Venezuelans were seeking refuge at the site. He blamed the protests on "coup leaders" backed by Cuban exile groups in Miami.
Chavez and Castro are good friends. Castro even celebrated his 75th birthday with Chavez last year in Venezuela.
A new constitution written by Chávez supporters requires all schools to teach ``Bolivarian principles'' ---- a code phrase for Chávez's brand of leftist populism ---- and the pro-Chávez majority in the legislative National Assembly is preparing a bill laying out the exact curriculum. Last month, the president issued Decree 1011, creating a corps of ``itinerant inspectors'' empowered to close schools and fire teachers that don't follow government-set procedures and standards.
``Political commissars,'' Agudo called them. Jaime Manzo, head of the national teachers' union, called it ``a sword hanging over the head of any teacher who refuses to sing Chávez's praises in the classroom.'' Parents' groups and the teachers' union have appealed to the Supreme Court to block the decree and submitted to the assembly an alternate education reform plan that guarantees a ``pluralist education'' and bans ``partisan politics'' from the classroom.
New history texts for fourth- and sixth-graders published in 1999 praised Chávez's coup attempt and branded as ``corrupt oligarchies'' the two parties that ruled Venezuela since the late 1950s, Democratic Action and COPEI. Chávez has also greatly expanded a system of paramilitary classes in public high schools that had long been on the books but were seldom held, portraying them as ``the founding stones of the new Venezuelan man.''
``He is promoting militarism, infecting texts with viruses that foster class hatreds ... and speak against globalization and privatization,'' Raffalli said in an interview. Chávez recently signed a deal with Cuba under which Havana will train Venezuelan teachers and provide educational materials, and Education Minister Hector Navarro last year approved a nationwide essay competition on the life of Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ``Ché'' Guevara.***
April 2001 - Mr. Chávez has described the subsequent purge of Ms. Imber and others as the start of a "Bolivarian cultural revolution," a reference to Venezuela's national hero, Simón Bolívar. But that term has generated apprehension here, especially in view of Mr. Chávez's declaration "I am a Maoist," made during the visit this month of President Jiang Zemin of China, and the agreements he has signed to bring Cuban advisers and exchange programs to Venezuela. Cultural affairs in this oil-rich nation of 24 million people are supervised by the same ministry that is responsible for education and sports. Last year Mr. Chávez made Manuel Espinoza, 64, a former Communist Party member and painter whose work has been exhibited, among other places, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the country's top cultural official by appointing him director of the National Council of Culture. ***[Castro has sent Chavez over 600 teachers, doctors and sports advisors.]
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