VENEZUELA: FIDEL CASTRO VISIT

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(29 Oct 2000) Spanish/Nat
XFA
On the third day of official visit to Venezuela, Cuban President Fidel Castro met with farmers and visited the hometown of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The official reason for visit is to sign an agreement between Cuba and Venezuela allowing Cuba to get cheap oil in exchange for medical assistance to Venezuela.
But there were other issues on the agenda when Castro addressed his audience - including baseball.
The Cuban leader chose meetings of farmers and students to drive home his message of Latin American unity to appreciative crowds.
Binding together the countries of the continent against what he regards as an expansionist United States was the main topic for his speeches.
But it was a joint love of baseball that brought Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez together earlier in the day.
Castro hosted a meeting with 5,000 farmers in Guanare; and flew to the northern city of Barquisimeto, where he gave a fiery speech to more than 10,000 university students. 
A late-night Cuba-Venezuela baseball game was due to follow, with Castro managing the Cuban squad and Chavez playing for Venezuela.
SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
"Today, I'm not going to be the pitcher because I haven't been training lately and it would be too hard.  But I will be on the first base."
SUPER CAPTION: Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela
In his speech to the students, Castro added that Venezuela "is in the best of conditions to fight for the unity of Latin America ... so that the giant from the north does not swallow us one by one."
SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
"I'm convinced that a true democracy can happen, true democracy, true liberties, as Marti (Jose) use to say "you need to be educated to be free," we have reached the conclusion that being educated is the only possible way to be free."
SUPER CAPTION:  Fidel Castro, President of Cuba
Castro told the students in Barquisimeto he had been very touched by his meeting with the farmers, urging them to support Chavez and combat poverty as he cited a litany of complaints he heard from the poor in Guanare.
SOUNDBITE: (Spanish)
"We stopped in many places, we met many people on the road , we talked to many different farmers in many places who live in very poor and humble houses, I asked permission to President Chavez to chat with them (and ask) How do you live, what do you do?" 
SUPER CAPTION:  Fidel Castro, President of Cuba
Elected in 1998, the leftist Chavez has deepened ties with Cuba, and his close friendship with Castro has made the United States uneasy.
Castro, on a five-day visit to sign a petroleum assistance pact with oil-producing Venezuela, repeatedly has praised Chavez as a leader in the tradition of his own revolution.
In a Friday speech to the Venezuelan Congress that was boycotted by anti-Chavez lawmakers, the 74-year-old Castro suggested that his own days as a revolutionary are coming to an end, but that the 46-year-old Chavez's were just beginning. 
To the poor majority that provides much of his support, Chavez's fiery rhetoric promising an end to social injustice has been an antidote to despair. 
To his critics, Chavez's revolution has amounted to an assault on the democratic balance of power in Venezuela.

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YouTube url:	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKPmE044H-4
Created:	13. 9. 2019 10:59:56

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VENEZUELA: FIDEL CASTRO VISIT