/americas

Chávez Altered How Venezuela Views Itself - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/world/americas/for-good-or-ill-chavez-altered-how-venezuela-views-itself.html?ref=world

“He has made people who didn’t feel they were part of democracy before feel like they’re part of the system,” said Joy Olson, director of the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group. “That hasn’t happened in very many countries. If you look at the United States, poor people don’t feel like they’re very much a part of the system, and he did that.”

The dynamic was on full display Wednesday as enormous crowds thronged the streets to watch Mr. Chávez’s modest brown wood coffin, covered in a Venezuelan flag, being carried through the capital, Caracas.

A Leader’s Cry in Venezuela - ‘I Am Chávez’ - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/world/americas/a-leaders-cry-in-venezuela-i-am-chavez.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&nl=todayshead

The puzzlement over what sort of leader Mr. Maduro will prove to be extends to Washington, where American policy makers have been feeling out Mr. Maduro for months, years even, to determine whether he might provide an opening for closer ties between the two nations.

American officials say Mr. Chávez, despite his very public denunciations of Washington, worked behind the scenes to keep trade relations between the two countries, especially in the oil sector, strong. They recalled how Mr. Chávez once picked up the phone and dialed an American diplomat to talk policy, an odd move for a leader who more than once barred American ambassadors from Caracas and regularly denounced Washington and its leaders, sometimes using barnyard epithets. “The United States needs to fix this,” Mr. Chávez said during the call, which concerned the ouster of the Honduran president in 2009. “You are the only ones who can.”

Beneath the bluster, American diplomats and analysts said, Mr. Chávez could be a pragmatist, albeit a sometimes bombastic one, and they hope Mr. Maduro will prove to be even more of one.

Les États-uniens s’interroge sur la politique future du successeur désigné de Chávez.
Du moins, les diplomates ; les barbouzes, eux, ne font pas part de leurs éventuelles interrogations ni de leurs réflexions au NYT…