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A leader should follow his map faithfully, pausing now and then to get his bearings, and expect to arrive at his destination in due time.
President Hugo Chavez Frias (Frias is his mother’s family name) of Venezuela is such a leader, except that his political opponents don’t like the bearings along his map, don’t like his map, don’t like his destination; in fact, they would like to do without him altogether.
The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) sent a delegation of American editors to Venezuela on a fact-finding mission May 11 to investigate the country under Chavez’s leadership, his claims for success, and his detractors and their detractions.
The delegation was varied, including representatives from such large and important metropolitan newspapers as The Washington Post, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinal, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Buffalo News and The Boston Globe. Also included was a representative from the relatively small and insignificant West Plains Daily Quill.
The timing of our visit couldn’t have been better if we’d written a script: Chavez consented, the day before, to greet us on the day of a news conference in Bogota, Colombia, called to announce that close ties had been found between him and his government and the terrorist organization “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).” FARC is a rebel group which has been fighting to topple the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

On March 1, Colombian military forces attacked a FARC camp less than two miles inside Equador’s border, killing 24 FARC members, including Raul Reyes, the nom de guerre of Guillermo Enrico, called the “foreign secretary” of FARC.
Recovered after the raid were three laptop computers, three flash memory drives and two external hard drives, containing 600 gigabytes of data, including manuscripts, letters, photos, e-mail addresses and other information.
Colombian officials and the secretary general of Interpol (International Police Organization) reported at their news conference May 15 in Bogota that the data found links the Chavez government and the FARC, although Interpol’s official report didn’t vouch for the subject matter and concentrated on the validity of its source and the handling of the information-holding data devices.
Later the same day, Chavez was host of a news conference of his own in Caracas, where he denied the link, belittled the Interpol investigation and blamed Uribe and the American news media (media terrorists; media dictators) for putting on “a show.”
That news conference, and what followed for us, were breathtaking high points as our ASNE delegation navigated its way through a course of varied opinions.
We were admitted to a building that was part of the Mira Flores palace campus two hours before Chavez appeared. It was a guess that he was huddled in a room adjoining the large news conference venue, plotting with his aides how to handle a denial of the information suspected of linking him to the computers and their information.

Our group was seated on one side of the auditorium-size room, along with the four wire service correspondents who were allowed to ask questions, one question each.
Chavez is ranked second only to Fidel Castro in the length of his conferences. Castro is reported to have kept stadium audiences all night when he got wound up. Chavez’s longest conferences of seven hours rank a distant second.
We spent the time waiting by taking each other’s photos in front of the stage, which was bedecked with flowers, Chavez’s desk, and behind them a huge painting of Simon Bolivar, who liberated Venezuela from the Spanish.

That done, one wag started a pool in which we guessed what time Chavez’s conference would end.
The wait was so long a woman appeared twice to wax Chavez’s desk and wash his chair.
Finally, the president emerged. We stood. Then he got to business.
The first part of the presentation was a familiar group of statistics about how well the economy is doing, and plans to help the poor, including a challenge to European nations to match Venezuela’s offer to spend money on aid plans.
Chavez is a master at keeping an audience’s rapt attention. He drank coffee during his presentation and smiled when he asked if anyone had a calculator as he labored, pencil in hand, over a calculation.
But the president became animated when the first question was put to him by an Agence Presse Francaise (AFP) correspondent. It was about the laptops and the information in them.
Chavez railed at Interpol and its secretary general, Ronald K. Noble, calling him “gringo policeman,” and an “international bum,” referring to his American citizenship.

He also ridiculed the chain of custody of the computers, saying that the Colombians might have tinkered the the information on them before turning them over for examination by Interpol. (This is a variation of the defense: I didn’t do it, but if I had...)
As a demonstration of how the computers could have been rigged, Chavez acted out a skit in which he scribbled on a piece of paper, having the questioner read it at the beginning and end of the skit.
The skit involved using his minister of food and the minister of the interior, portraying a fictitious murder and misdirected evidence.
The paper read, “On the corpse of (Minister) Osorio I put a paper, and as a policeman, I know how to do it without leaving fingerprints. I then take his coat and I convoke you (the press corps). Surprise! Look what the terrorist Osorio had in his pocket ... it is dated May 10. I did it now and I blame another: Osorio, I will kill you. (Signed) Rodriquez Chacin. Catch the murderer!”
Chavez also implicated the American news media for being stooges of President George Bush’s Administration, calling us so many names I’ve forgotten most.

The U.S. has been alarmed about Venezuela’s huge buildup of arms, ranging from jet fighter planes to automatic rifles. Chavez has maintained they are for defensive use only but other nations believe that the FARC rebels could put them to good use if their suspicions are right that Chavez is arming and funding the Colombian rebels.
Chavez has managed the release of prisoners of FARC and has blamed the American news media and the Bush Administration for not recognizing his good works.
The president ran out of steam after three hours and ended the conference after vigorous answers to three other questions.
I’m not sure that our delegation wasn’t admitted to the news conference just so Chavez would have our warm bodies to point to as media enemies, but after the conference, and after the working press (a group seated across the room from us), had left, he came down off the stage and met with us.
We mobbed him. Knowing other reporters would report on what was said, I didn’t join the friendly melee.
I don’t know if Chavez felt sorry for insulting and charging us, as palpable members of the American press, or grew to like our delegation as he spoke to us one on one, but what happened next was the singular highest light of our trip. See the account of coffee with Chavez.

Nobody asked our host to pass the coffee when we sat down with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias, in the stateroom at his palace in Caracas.
Members of our American Society of Newspaper Editors delegation had trouble believing that after almost three hours blasting the American news media at a news conference we suddenly being treated as royalty.
After using our group as a prop and visual aid while he harangued U.S. newspapers--not The Quill, of course, but papers such as The Washington Post--he talked to members of our group.
I didn’t hear him invite us to the palace for coffee, but the next thing I knew we were following Chavez across the driveway from the building where the news conference had been and into the palace.
Chavez formed a two-person receiving line. He and his interpreter welcomed each of us individually, asking where we were from and making a comment or two.
I had hung back from the throng. I was using my cane again and didn’t want to be trampled by the few members of the group who seemed all but giddy about the unexpected treat.

The president didn’t see me and turned and walked toward his chair. A couple of aides were quick to tell Chavez he had missed one of us. He rushed back, grabbed my shaking handshaking hand, and clasped my arm. It was as close I’ll ever be to having a president hurrying on my account.
I stumbled through a thank-you for being our host and found a seat among chairs configured in a horseshoe with him and his interpreter at the toe.
Coffee and, I think, pastries arrived with waiters. Chavez began to apologize to “you all” for his harangue at the news conference.
He said there were mistakes in his country but no dictatorship or gagging of the press. He said his aim was to have an exchange of ideas, then “everyone can make their own decision and draw your own conclusions.”
Of Americans, he said, “I beg for a pardon from them. I beg forgiveness if (in) my speech I’ve hurt any feelings back in the States. I ask for forgiveness. When I speak about the United States, I do not refer to the people, to the citizens. I refer to the elite that is governing the United States. And not even referring to all of the elite governing the United States.”

What Chavez said next caused me to smile and shake my head. He named among the cultural elite as his friends, including Danny Glover, Kevin Spacey and Sean Penn. He called them close friends but said when they visit they tell him what they approve of and what not. “And we are still friends.”
He didn’t want to pick an American presidential candidate he would like to see elected and work with, but said, “Our preference would be that whoever is elected we might start immediately some change.”
Of President George Bush, he said that he made met Bush in Canada and tried to talk to him. Others had tried to get Bush to talk to him, Chavez said, but the American president wouldn’t sit down and talk.
He said he likes President Bill Clinton: We were able to talk several times. We used to discuss about oil about terrorism, about drug trafficking and many other matters...so I do hope that we have a new government.”
Chavez also said “...There’s a world waiting for us (U.S. and Venezuelan leaders) to tackle injustices. Well, if we couldn’t do all that, at least we can sit down and talk.”
The favorite son of most of Venezuela talked disapprovingly of recent U.S. foreign policy, especially in Iraq, and expressed concern that an invasion of his country by the United States is a “genuine concern.” He said, “We have evidence of plans that exist in this sense.” And he also said he could continue to supply the U.S. with oil, but that if the U.S. invades production will go down as it has in Iraq.
“I try not to meddle unless someone meddles with me,” he said.
DOOMED

Asked if he would leave office when his term ends, Chavez mentioned his daughters and son, and his grandchildren, who he would like to see more of.
But, sobering, he said, “I think I’m doomed.” And many other Latin Americans like Chavez have, indeed, been doomed to death.
He said that (if he survives to retirement) he would love to teach mathematics or coach baseball.
Asked if liked baseball, he said no but then launched into a story about how he took a team of aides to Havana to play baseball. After Venezuela took the lead, with Chavez pitching, Castro put in some ringers from the Cuban national team, disguising them as rumpled old men with long, gray beards.
He laughed at the memory.
Then I made a big mistake, one which I’m sure irked most of my colleagues. After Chavez finished edifying Castro as being the best leader of the world he can imagine, I pitched him a marshmallow question.
I told him I had read a lot about him (two books) and Castro (Castro’s recently published “talking” autobiography), and I wondered what was the best advice his Cuban com padre had given him.
The master storyteller launched into an often-told tale about when he was the target of a coup attempt in April 2002.

The convoluted story involved his being taken prisoner by members of the military, and Castro’s advice by telephone that he should save himself by resigning, if necessary, and that he should not waste his life and those of the brave men in the palace still loyal to him. That was Castro’s best advice.
While it’s difficult to conceive of Chavez being allowed to sit in his office and think about things, and take phone calls from Castro and his family, apparently that’s what happened.
Finally, of course, he was spared, but before he regained the seat of rule he was taken away by some of the military in a helicopter.
On his way to the helicopter, he went down what almost was a receiving line, shaking hands and saying farewell. At one point, one of his instructors from the military academy thrust a small blue crucifix into his hand, saying, “Take it with you, and God bless you.”
At this dramatic point in the story, Chavez reached into his green military tunic and produced the cross for us to see.
I’m sure it must have looked as if I was a plant to give him the opportunity to tell the story. He even thanked me for asking the question.
What probably irked my colleagues is that the story took nearly 25 valuable minutes to tell.

At last he begged off so he could hop his plane for Lima, Peru, where he was to attend an economic summit with, among others, his enemy the Colombian president and the chancellor of Germany, with whom he had traded barbs during the time we were there.
Before he left, though, he signed the backs of some of the delegations women’s daughter’s photos. He signed them “Love always.”
And always the charmer, he gave each woman a smacking kiss on the cheek.
On his way to the door he passed me, and I shook his hand and wished him “Vaya con Dios,” go with God.
It seemed the polite thing to do for someone in his position who had made us, finally, welcome and shared an hour and a half with us.
As he passed me he turned around and patted his heart.
It was hard to reconcile these benign gestures with the accounts of his behavior as presented by the dissidents we met.
And that is what made it so difficult for us to reach a conclusion about him.
Plain despot? Enlightened despot? Dictator? Beneficent dictator?

Visits to showcases demonstrating Venezuela’s progress in social programs began with one to a free medical clinic.
Venezuela has long suffered from inadequate health care, especially in farther reaches from major cities. The government, with President Hugo Chavez and his billions in oil revenue, has built “hundreds” of clinics in the countryside, most staffed by Cuban doctors.
Many years ago, Cuban Commandante (Chavez’s term) Fidel Castro asked his comrade what he could do to help Chavez’s country and his presidency. Chavez told him to send doctors. Castro did, reportedly some 30,000 to date.
There is no reason not to believe Venezuela’s progress in health care, except that on a visit to Cuba a few years ago I toured a Cuban medical school, spoke to several students, including Americans, and after that I wouldn’t stand in line for a Cuban doctor to trim my toenails.
Nevertheless, the standard of care in Venezuela is miles above what was available before Chavez and oil money.
Both caregivers and patients at the clinic we toured were ecstatic about the care. No surprise, either, that some of our

On one leg of my return trip from Venezuela I did one of those things so embarrassing that I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed it.
As far as I could tell no one did, but that didn’t stop my face from turning radish-red.
Beginning in Springfield, on May 9, on the first leg of my trip, as expected I was singled out by Transportation Security Agency officers for special treatment. When I travel I take, and often use, a cane. After three surgeries on my left leg, including the implant of a metal knee, 10 years ago, I have found it necessary to use a cane if I have to walk 100 yards or more. The knee doesn’t hurt because there isn’t much of me left there. But my left leg is three-eighths of an inch shorter than my right and that causes my left hip to hurt unless I use the cane to shift the weight to my right side.
The appearance of a cane gets me the special attention: I am yanked out of line on the far side of the walkthrough metal detector after my metal knee sets off alarms.
The special attention includes having my shoes sent off to be X-rayed, a sit-down and standup wand treatment, then a thorough body frisk, especially around the left knee.

Every time I undergo such treatment (welcome, because I’m hopeful a terrorist would be caught in such a web of scrutiny), I am asked if I have “done this before.” I always want to say, “It depends what you have in mind,” but I know that being a wise ass would get me even more special treatment and slow my progress through airports. (Another comment might be, “Does it seem likely that I would hide contraband under a scar on my leg?”)
It used to be that in Miami travelers returning from any port south of the borders were virtually locked in an area between their plane and the immigration and customs lines while a not very subtle examination was conducted.
I kind of enjoyed the experience because small dogs, mostly beagles, were walked among the passengers, each on a leash and sporting a snazzy jacket identifying it as belonging to the Dept. of Agriculture or Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agency, sniffing for flora such as fresh fruit, vegetables and live plants, or contraband governed by ATF.

Things have changed. Now there are the usual lines in which each passenger puts all of the metal objects on his person in a plastic tub to be sent through an X-ray machine and then passes through the metal detector.
So far, so good. Then came my undoing.
I was singled out after my knee parts set off the buzzer and light. A special “medical” searcher was summoned. He asked me to take off my shoes. I didn’t hear all of what he said next. It was something about shoes and air machine.
I looked around and saw a wall behind me with two long, oval ports about waist high, so I held my shoes in front of them and waited for something to happen. And that’s what made my face red.
The security man said, “No, give me your shoes and step into the air machine.” He said it in such a manner that I almost could hear an unspoken “you dummy” in his command.
I walked around what I then realized was a structure with a doorway--through which I passed. As directed, I stood where footprints were painted on the floor, raised my arms and got a shock: innumerable jets of air hissed out of small holes all around me, ruffling my shirt, trousers and hair.

After I was puffed from head to toe a recorded voice told me to remain until a green light replaced the red one.
My immediate impression was of a waterless car wash.
No mention was made of the air machine and I was led to the wanding and patting-down station.
After I got home wife Dianne found an explanation for the air machine. To oversimplify, the machine’s air jets spew a chemical which detects other chemicals that are constituent parts of chemicals found both in most kinds of dope and in explosives. It seems that the expelled air is inhaled from the chamber and analyzed.
The Internet site with information about the machine and its process mentioned that there are many ways to flunk the test. Supposedly, the machine will detect any number of harmless hand and body lotions, calling for further testing. I also have read that the majority of $100 bills in circulation in the U.S. have traces of cocaine on them (rolled $100 bills seem to be a favorite device through which to snort cocaine), which can be identified even though such bills are carried in a wallet, causing a delayed trip because of more thorough checks.
Security in Caracas was another story. I passed through the metal detector, setting off the usual beeping, and looked around for my next handler. None was to be seen.

The airport security detail seemed to be more interested in not spilling our luggage from the post-X-ray conveyer belt than in me. No one bothered to look up so I gathered my X-rayed luggage and walked toward the plane. Probably for good reason, an airline employee was stationed along the route to the plane and called several of us out of line to hand-check our carryon luggage.
That checker found some contraband in my bag: I had “forgotten” Dianne’s advice to put bottles of liquid in a clear plastic bag, and I ignored similar warnings on signs at the American Airlines ticket counter.
When admonished by the airline checker, I fibbed and played dumb. He said I should learn current security rules as he confiscated two bottles each of hotel shampoo, hair conditioner and body lotion. I’ll bet they are stationed on his wife’s vanity by now.
So here is my best advice: Put your hotel souvenirs in a clear plastic bag.
As for me, count on my using a collapsible cane on my next trip. I had an extra such cane packed in my checked luggage this trip and it caused no problems.
Next trip I will carry two canes, one to use until I put it in my checked luggage and one to put in a carryon before reaching the security area. If that doesn’t work, and hobbling through customs after packing my using cane doesn’t either, Dianne will know why I have missed my plane.

A visit to the museum of modern art in Caracas was a stop for our delegation of American Society of Newspaper editors visiting the Venezuelan capital on a fact-finding mission.
While most of our group made the visit with decorum, I must admit to horsing around.
The museum was showing some works in its permanent collection; it also had a couple of special exhibits.
One wall of paintings contained “kinetic” art, which is to say, ad did our guide, it “moves,” or seems to.
A favorite piece is a painting with intricate vertical lines which seem to move as one passes by. The “movement” is so dramatic it challenges the imagination to believe it consists of simple lines on canvas. To be sure I put my nose to the wall and viewed it sideways. It was just paint on canvas.
Another painting consists of vertical lines on canvas, except for a square in the middle, within which the lines are horizontal. It’s difficult to describe the effect except to say I had to look away because astigmatism made my vision jumping 10 times worse than watching a weatherman with a striped tie on television.
What I tried to do to capture the effects of these two paintings was to pass by them with a video camera. I haven’t checked the camera yet, and I may con someone else into previewing the jarring images.
Farther along on the tour, a museum crew was hanging a mobile consisting of clear Plexiglas rectangles and squares.
In art jargon, something which isn’t identifiable as a painting, a print, a drawing, a collage or statuary often is called an “installation.”

The men putting together the mobile were using a four-foot step ladder. Behind them along a wall was another step ladder, this one a 10-or 12-footer. I pointed to it, and, through our interpreter, asked the curator if it was an installation.
He seemed horrified and about to disabuse me of that judgment when he saw me grinning and realized I was kidding.
If you think that was rude, consider that I hadn’t heard anyone from our group ask a question or make a comment yet which could be heard by our guide.
In a gallery we toured later, devoted to sickness and death, was a whole horse carcass, taxidermied (?), Fiberglassed and otherwise decorated with paint and objects. The sculpture had what I took as a spear tip sticking out from its shoulder, and a bloody hole in its chest which could have housed a football; its teeth protruded from a rictus.

Because the sculpture was of special interest, I asked the curator if the two front hoofs of the rearing equine had any significance.
In traditional horse and rider sculpture, the position of the hooves on a battle horse (both on the ground or one or both raised) tells the disposition of the rider: injured or killed in battle, or lived through it.
The curator was delighted to explain about the hoof positions’ significance. I was glad to give him the opportunity, it gave him joy to realize that someone was interested in him and the artwork. I even asked if there were postcards featuring the horse sculpture. The interpreter said there were no postcards but a book of the artist’s work was available.
But I felt like a heel. That the hoof placement on a war horse and rider is meaningful is an urban legend. Meaningful positioning was fashionable for a time during the Civil War era, but afterward the word didn’t travel well and the custom was widely ignored.
We left the galleries, went outside and back in, and settled in the museum cafe for complimentary fruit juice and sweets.
I declined both. Eyeing my cane, the museum director graciously offered, in Spanish, to bring me the refreshments, probably thinking I was too tired or too crippled to get them for myself. I declined but told him the museum exhibits were both grande and magnifico. I have no idea if the observation was linguistically correct but he seemed pleased to hear it.
We had no time for me to acquire the book of the artist’s work from the gift shop, but on our walk to the bus the curator who I duped ran up to me and opened the museum’s catalog to the horse sculpture. I expressed great interest and he gifted me with the volume.
Then I felt like heels of two shoes.

Dirt poor and filthy rich pretty much describes the difference between the economic classes of Venezuelans, and one thing which symbolizes that difference is the hotel in which our American Society of Newspaper Editors delegation stayed on our visit to that Latin American country in May.
While a few of the persons passing by our luxury hotel were dressed in business clothes and carried briefcases, the vast majority were wearing casual or work clothing in poor condition.
There is no chance that most of them will, under any circumstances, be admitted to our hotel, and they couldn’t guess at the opulence inside.
Looking out the doors of the hotel was enough to convince some in our group that warnings about leaving it were justified: most passersby looked as if a good mugging of Americans would improve their lot.
Although a small shopping arcade was attached to the hotel, some of our group were beckoned by a bookstore across the street from a rear entrance.
One couple that looked longingly at the bookstore were happy when I walked them across the street and stayed while they shopped for souvenirs. Others of our group, principally veteran travelers in Latin and South America, moved about without concern.
For many of us, though, it was a comfort that we only had to walk a few paces out the front door to board our chartered bus.

But it was telling that during daylight hours four hotel security guards were standing in front of the hotel, six at night, eyeing each vehicle passing through its circle drive. If I’m right in my observations, a description of each vehicle, and its license plate number, were radioed to someplace within the hotel, along with the time it arrived and left.
Also, there were a few hotel staff members inside keeping a keen eye on everything in the lobby.
Another interesting safety feature was that guests’ key cards had to be used to get elevators to go up, but not down.
Examples of the hotel staff’s solicitude, both of us smokers in the group, a woman editor from West Virginia and I, were waved back from ashtrays at either end of the hotel facade. We had used them because the two large urnlike ashtrays flanking the front doors were forbidding. Standing in places to reach them caused us to reach through the photoelectric beams, or to step on devices under a carpet, which opened the front doors.
The hotel staff didn’t seem bothered by this but it made us self-conscious.
I also was waved back to the front of the hotel when I crossed the drive to photograph a gardener trimming a flower bed with a machete. The waver-back indicated I might get run over and hurt.

Once through the gauntlet of outside watchers and inside the lobby, guests were awed at the hotel decor. From the fine floor treatments to

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