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Original Article (Spanish)

Hugo Chavez, the president of the Republic, has assured people that the American market is not essential to Venezuela, and he declared that if the aggression against his government continued to increase, diplomatic ties between the two countries would be at risk.

He said that President Bush cannot seem to take an accurate measure of the situation, and that either he has bad advisers or there is something wrong with his head.

The chief executive said that if he stopped sending petroleum to United States, the Americans must know that the price of a gallon of gasoline would rise to $10.  Nevertheless, he was careful to explain that he doesn’t want to cause harm to the Americans and would even order that they be permitted to enroll in the Misión Milagro.

[Editor’s Note: Mision Milagro is a joint Cuba/Venezuela program that treats poor people with eye disease in Latin America and the Caribbean. Chavez means to imply that George W. Bush doesn’t see clearly].

Chavez demanded that the United States release five Cubans being detained there who are accused of espionage. There cases will soon be retried in the courts of that nation.

Chavez Damands Release of the 'Cuban Five' Being Held By the U.S.

[Editor’s Note: The defendants, who were arrested in 1998 in Florida, are alleged to have belonged to the biggest ever Cuban spy ring in the United States. Last week, a judge declared their first trial in 1991 unfair, and ordered a retrial].

President Chavez announced that in the coming days, he would travel to Cuba to attend graduation ceremonies for Latin-American students of the School of Medicine on Saturday, and he pointed out that they would be the first graduates of the “Bolivarian Medical Revolution.”

[Editor's Note: Chavez refers to his reforms as the “Bolivarian Revolution” and paints himself as a kind of successor to Simón Bolivar (July 24, 1783 - December 17, 1830). Bolivar was a South American revolutionary leader credited with leading the fight for independence from Spain in what are now the nations of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Bolivia. He is revered as a hero in these countries and throughout much of Latin America].

At the closing ceremonies of the 16^th annual World Festival of Students and Youth, the President also announced that his government is preparing to publish 20 million anti-imperialist books, not for sale but for free distribution around the world. The Head of State entrusted the task to his minister of culture, Farruco Sesto.  The chief executive said he would publish all the anti-imperialist texts he could because, “one must save the world.”

Chavez 'Testifies' Against the United States

The Venezuelan Head of State asserted that “either we dismantle American imperialism or the imperialism will put an end to this planet.”

Chavez asserted that there has never been an empire more brutal, more cruel, more cynical, more savage, more hypocritical, and more dangerous than the one led by his counterpart, George Bush.  He said that “Mr. Danger,” like all other U.S. presidents, is not a person but an imperial system of hegemony that personifies within himself all other names and figures.

The President of the Republic, who appeared at the Festival of Youth to render testimony [at a mock anti-imperialist trial against the United States]," declared that he had come to denounce the imperial way.  “I have come to denounce 180 years of harassment. I have come to denounce 200 years of aggression,” he said.

Chavez affirmed that since the times of Francisco de Miranda, the United States had boycotted Venezuela’s revolutionary projects and now boycotts the current project, which involves millions of Venezuelans.

Francisco de Miranda

[Editor’s Note: Francisco de Miranda, 1750–1816, was also a Venezuelan revolutionary and a hero of the struggle for independence from Spain, he is sometimes called “The Precursor” to distinguish him from “The Liberator” Simón Bolívar, who completed the task of liberation].

“I have the impression that Bolivarian project is adding more and more men and women in America and also in North America,” President Chavez said, and he indicated that as it was 200-years-ago, the epicenter of the project remained in Venezuela.

Chavez said that he was well aware imperialism could end his life, and that even now, he has been condemned to death by the elites. But President Chavez said that a coup d'etat in Venezuela was impossible. “They will find no Pinochet in Venezuela,” he declared, adding that with each passing day, the people, the Armed Forces and the government find the idea of a coup d'etat more and more unthinkable.

In the same manner, Chavez warned “Mr. Danger,” that in the event anything ever happened to him, Bush would live to regret it.