MARÍA LILIBETH DA CORTE
EL UNIVERSAL

"Until victory, forever. We are overcoming," said Cuban and Venezuelan presidents Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez Sunday after they talked over the phone for one hour and 22 minutes, during Chávez' weekly radio and TV show Aló, Presidente (Hello, President). It was the first live contact with the Cuban leader since he got ill almost 15 months ago.

Before their phone talk, a 17-minute video footage was broadcast showing a meeting the two leaders held last October 13 in Havana, which according to Chávez took more than four hours. During their encounter, the Venezuelan ruler gave Castro a painting he made while in Yare jail. Castro asked Chávez to sign the painting.

Chávez' weekly show Sunday was broadcast from Santa Clara town in Cuba and was dedicated to honor Argentinean guerrillas leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara, on the 40th anniversary of his death. Such commemoration and the presentation of Castro occupied most of Chávez' show. After the transmission, Chávez was scheduled to attend the so-called "pre-opening ceremony" of Cienfuegos refinery in the island.

Chávez was visibly excited when he talked to Castro, who certified that he was talking live by describing every move Chávez was making on TV. "I watch you waving your left hand, yes, I know you are left-handed," said Fidel from Havana.

During the talk, Chávez highlighted the work his government has been making with the Cuban administration and said: "We are one single government."

Earlier, Chávez reminded the words of Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage, who once said that the island had "two presidents: Castro and Chávez."
"This causes urticaria to the Venezuelan oligarchy, and we do not want them to get sick. Yet Lage said so, that Cuba had two presidents, and then I just said in Cuba that Venezuela has two presidents too, but we are one single government. We are headed for the (José) Martí-style, Caribbean, South American Confederation of Bolivarian Republics."

"Fidel, let's tell everybody, we are going to turn this aggregation of countries -the Bolivarian Alternatives for the Peoples of the Americas (ALBA) and beyond that- into a confederation of republics. We are going to turn the union of our peoples into a region-power."

Then the Venezuelan ruler claimed that the links between Cuba and his country dated back to the times before independence. His remarks came following his reading of a letter forwarded to Francisco de Miranda while in Havana from, Chávez said, Simón Bolívar's father. "Love and desire between Cuba and Venezuela have been in the air for centuries," the Venezuelan president added.

Meanwhile, amidst jokes and criticisms regarding US President George W. Bush, Castro extolled Wolfgang Larrazábal, the chair of the government board that took power in 1958 after Marcos Pérez Jiménez was overthrown.

"As you have seen from this video footage, Fidel is in a good mood. He has a nice color. I told him, 'Hey, you look blushed.' He has his beard trimmed and the best mood and mystic," said Chávez, after Castro terminated the phone talk because he was going "to take some pills."

A threat against Bolivian dissenters
Perhaps getting ahead of his planned confederation of republics, Chávez warned "the Bolivian oligarchy" that his government would not "fold its arm" if his Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales were overthrown or killed. He added that Bolivian oligarchs, "based on tricks and terror," are sabotaging the Constituent Assembly.

He forecast that "evidently" the Constituent Assembly in Bolivia could not draft a new Constitution. In a contemplative mood, Chávez stated, "oligarchies do not forgive." He told his ministers that "no consensus can be sought with such currents. What consensus? The consensus of Washington. All they want is hegemony and imposition."
    
"Be careful, because you could be faced not only with the Vietnam of the ideas, but also the Vietnam of the machine guns of war," Chávez threatened Bolivian opposition groups.

Translated by Maryflor Suárez R.
msuarez@eluniversal.com