IF THE SAHARA DESERT WENT Marxist, ran a Cold War-era joke, pretty soon it would have to import sand. Today the gag might be: If Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, elected Hugo Chávez, pretty soon it would have to import petroleum. Except it's not a gag. In December 2002, less than four years into Chávez's presidency, Venezuelans began importing oil. The wells hadn't gone dry. Rather, the state petroleum firm, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which was then controlled by the opposition, had called a general strike to protest Chávez's increasingly autocratic rule.

Chávez balked at their demands--that he either call a free election or resign--and instead fired some 12,000 of the company's 38,000 workers. He emerged from the fracas with absolute power over PDVSA, though at the time that didn't seem like much to wish for. Venezuela's oil industry--along with its broader economy--had been crippled by the strike, which came just months after an abortive coup failed to dislodge Chávez. One expert predicted the country had lost the equivalent of 400,000 barrels per day. Since then, of course, global prices have skyrocketed--and Chávez has made out like a bandit. It's no exaggeration to say that petroleum isthe lifeblood of his "Bolivarian Revolution."

Indeed, to the extent that America and the world take notice of Chávez, it's almost entirely a function of his oil wealth. The thuggish Venezuelan leftist, a former army colonel, has been spending cash in the Western Hemisphere like a drunken sailor; and the chief beneficiary of this largesse has

Would Bill Delahunt? The Massachusetts congressman, a Democrat, recently brokered an oil contract with Chávez worth some $9 million. Under the terms of the deal--which grew out of a Delahunt-Chávez meeting in Caracas last August--a Houston-based PDVSA subsidiary, CITGO, will send 12 million gallons of cheap home-heating fuel to various charities and more than 40,000 lower-income Bay Staters this winter. About three quarters of the oil will go directly to poor families; the rest will go to local organizations serving the needy.

Delahunt was cock-a-hoop over the agreement, which he trumpeted as a token of Chávez's concern for the indigent. He denied it had a political context. "It was about people," he told the Boston Globe. "It was genuinely humanitarian in its intention and in its impact." That's not how the Bush administration saw it. Here was a lone congressman playing freelance diplomat and allowing a stridently anti-American--and antidemocratic--bully to score propaganda points. But Delahunt didn't seem to mind. "I don't work for Condoleezza Rice," he told the Globe. "I don't report to the State Department. I report to the people who elected me in the state of Massachusetts. I belong to an independent branch of government."

No doubt folks in his Quincy-area district will be delighted to get discounted fuel this winter. Take Linda and Paul Kelly, the Quincy couple in whose front yard the contract was signed at a press conference on November 22. "Just because [Chávez] has problems with President Bush, that's not going to affect me," Mrs. Kelly explained to the Globe. "My political views aren't going to keep me warm. I know people keep talking about this, but it's a gesture that someone wanted to make and give to me, and it's going to help lots of people, not just me."