The Dictator and the Congressman

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 been Fidel Castro's Cuba. "If he didn't have that money behind him," says GOP congressman Connie Mack IV, a Chávez critic, "I don't think people would take him as seriously."