Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez brought his unique political talents, and views, to the South Bronx.

Chávez gets a cheer in the Bronx --

BY PABLO BACHELET --

<mailto:pbachelet@...>pbachelet@... --

NEW YORK - Clad in dark slacks and his signature red shirt
representing his ''Bolivarian revolution,'' Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez took his magnetic charisma to a South Bronx community
gathering Saturday -- and the people loved it.

He kissed, hugged and mixed it up with gusto with a Dominican music
band, almost as if he were courting voters.

His audience included representatives of faith-based groups and
charter schools. They came intrigued that a president from another
country would trek uptown, away from the wealth and power in
Manhattan. And they got a firsthand taste of Chávez's talent for
mingling with ordinary people, a trait that has made him wildly
popular among Venezuela's poor.

''You'd better put in there that I got a kiss from Chávez,'' said
Catherine Scott, a 59-year-old black Spanish teacher as she wiped
tears from her eyes. ''I never even got a kiss from [President]
Clinton,'' she added, laughing at her joke.

Fifteen organizations had set up tables in The Point Community
Development Corp. on Garrison Avenue, displaying their work much like
in a fifth-graders' exhibition. The event had been arranged by Rep.
José Serrano, a New York Democrat who, a decade earlier, brought
Cuban leader Fidel Castro to the Bronx.

BEAMING CROWD

Castro, whom Chávez openly admires, spoke then for about 30 minutes,
mostly about baseball. Chávez spent more than two hours at the
center, in Hunt Point in the South Bronx, moving from table to table
in a chaotic cluster of aides, journalists, bodyguards and beaming
Bronx residents taking pictures.

He asked Heidi Hynes, the executive director of the Mary Mitchell
Family and Youth Center if her organization was headquartered nearby.
He wanted to know what the kids did, and who Mary Mitchell was.

''And what is your budget?'' he asked.

Hynes replied that it was around $300,000 a year.

Chávez turned around and told an aide to take down the name. He
instructed the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington to make a donation.

Hynes said her center had been visited by famous athletes but never
by a top-level politician. The Bangladeshi ambassador to the United
Nations came once. ''We're delighted to be able to host a foreign
dignitary in the Bronx,'' she said.

Serrano said it was Chávez who had insisted on meeting with community
leaders of the Bronx, a community of 1.7 million people, and, to
many, still a symbol of America's urban underclass.

Speaking with about a dozen journalists, he said there was ''more
soul and power'' in The Point than in the U.N. General Assembly.
Chávez had spent the previous two days meeting with world leaders and
made his mark by delivering a blistering attack on the United Nations
and the Bush administration Thursday.

He then hoisted up 2-year-old Marquez Hunter. He kissed him and said
in his elementary English, ''This is my boy!'' pointing to the
startled child, then he added: ''This is my summit, this was his
summit.'' The cameras flashed.

DIPLOMATIC QUARREL

Chávez's arrival in New York was delayed by nearly two days, marred
until the very end by his long feud with the Bush administration,
which he accuses of plotting to overthrow him. His staff quarreled
over visas for his security detail. Venezuelan officials complained
that Chávez's security chief and his doctor were not let off the
plane for lack of visas.

He met with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, no friend of the United States. But on Saturday,
Chávez was focused on folks like Lucretia Jones, who heads Mothers on
the Move, a group that seeks equal opportunities in education and
housing. She had only a vague notion of Chávez before Saturday. She
had first heard about him during the April 2002 coup. Chávez was
briefly overthrown, but returned triumphantly two days later.

Jones heard about Chávez again last month, when Rev. Pat Robertson
caused an uproar when he called on the United States to assassinate
the Venezuelan leader.

The Palo Monte, a group of musicians from the Dominican Republic,
were playing catchy, fast-paced tunes. Chávez mingled with them.

He played a güira, a sort of aluminum cylindrical percussion
instrument, and then grabbed two maracas, essentially large rattlers.
As Chávez swayed to the music, the band sang, ''¡Ooh, ah, Chávez no
se va!'' (Chávez is not leaving).

`IMPERIALIST CURRENTS'

But Chávez also showed his confrontational side.

The Venezuelan said the final U.N. declaration, which was worked out
amid much diplomatic haggling, was ``very suspect.''

''They're trying to legalize the imperialist currents,'' he said.

And the Bronx cheered again.

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---------------------
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office Fax: (604) 291-5944
Home: Phone (604) 689-9510

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