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<\/a>\u201cChavez cried,\u201d reported David Gerges for the <\/em>British newspaper the Daily Mail,<\/a><\/em> \u201cand his voice broke in the televised speech made in his home of Barinas, in front of his parents and other relatives. The 57-year-old praised Jesus andcalled on God to spare his life, in an emotional speech. Chavez made his plea standing below an image of Jesus with the Crucifix. He was anchored by his mother and father who both held his hand as a priest led a prayer for his health.\u201d<\/p>\n Chavez then flew to capitalist Brazil for emergency medical treatment after communist Cuban doctors inflicted intestinal radiation burns on him during mishandled treatments for his cancer. Officially Chavez has never admitted he has cancer \u2013 and has provided no details of his illness.<\/p>\n However, the broadcast marked a double repudiation for Chavez, who delights in wearing Fidel Castro\u2019s Communist mantle \u2013 and revels in his inherited role as America\u2019s greatest antagonist in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n The Brazilian media reported that the ailing Chavez checked into the Sirio e Libanes hospital in Sao Paulo. Earlier, he had rejected Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff\u2019s offer for medical assistance, preferring treatment in Cuba.<\/p>\n But now, Chavez came home from officially atheist and communist Cuba to embrace both Christianity and capitalist medicine. It\u2019s quite a turnabout.<\/p>\n In 2010, he denounced Catholic leaders, accusing priests of siding with the country\u2019s wealthy rather than the poor and suggesting that Christ would whip some church leaders for lying after Cardinal Jorge Urosa warned that Chavez was a threat to democracy and freedom.<\/p>\n During his decades in power, Chavez has silenced critics, grabbed unprecedented power with\u00a0decrees allowing\u00a0him to draft and sanction laws without the participation of the National Assembly — and\u00a0has run roughshod over human rights. He repudiated the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights\u00a0after it\u00a0accused him of massive human rights violations. In 2009, Freedom Watch <\/a>accused Chavez of terrorism, including conspiring with Colombian guerrillas, al-Qaida and the Taliban.\u00a0Exiled Venezuelan journalist Antonio Guzman-Blanco <\/a>says Chavez maintains close ties to FARC and ELN Marxist, two\u00a0drug-trafficking guerrilla terrorist groups dedicated to destabilizing\u00a0neighboring Colombia.<\/p>\n “Chavez has been sympathetic to the regimes in Libya, Iran and Iraq and has been recently tied to the ETA Basque terrorist organization,” writes Guzman-Blanco.\u00a0“It is widely believed that he also has ties to Arab terrorist organizations, and that he provided safe passage to Colombia for several IRA operatives.” In 2008,\u00a0the Miami Herald<\/a>\u00a0identified Chavez’s minister of defense\u00a0as an international\u00a0narcotics kingpin.\u00a0Prominent Venezuelan journalist Ricardo Guanipa\u00a0fled the country under death threats after\u00a0he exposed\u00a0widespread\u00a0Chavez\u00a0appointees’\u00a0corruption.<\/p>\n \u201cChavez has proven himself to be no friend of Christians\u201d \u2013 or Jews either for that matter, reported Timothy C. Morgan for Christianity Today<\/a> <\/em>magazine in 2009, noting Chavez\u2019s expulsion of missionaries from Venezuela and a number of anti-Jewish incidents blamed on Chavez.<\/p>\n \u201cRecently, the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom put a spotlight on government-sponsored anti-Semitism,\u201d wrote Morgan. \u201cThe Commission sent letters earlier this month to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon Jr. and to U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief Asma Jahangir expressing concern about increasing incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n In particular, the report cited an attack on the Tiferet Israel Synagogue in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and quoted Commission Chair Felice D. Gaer saying, “Over the past several years, the Jewish community has suffered as President Chavez and government-affiliated media publicly made anti-Semitic remarks and published anti-Semitic cartoons and opinions.”<\/p>\n Morgan also recounted Chavez\u2019 expulsion of hundreds of Christian missionaries, accusing them of contaminating the cultures of indigenous populations. His Ministry of Interior\u00a0revoked their\u00a0permission to serve in the Venezuelan jungles or\u00a0run schools, clinics and nutrition centers that had been in operation for decades. Chavez called the missionaries “imperialists” and proclaimed he felt “ashamed” at their presence.<\/p>\n Singled out by Chavez was New Tribes Ministries, “which preaches to non-Christian indigenous peoples,\u201d reported the BBC<\/a>, \u201cone of Latin America’s biggest missionary organizations” which\u00a0“has 3,200 workers and operates in 17 countries, with operations in West Africa and Southeast Asia, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Christian workers were forced to\u00a0leave remote tribal areas\u00a0and other\u00a0pulled out after Chavez officials warned that they, too, would be expelled and banned from working with indigenous tribes if they did not leave voluntarily.<\/p>\n Chavez called the Christian missionaries \u201cpart of a broader conspiracy in Washington to topple a president whose regional influence is growing thanks to massive oil revenues,\u201d reported BBC’s Simon Watts. \u201cU.S. officials clearly do not like Chavez much, but they strongly deny any plot and it is also hard to tell how genuinely the Venezuelan president believes what he says.<\/p>\n \u201cLike his friend Fidel Castro, Chavez thrives on conflict and finds it politically useful to portray himself as a victim of U.S. aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Associated Press\u2019 Christopher Toothaker has a long and fascinating look at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,\u201d reported Molly Hemingway a few days ago for GetReligion.org. <\/a>\u00a0\u201cLet\u2019s get right into it. Here\u2019s the top of the piece:<\/p>\n \u201cCARACAS, Venezuela \u2014 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has spent much of his career praising the socialist ideas of famed atheists such as Karl Marx and Fidel Castro. Now in the thick of a prolonged battle against cancer, however, the leftist leader is drawing inspiration more than ever from a spiritual leader: Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n \u201cChavez has been praying for divine intervention during increasingly infrequent appearances on television, holding up a crucifix while vowing to overcome his illness. He says living with cancer has made him \u2018more Christian.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n His voice cracking with emotion, \u201c\u2018I\u2019m sure our Christ will do it again, continuing making the miracle,\u2019 Chavez said as he raised his cross to his lips and kissed it, prompting applause from an audience of aides.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Chavez survives cancer, political analysts say his increasing religiosity could pay election-year dividends in a country where Catholicism remains influential.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd,\u201d observes Hemingway, \u201cit goes on like that for a while. The report is detailed and includes quite a bit of perspective from analysts (including of the skeptical variety). He\u2019s apparently become quite outspoken about his faith, even crying during a televised Mass with relatives. The article is illustrated with a picture of Chavez holding up a crucifix and kissing it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe story of Hugo Ch\u00e1vez’s presidency in Venezuela since he first arrived in office in 1999 has been a bit like the dance of the seven veils,\u201d noted the Economist<\/a><\/em> magazine a few years ago.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>