"Something must be working, because his approval rating
stands at 77 percent, the highest in the Americas..."

Here is today"s multiple choice question: Who recently
provided 1.15 million gallons of low-cost heating oil
to thousands of poor and working class families in
seven East Coast states, including 25,000 people in the
Philadelphia area, and did so with the words, "No one
should be forced to sacrifice food, shelter, or
medicine to stay warm?"

a. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

b. Felix Rodriguez

c. George W. Bush

d. Oprah Winfrey

e. 10 major U.S. oil companies.

The correct answer is "b" and Rodriguez is the CEO of
Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela"s state-run oil
company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). On behalf
of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he also
distributed free heating oil to dozens of homeless
shelters from Maine to Delaware.

Venezuela, owner of the largest oil deposits outside
the Middle East and the world"s fifth-largest oil
producer, also sold oil at far lower costs to 15 poor
nations in the Caribbean and Central America. Even
Native Americans in Maine were recipients.

The 10 U.S. oil companies did not respond to requests
to help the poor. One of them, in fact, Exxon, reported
record profits of $36 billion in 2005.

In spite of these good acts, Venezuela"s leader is very
controversial. Can the twice democratically elected
Chavez be the same fellow that Pat Robertson wants the
CIA to assassinate, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld has likened to Adolf Hitler; and official and
semi-official types have placed on the White House
"enemies list," labeled a "red devil," as "lethal as
Osama bin Laden," and a "madman?" Further, the United
States supported an unsuccessful military coup against
Chavez in 2002 and Condoleezza Rice has called the
Venezuelan government a "major threat to the region."

Assuming for the moment that preventing Pennsylvanians
from freezing to death hasn"t prompted this venomous
rhetoric, what could account for it? Perhaps the answer
lies in some evil deeds done by President Chavez back
in Venezuela. What mischief has he been up to there?

The challenges are daunting in Venezuela, where 80
percent of the population is poor and a million
children scratch out a bare subsistence in the major
cities. After four decades of indifferent upper-class
rule, Chavez, a 51-year-old former army paratrooper,
was elected president in 1998 and again in 2004.
According to Washington- based economist Mark Weisbrot,
"The tangible improvements for those living in
Caracas"s poor barrios have been noticed in the rest of
Latin America, a region with the most outrageously
unequal income distribution in the world." Here are a
few highlights of his tenure:

For the first time, universal health care is official
state policy and peasants are living longer due to
accessible health care.

Elementary schools are providing three free meals a day
to all students, drawing some million new students to
school.

Misiones (missions and government projects) are
extending vital social services like literacy training,
food subsidies and rudimentary health care to the poor.

Indigenous Venezuelans, homosexuals and women are now
protected in the constitution.

Land reform is redistributing idle land to landless
peasants.

Operation milagro (miracle), a joint venture with Cuban
doctors, has restored eyesight to thousands of blind
people in the region.

Venezuelan elites, who despise Chavez and call him a
monkey, have tried mightily to sabotage the economy for
eight years, but it grew at a respectable 9 percent in
2005, the highest in the hemisphere.

Venezuelan oil has made this possible, but only Chavez
acted on the clearly subversive and radical notion that
the country"s resources should be used to benefit the
country"s people and even those beyond its borders. Oil
was nationalized in 1976, but the oil bureaucracy
operated as a "state within a state." The system
remains imperfect, but Chavez finally took control in
2001 and the petrodollars are now staying home in the
form of social spending, faithfully reflecting social
ownership of this natural resource. Something must be
working, because his approval rating stands at 77
percent, the highest in the Americas, according to
Datanalisis, the country"s major polling firm.

And, of course, this begins to explain why Chavez is
viewed as a threat. An alternative development model
where the citizens, not private U.S. foreign investors,
are the primary beneficiaries of government policy is
feared by U.S. elites. As Latin American expert Prof.
Rosa Maria Pegueros observes, from Washington"s
perspective the real threat is that if Chavez succeeds,
he may "create an eqalitarian society that has the
power to resist United States hegemony."

Who knows where this virus may appear next. To help it
spread, I"m filling my tank at the Citgo station from
now on.

[Gary Olson, Ph.D., is chair of the Political Science
Department at Moravian College in Bethlehem. His e-mail
address is olson@moravian.edu]