President Hugo Chavez

President Hugo Chavez ordered Venezuela's military on Sunday to prepare for a possible armed conflict with Colombia, saying the country's soldiers should be ready if the United States attempts to provoke a war between the South American neighbors. "The best way to avoid war is preparing for it," Chavez told military officers standing at attention during his weekly television and radio program. Repeating an often-used military adage, he added, "If you want peace, prepare for war." Chavez told his supporters that President Barack Obama holds sway over Colombia's government, and he cautioned the U.S. leader against using his allies in Bogota to mount a ... Read Full Story

While a drought has put Caracas under widespread water rationing for the first time in years, for Venezuelans in this hillside slum it's just more of the same. Every two weeks, Naisi Obando and her children join the crowd at the water truck when it rumbles up a dusty road into their shantytown. They bring barrels to be filled with a gushing stream from the truck, and use garden hoses to siphon the water from the barrels down steep stairs to their home. "We really suffer a lot to get water here," Obando said. Like many Latin American cities, poor sections around Venezuela's capital ... Read Full Story

President Hugo Chavez's government is sending 15,000 soldiers to the border with Colombia, saying the military buildup is needed to increase security, combat drug trafficking and root out paramilitary groups. The deployment to the Venezuelan border states of Zulia, Tachira, Apure, Amazonas and Bolivar follows shootings involving troops and gunmen that have heightened tensions between the two countries. The latest came Thursday when pro-Chavez lawmaker Iris Varela said Venezuelan soldiers killed a suspected Colombian paramilitary fighter and detained five others near the border. Venezuela has long complained that Colombia isn't containing the violence from its decades-long armed conflict involving leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries. ... Read Full Story

A Venezuelan man was arrested in the shooting deaths of two National Guard soldiers near the Colombian border, a crime that authorities blame on right-wing Colombian paramilitary fighters. Prosecutors said Tuesday that four men on motorcycles shot and killed the guardsmen at a checkpoint near the border. The slayings Monday raised tensions along the frontier and prompted Venezuela to temporarily shut some border crossings. One suspect, 20-year-old Venezuelan Johan Manuel Mora, was detained in the border town of Urena shortly after the killings and two guns were seized from him, prosecutors said. Authorities are searching for the other three men, who they say got ... Read Full Story

Horrified by the excesses of dictatorship, Latin Americans discarded the strongman model at the end of the 20th century and limited politicians' time in power. Now a new wave of populist presidents is trying to do away with those limits, arguing they impede real change. As leaders in country after country move to extend their rule, opponents fearing a return to the "caudillo" era of authoritarian power have done everything to stop them — from throwing eggs to staging coups. "It's a new political model of what I call low-intensity dictatorships," said Manuel Orozco, a Central America analyst at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue. Term ... Read Full Story