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Chavez, Castro figure in Bolivia's election ***Beginning his presidential bid last month, center-right front-runner Jorge Quiroga accused MAS leader Evo Morales of being an "agent for Venezuela's brazen interference in the internal affairs of Bolivia."

Mr. Quiroga charged that Mr. Chavez and Mr. Castro had a "regional plan" to "destabilize" South America.

Mr. Morales lashed back by accusing Mr. Quiroga of "following orders from [President] Bush."

Charges of Venezuelan interference are based in part on a meeting last month in Caracas between Mr. Morales and Mr. Chavez. The talks also were attended by Felipe Quispe, the extremist head of the Pachakutec Indigenous Movement (MIP).

While MAS and MIP cooperated in the sometimes-violent protests that have ousted two Bolivian presidents since 2003, Mr. Quispe and Mr. Morales are rivals for the support of Indian constituencies in the high Andes. Yet, shortly after their return from Venezuela, Mr. Morales named a one-time close aide to Mr. Quispe, Alvaro Garcia Linera, as his running mate.

In accepting the nomination, Mr. Garcia vowed to campaign for full nationalization of Bolivia's oil and gas resources and for a new constitution favored by MAS.

While he recently has become known as a socialist opinion leader and television pundit, Mr. Garcia faces legal charges involving past activity with the terrorist Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK).

One of the leading conservative candidates, businessman Samuel Doria Medina, once was kidnapped by the EGTK, which obtained a $5 million ransom negotiated through the London firm Control Risks.

Some of the money is thought to have gone to finance leftist parties in Bolivia, as well as the 1996 armed takeover of the Japanese Embassy in Lima, Peru, by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.................***

Castro's Medical Mercenaries ***..........By the mid-1990s Cuba's vaunted medical program was crumbling as well. Hospital patients asked relatives in Miami to send bedsheets, pillowcases and cotton balls because Cuba's hospitals had none. Hospital hallways were dark because staff stole the lightbulbs in order to resell them. Some doctors complained they couldn't write prescriptions: no paper or pens. Córdova's frustrations mounted. Some days, he turned patients away. "You can make a diagnosis, but there's no medication to treat it," he says. "No penicillin, no aspirin. It is like a bad joke."

Yet at certain hospitals, such as Cira García in Havana, the shelves were well stocked with drugs and top-of-the-line equipment. Cira García strictly treated foreigners with hard currency and Cuba's ruling elite--doctors' families not included. .....***