Señora Chávez was forced to flee the Miraflores Palace in Caracas during an attempted coup in April. Though her husband returned to power after just 72 hours, it appears that their marriage cannot be restored. In an interview with a leading opposition newspaper, Marisabel Chávez, a 37-year-old former beauty queen, blamed the split on the country's topsy-turvy politics and on her husband's abrasive personality.
The couple were married shortly before Señor Chávez, 47, won a landslide election victory in 1998. They have a four-year-old daughter and both have children from previous marriages. In the interview Señora Chávez said that their married life had deteriorated after her husband's election. "Many things changed, our surroundings, our friends," she said.
Her statements reflected a widespread sentiment of concern across the country over Señor Chávez's highly divisive politics. Since taking power, he has launched what he calls a social revolution to close the gap between Venezuela's wealthy elite and the poor majority. Many critics say his left-wing policies have caused deeper economic problems and social resentments that could explode in violence. Señora Chávez appeared to distance herself from her husband's policies, suggesting that he had been seduced by power and the idolatry of his supporters. "I don't want to be a martyr of the revolution or to be used as a political object by the opposition," she said. [End]
But several U.S. officials reacted with skepticism to these gloomy scenarios. ''There is a general [regional] commitment to market economies and open trade that remains firm,'' says Lino Gutierrez, the No. 2 official at the U.S. State Department's Latin American affairs office. ``We are encouraged that the Argentine government is beginning to take the steps necessary to put the country on better economic and financial footing.''
Asked about the South American domino scenario, another senior Bush administration official noted that the same kinds of theories were floating around a little more than year ago, when many predicted that populist former President Alan García would win in Peru, and that leftist former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega would win in Nicaragua, and that the whole region would move left. It didn't happen. Bush administration officials are confident that, over the next three months, the U.S. Congress will give President Bush ''fast-track'' authority to expedite new free-trade agreements, and that this will lead almost immediately to expanded trade benefits for Andean countries, and to the signing of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Chile. ''All of these things are going to change the atmosphere in this hemisphere,'' a senior Bush administration official says.***