A smaller group of supporters of Castro and Chavez, many carrying posters of Castro, confronted them. The two sides exchanged taunts and insults, then started throwing stones and bottles. Police fired tear gas to separate them. The topic of communist-ruled Cuba, where Castro is facing a storm of international criticism over his crackdown, is highly sensitive in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Chavez, a former paratrooper who was first elected in 1998, is a close friend and political ally of the Cuban leader and has turned his oil-rich country into the Caribbean island's single biggest trading partner.
Venezuela ships oil to Cuba under a preferential energy accord and several hundred Cuban doctors, coaches and sugar specialists work in the South American country. Foes of Chavez accuse him of trying to imitate the Cuban leader and of seeking to install Cuba-style communism in Venezuela. Venezuela was the only country in Latin America to vote with Cuba this month against a U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution calling on the communist state to accept a visit by a U.N. envoy to probe alleged abuses. The resolution was passed overall by 24 votes to 20, with nine abstentions. [End]
Inspired by Cuba's system of urban market gardens, which has been operating for several years, left-wing President Hugo Chavez has ordered the creation of similar intensive city plots across Venezuela in a bid to develop food self-sufficiency in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. "Let's sow our cities with organic, hydroponic mini-gardens," said the populist former paratrooper, who survived a brief coup a year ago and toughed out a crippling opposition strike in December and January. Inside Fuerte Tiuna military headquarters, soldiers of the crack Ayala armored battalion supervised by Cuban instructors have swapped their rifles for shovels and hoes to tend neat rows of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, coriander and parsley.
Since his election in late 1998, Chavez has drafted the armed forces to serve his self-styled "revolution" in a range of social projects, from providing medical services to running low-cost food markets for the poor. Besides the military vegetable patch in Fuerte Tiuna, the government has also planted a 1.2 acre (half-hectare) plot in Caracas' downtown Bellas Artes district. The market garden, denominated "Bolivar 1" in honor of Venezuela's independence hero Simon Bolivar, is being run by an agricultural cooperative set up in a nearby poor neighborhood.
PUBLIC SKEPTICISM The sight of sprouting vegetables nestling in concrete-lined earth beds behind wire fences in central Caracas causes many passers-by to stare. "This might be all right to provide for a family but not to feed a country," scoffed Diego Di Coccio, a 40-year-old unemployed businessman. "They should use the money to unblock the drains," said chemical technician Hector Gonzalez, pointing to the piles of rubbish in the streets around. Skeptics question why resource-rich Venezuela should need urban vegetable gardens when it has hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farming land, much not in use. ***