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Photo from Miami Herald <\/a><\/p>\n Well, this report in the Miami Herald<\/a> explains alot about Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez;<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ‘I chew coca every day in the morning . . . and look how I am,” he is seen saying on a video of the speech, as he shows his biceps to the audience.<\/p>\n Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez, who does not drink alcohol, added that just as Fidel Castro ”sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana,” Bolivian President Evo Morales “sends me coca paste . . . I recommend it to you.”<\/p>\n It was not clear what Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez meant. Indigenous Bolivians and Peruvians can legally chew coca leaves as a mild stimulant and to kill hunger. But coca paste is a semi-refined product — between leaves and cocaine — considered highly addictive and often smoked as basuco<\/em> or pitillo<\/em>.<\/p>\n ”It is another symptom that [Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez] has totally lost the concept of limits,” said An\u00c3\u00adbal Romero, a political scientist with the Caracas Metropolitan University. “It shows Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez is a man out of control.”<\/p>\n More seriously, Venezuelan and Bolivian analysts said Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez’s comments amount to a dangerous endorsement of a substance controlled around the world, and perhaps even an illegal act by a very public head of state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think Hugo has finally lost it – if indeed he ever had it. Whether he actually does coke or not is irrelevant at this point. The fact that he’d make a public pronouncement that he uses an illegal substance and encourage others to do so as well, is certainly indicative of a juvenile attitude towards his office.<\/p>\n While dietary staples are disappearing from shelves and homes, and garbage piles up in the streets of Caracas in Venezuela, Chavez was in Bolivia handing out $1.5 million in checks for public works projects there (Miami Herald link<\/a>);<\/p>\n For two hours, President Evo Morales huddled in this jungle city with a dozen area mayors as they pitched public-works projects — to be financed directly by Venezuelan President Hugo Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez.<\/p>\n The Venezuelan and Cuban ambassadors to Bolivia flew here aboard the presidential jet to join the talks. The public was kept out.<\/p>\n After the money was divided up, Morales invited the media in and offered the mayors, one by one, a handshake and a Venezuelan embassy check for up to $150,000. In all, Venezuela gave about $1.5 million that day last November.<\/p>\n ”I admire the Venezuelan government for showing this solidarity,” said a beaming Walter Valverde, mayor of the town of Puerto Rico, holding a $28,917 check to build a new hospital.<\/p>\n Flush with oil profits, Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez is making an unprecedented effort to win the hearts and minds of citizens from Buenos Aires to Boston as he seeks to export socialism and challenge the United States’ traditional role as the region’s dominant player.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He’s probably just paying protection money to keep his coke pipeline open. I wonder how the people in Venezuela feel about Chavez handing over their money to fund sewer systems in Bolivia while they can’t get trash pickup.<\/p>\n