If I ever have to choose between water and gold, or between the tropical forest and gold,” Venezuela’s president-elect Hugo Chávez Frias recently told a group of conservationists, “the gold will stay underground.” Such conviction about the environment may be due in part to presidential image-crafting by the ex-comandante, who six years ago rumbled into Caracas at the head of an armored column in a failed coup attempt. On Dec. 6, Chávez won big at the polls, a victory attributed to public disillusionment over corruption and hard times as well as to his championing of the disenfranchised. Since then, he has appeared more often in Armani suits and Gucci ties than in the military fatigues and red beret that won him the... [Log in to read more]