Venezuelan Leader Wins Praise For Efforts To Help His Nation's Minorities

The Bush administration depicts Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as a leftist troublemaker who wants to follow in Fidel Castro's footsteps.

But some black Americans support the Venezuelan leader, first elected in 1998, for his populist efforts to help his nation's minorities.
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"He's a true social reformer," Fort Lauderdale African-American activist Kwame Afoh said of Chavez. "He's recognized that blacks are the most colonized people in the world."