THE CHAVEZ CONNECTION TRANSCRIPT
REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes
ADAM GREEN, SOCIAL WORKER: The South Bronx, where we are now, is this country's poorest congressional district. The river in many ways is a sort of a womb of habitat of life and real hope for the larger environmental and social state of the South Bronx.
These people are part of a unique program to transform one of New York's toughest neighbourhoods into a viable, healthy community. The group builds its own boats and uses them to restore the Bronx River - a project designed to develop self-esteem and teamwork and to nurture an interest in the environment. But what's really unusual is where most of the money comes from to keep the project alive. Although it's based in the heart of one of America's most impoverished areas, the funding comes not from the US Government but from the state oil organisation of Venezuela, a company called CITGO.
ADAM GREEN: It's been great, it's a 3-year $210,000 grant, so that's $70,000 a year. One of the really wonderful benefits is that not only is it 70 grand a year, but it's for three years.
MAN: I like this program, though, it's fun. And if I could I'd tell the whole world about it, seriously.
The funding of the Bronx River Program is just a small part of a larger campaign by the Venezuelan oil company to help some of America's poorest citizens. And they've poured millions of dollars into the South Bronx, supporting social and environmental activists. In a nation that is now strapped for cash because of its military campaigns overseas, community groups in places like the South Bronx are now looking abroad for money.
ADAM GREEN: The US policy is not one that gives a lot of money to social concerns. I think there's a sense that we are a 'pick yourself up by your bootstraps' kind of a society, and somehow everyone's supposed to do it, and if I can do it you can too, and you know, everyone knows where the US has been spending its money recently, and it's not here at home.
The Venezuelan funding is the brainchild of Venezuela's outspoken President, Hugo Chavez – a nemesis of US President George Bush, whom Chavez described in the UN as the devil himself. Chavez's love affair with the Bronx started just over two years ago, when he visited the area as a guest of the local Democrat congressman. Chavez claims that it is his affinity with America's poor that drives his foreign charity campaign, but his critics say that it's an obvious and failed attempt to embarrass the US Government.
JIM ROBERTS, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: I don't think he's succeeded. I think people see through it, people see it for what it is – a fairly crude propaganda operation.
Jim Roberts is a Latin-American specialist with a conservative, Washington-based think tank called the Heritage Foundation.
JIM ROBERTS: He may have won the propaganda war in the South Bronx, but the South Bronx doesn't speak for the United States, so many people here see through him and see him for what he is – a populist demagogue strongman using other people's money to acquire personal political power and influence and wealth, actually, for himself and his family and his regime.
TONY ARCHINO, ACTIVUST: Anything that brings resources into a community like this without taking away anything is a good thing.
For activists like Tony Archino, the controversial nature of the funding is a secondary issue.
TONY ARCHINO: I understand some of the issues surrounding having Venezuelan money, but the idea here is the money is being promoted to the community in a lot of different ways - us being one of them - and it's very successful.
BERNARDO HERRERA, VENEZUELAN AMBASSADOR TO US: People always said, "Is there a political motivation?" And I say yes. You know what is the political motivation - to tell people that there is another way of doing things.
According to Venezuela's ambassador to the US, the charity campaign in the South Bronx is meant to demonstrate Venezuela's global commitment to helping the poor.
BERNARDO HERRERA: Even people told us, "Why are you helping the US? Why are you helping the low-income people or the poor people in the US?" And I always told them, "What is the difference between a US poor from a equatorial poor or a Venezuelan poor?" It's exactly the same.
In fact, Venezuela's state oil giant, CITGO, has been extending its charity well beyond the Bronx River.
TV ANNOUNCER: This year they are targeting more than 100 million barrels to 16 states.
Causing further embarrassment to the Bush Administration, Chavez has started a program through which CITGO provides heavily discounted heating oil to poor residents of the South Bronx. Ambassador Herrera says it's Venezuela's responsibility as a global energy supplier, to give something back to those who can least afford it.
BERNARDO HERRERA: You know, our way of thinking is that you help with what you have. We happen to have oil, heating oil in this case, and a different idea of cooperation, a human sense of how we should cooperate among people. This is what we have.
GLORIA COLON: So this is our building, 11/16 Whole Ave. So this is where the oil, they put the oil in here. You can see it's a big tank, it holds a lot of oil - 4,000 gallons. So we need a lot of oil to fill up that tank.
Gloria Colon heads her building's residents committee in one of the Bronx apartment buildings that is receiving Venezuelan heating oil. Faced with the rising cost of heating fuel, she and the other residents couldn't care less about the politics of the Venezuelan largesse.
GLORIA COLON: We say, "Hey, somebody is giving us a hand and we're taking it," and that's it, that's the way we see it. We don't get involved in the politics of it. We just - we're happy that we got the help because we really needed it.
The South Bronx has a fierce reputation and a troubled history. Along with its large African-American population the Bronx attracts poor immigrant families drawn by cheap housing. Poverty, crime and substance abuse are rife. The New York authorities have been unable to deal with all its problems and the Federal Government pays it scant attention. But with the backing of Venezuela, social activists here are determined to transform the area.
STEVE OLIVEIRA: I don't know if you've heard of the term, "the Bronx is burning," that's because in the '70s and '80s what happened was a lot of these houses would be burnt because of the recession, and people would take the money from the insurance.
With the US economy under strain and huge numbers of housing foreclosures, Steve Oliveira is worried that the Bronx might once again live up to its reputation as a burning ghetto.
STEVE OLIVEIRA: I hope to God that doesn't happen here again, you know. That coupled with just an influx of more immigrants is just going to be the worst thing that happens to this area, where immigrants that are trying to get a leg up are finding things even tougher than from where they're from.
In the South Bronx, solid signs of the Venezuelan cash injection are already appearing.
STEVE OLIVEIRA: This place was pretty much a dump. What you see is concrete plant park.
The organisation that Steve works for has used Venezuelan money to transform industrial areas from urban eyesores into public parks and green zones. But an even more pressing concern is the declining health of the people who live here. The South Bronx is surrounded by three major highways, polluting the area with toxic fumes. Now, with the support of the Venezuelans, a major campaign is being planned to have the highways removed and re-routed well away from the neighbourhood.
STEVE OLIVEIRA: The fact that the community of South Bronx is littered and imprisoned by freeways. You can see by this traffic jam here that a lot of these vehicles are diesel vehicles, which contributes to the asthma rate here, which is twice that the national average in the US. Add that with the lack of services here, add that with this area being the poorest congressional district in the nation, and you have pretty much a recipe for just economic depression and an area that people forget.
What I wanted to bring you down here for – this mural here discusses the life of Jesus, but in the context of the South Bronx. Right here you can see a lot of the masses which a lot of the community can identify with.
Steve sincerely believes that it was Chavez's personal empathy with the mostly poor and struggling residents of the South Bronx that led to the Venezuelan funding projects.
STEVE OLIVEIRA: I think he identified with the people of colour here. We have a heavy Latino population, we have a heavy African-American population. I think that's what he identifies with the people here that are suffering remind him of the people in Venezuela to a point.
But critics say that the image of Chavez as a liberator for the poor is a false one. Although its oil exports earn the country billions of dollars, many Venezuelans still live in desperate poverty - a fact Jim Roberts says some American activists prefer to ignore.
JIM ROBERTS: You'd think that they would say, "Thanks very much, but actually 97% of the poor households in the United States have a colour television, for example, whereas people barely have running water and dirt floors in Venezuela. Why don't you use that money to help your own people?" But that's not what they say. They join in the chorus and they blame the conservatives in the United States for being stingy with taxpayers' dollars and they want the US taxpayer to pay everybody's heating bill, I guess, amongst other things.
But Steve Oliveira says American critics of the Venezuelan-funded activities in the South Bronx need to pay closer attention to their own backyard.
STEVE OLIVEIRA: I would say to them, maybe you should be more American and start saying, "What can I do for America, for this side of America,” rather than paying a blind eye while you go from point A to point B.
Venezuela's ambassador agrees that attitudes in America towards helping the poor need to change and he's hopeful that one day the US Government will follow the Venezuelan example.
BERNARDO HERRERA: Latin America has already changed. What we need now is a US adjusting its vision and its policies towards the region – a region that has already changed.
While many Americans might prefer to forget or ignore the problems faced by the residents of the South Bronx, few can deny the effect that Venezuelan money has had on this poor community.
TONY ARCHINO: We're learning real skills, we're doing real work, and in the case of the environmental science aspect, you're actually improving your community - not only for the plants and animals but the people as well to have a better quality of life, and I think that's really important.
Reporter: Nick Lazaredes
Editor: David Potts
Producer: David Potts