Venezuela: popular TV channel replaced !

According to Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chavez, “(RCTV) became a threat to the country, so I decided not to renew the license . . .” The license ran through May 27^th this year. Radio Caracas TV had been the country's oldest and most popular private channel serving over 28,000,000 citizens.

Chavez has had a stormy relationship with the press and media during his turbulent presidency. He was popularly elected in 1999, but was removed from office in 2002 because he had alienated the business community, news media, labor leaders, and the Roman Catholic Church. He was returned to office two days later! For another two years there were petitions to allow a referendum to decide whether he should stay in office. He is still in office and is considered a major player in the oil producing world. He has placed many once-private businesses under public control effectively moving the country into the socialist arena.

The World Book, offered through the Kansas Library Card (http://www.kslc.org ), has loads of information on Venezuela and Chavez. This beautiful country has waterfalls, mountains, the ocean,and abundant oil and natural gas in just over 350,000 square miles. There is also information for your youngest researchers in the World Book Kids area found in the upper right area of the homepage. An audio version of the national athem is available there along with the Venezuelan flag and general information for youngsters.

To find in-depth information on the elimination of RCTV this last weekend use the ProQuest databases search box and type in “RADIO CRACAS TV”. You will locate articles from the Global Information Network, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and much more!

Using the Thomson-Gale (InfoTrac) databases search box type in “RCTV” and notice that the first 70-something magazine articles returned are from a Spanish language magazine “Politica.” Most of these are very recent and offer a great deal of information for those fluent in Spanish. You will also find articles from Variety, the Nation, and the National Catholic Reporter in English. If you click the tab for News (instead of Magazines) for these results, you will find many more articles. Most are from Spanish newspapers. However, you will find articles from the London Times, the International Herald Tribune, and Miami Herald among others.

You might want to look up “U.S.-Venezuela relations” or “Hugo Chavez and socialism” or “Venezuela and tourism.” Do your own search using the powerful databases from your State Library and see what else you can find out about Venezuela, Chavez, and Radio Caracas T.V.!