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| President Hugo Chávez in the Meeting of Intellectuals and Artists for the Latin American Peace and Sovereignty, Caracas |
“We are providing Haiti with a shipment of food in the next hours,” announced the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, on April 12, during the Meeting of Intellectuals and Artists for the Latin American Peace and Sovereignty, held in Caracas.
This aid includes 364 tons of food to contribute towards a solution of the critical situation in the Caribbean nation as a consequence of the increase of food prices, especially rice, which has unleashed violent riots in the last days.
This shipment will include 52 tons of each of the following foodstuffs: meat, chicken, mortadella, milk, black beans, oil and lentils. “This will help alleviate somehow a very big and deep crisis,” added President Chávez.
“Tomorrow they’ll attack me. Sure they are going to tell the Venezuelan people that I’m giving away food, while it lacks here. But as our people has developed a conscience, these attacks generally crash into the Venezuelan people’s steadiness,” he said.
President Chávez recalled his experience when he visited the Republic of Haiti on March 12, 2007, when he walk the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city, accompanied by the city’s people. He explained the passion he felt when sharing with the Haitian people.
“The situation, you know it’s terrible. Haiti was demolished as a Republic, as a state and as a nation,” he said.
Violent riots have caused at least five casualties resulting from confrontations between demonstrators, the police and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (Minustah).
Haiti, the first Latin American and Caribbean Republic (it achieved its independence from France in February, 1804), is Latin America’s and the Caribbean’s poorest nation, with an average per capita income below US $ 2.
The Meeting of Intellectuals and Artists for the Latin American Peace and Sovereignty ended on April 13, and was held on the occasion of celebration of the “Week of the Brave People.”
Presidential Press Office