MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chavez warns: if capitalism returns to Venezuela, it’s the end of oil cooperation

The Venezuelan president addressing the students

President Hugo Chavez confirmed he would run for re-election in 2012 and made a strong call for regional unity warning that “if capitalism returns to Venezuela” it would mark the end of oil cooperation.

Speaking for almost three hours Wednesday evening in Montevideo at the School of Medicine before leaving for Bolivia, the Venezuelan leader called for solidarity and ‘strong unity’ among the ‘brotherly countries’ of the region.

“If Venezuela were to fall again in the hands of imperialism many things would fall. Bilateral aid would fall; it would be unthinkable that Ancap (Uruguayan government’s oil and gas company) could have a presence in the Orinoco (tar sands and mature wells) fields. We must unite, that’s our only salvation” underlined Chavez to an audience made up of students, Venezuelan officials and security officers and local radical militants.

The event was organized by Uruguay’s University Students federation, FEUU, the trade unions organization Pit-Cnt and the unions of recovered companies (with Venezuelan funds). The Dean of Uruguay’s School of Medicine Fernando Tomassina received the Venezuelan leader when he arrived at the building.

Chavez began the act by improvising a three voices with a duet specially contracted to sing a poem dedicated to Simon Bolivar, Venezuela’s national hero.

During his long speech Chavez condemned the allied bombings in Libya, which are really targeting the North African vast natural resources, praised Fidel Castro, Cristina Kirchner and again called for regional solidarity.

A group of Medicine students protested the visit saying that FEUU had adopted an ‘irreverent’ attitude towards the School given the impressive display which should have been specifically a students’ assembly and not with Faculty’s protocol.