01:00 AM EST on Sunday, November 27, 2005

CAMBRIDGE

RESPONDING TO FEARS about high winter heating costs, the president last week announced a program to sell deeply discounted oil to thousands of poor families in the Northeast.

No, not President Bush, but Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez.

A Nov. 18 announcement on the Venezuelan State Oil Co.'s Web site said that thousands of low-income families in Massachusetts, and in the Bronx, would benefit from Chavez's oil diplomacy.

Venezuela has huge oil and gas resources -- the largest outside the Middle East -- and Chavez earlier this month pledged $10 billion from oil revenues to fight hunger and poverty in Latin America over the next decade, part of his "new socialism of the 21st Century."

Chavez has long proposed himself as the leader of the Americas, and now his efforts are extending to North America.

Chavez's discounted oil was front-page news in The Boston Globe, and Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt, a Democrat, claimed credit for helping to broker the deal that would benefit more than 40,000 families in Massachusetts. The deal, though, was really about Bush, the former Texas oil man who has declined to help the poor this winter, instead threatening to veto a plan in Congress to tax oil companies that reported third-quarter profits of $33 billion.

The major U.S. oil companies were asked to provide subsidized oil to the poor in Massachusetts, and none agreed. With spikes in oil prices -- and profits -- why has the industry ignored repeated pleas from low-income residents for winter fuel aid? In recent Senate testimony, the CEO of Conoco Phillips argued that it would not set a "good precedent" because it's the government's responsibility to provide such assistance. But the White House has all but abandoned federal programs to help keep Americans warm.

"The Venezuelan oil company commitment to offer millions of gallons of discounted oil this winter is also a challenge to other oil companies to fulfill their own corporate citizenship," Delahunt told me last week.

Asked if he was subverting State Department policy toward Chavez, Representative Delahunt responded that he doen't work for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and he only reports to the people who elected him.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, supported the accord. "I'm delighted to hear we'll be able to purchase oil at a lower price than the market for our citizens," he told the local media.

Bush and Chavez have sparred throughout their presidencies -- most notably at the Summit of the Americas earlier this month, an encounter that most believe Bush lost. Chavez, the socialist strongman, has emerged as a more ferocious -- and popular -- opponent to Bush than apparently any American Democrat. While Bush pushes policies to import oil and export democracy, Chavez exports subsidized oil to his friends, which include Cuba and China as well as the poor people of Massachusetts and the Bronx, and -- he says -- spreads the wealth.

The boom in oil prices has helped fuel a 43 percent increase in Venezuela's public spending this year, to $37 billion. Chavez is investing in a commuter train and the fourth phase of Caracas's subway system. Venezuela also created a nationwide chain of 14,000 retail stores that offer discounts averaging 35 percent. Health-care centers staffed with Cuban doctors are providing service for free.

Such bread-and-butter measures play well in Venezuela, and throughout much of Latin America, where in the past five years voters have veered left during the most recent elections in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela and Chile. In Ecuador and Bolivia, street protests urging more independence from free markets has helped oust presidents in the past few years. Between now and the end of 2006, 11 presidential elections will be held in Latin America.

In this context, Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, which already supplies 15 percent of U.S. oil imports, is providing subsidized oil to 15 Latin American and Caribbean countries. And his oil diplomacy has been winning allies not only in Latin America but in the United States.

An article published by The Miami Herald last Monday states that about a dozen U.S. copies of the groups Chavez has set up throughout his country to mobilize Venezuelans on behalf of his "revolution in behalf of the poor" are active. It points out that earlier this month, around 1,300 persons paid $20 each to attend "an evening of solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela" in New York City: "Partly organized by the local Bolivarian Circle, it was also endorsed by more than 80 left-wing organizations ranging from the U.S. anti-war group 'Answer' to the Cuban legislature in Havana." [Bolivarian refers to Simon Bolivar, the most important figure in Latin America's early 19th Century liberation from Spain.]

Described as the largest U.S. public demonstration to date in favor of Chavez, it was followed up by a similar gathering in Los Angeles. Members of those poor U.S. families that will receive subsidized heating gas from Venezuela will probably join some of those groups.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan state oil company also reached a deal with the office of Rep. Jose Serrano (D.-N.Y.), who represents the Bronx, to subsidize heating oil to the poor. He enthusiatically announced that the first shipments of low-cost Venezuelan gas will begin arriving in the Bronx by late this week.

Bush and his Republican allies in Congress, meanwhile, seem to be in denial about poverty in America, even the poverty exposed by Hurricane Katrina. In the Northeast, where home energy costs are expected to rise by 50 percent this winter, Chavez's charity comes as a heart-warming gesture from south of the border.

Chavez is running for re-election in his own country next year, but he seems to really aiming at a bigger prize: leadership of the Americas. The temperature is dropping, and the race is heating up.

Maria Cristina Caballero is a fellow at Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Colombian journalist.