Falling oil prices and some significant losses in recent elections may have delivered blows to Hugo Chávez's self-styled socialist revolution, but he can still count on the support of Sean Penn.
In the video above, the actor defends the democratically elected Chávez against US allegations of dictatorship and voices concerns that America is "becoming increasingly gullible to the demonising of foreign states or leaders".
The video includes clips of commentators on Fox News variously describing Chávez as an "economic terrorist" and (horror of horrors) "a socialist".
In an article accompanying the video on the Nation, in which Penn also talks about his meeting with another US bogeyman, the Cuban leader Raul Castro, he writes:
It's true, Chávez may not be a good man. But he may well be a great one.
Penn, a renowned liberal (and we all now how that word goes down in the US), will no doubt attract the ire of rightwing commentators (in this 2007 interview on Fox News, a New York councilman is called a "son of a bitch" by a reporter for defending Chávez, after 7mins 22s), but his support illustrates how the Venezuelan leader polarises opinion.
The Russian president, Dimitry Medvedev, is the latest leader of a state on not exactly friendly terms with the US to reach out to the Venezuelan president. He is due to arrive in Caracas today.
According to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, "the unstated reason he is in Venezuela now is that both he and Chávez want to express defiance to the United States".
Supporters credit Chávez with increasing access to education and healthcare and trying to improve the lot of the impoverished majority.
But the CIA website lists concerns such as "a weakening of democratic institutions, political polarization, a politicized military, drug-related violence along the Colombian border, increasing internal drug consumption, overdependence on the petroleum industry with its price fluctuations, and irresponsible mining operations that are endangering the rainforest and indigenous peoples".
Is Chávez a "great man", or is he the demon portrayed by the US? Or is the truth rather more mundane: that he lies somewhere between the two extremes?
