"In November 1999, Havana's Latinoamericano stadium sold out for a baseball game that was billed as a friendly rivalry between Latin America's oldest and newest revolutionary leaders. Hugo Chávez had been Venezuela's president for less than nine months when he took the field opposite Cuba's Fidel Castro, who had led his country's revolution 40 years earlier, when Chávez was just 4 years old. The crowd roared "Chávez! Chávez!" as the energetic Venezuelan leader trotted onto the field, dressed in white"
"U.S. sanctions were stifling Cuba, and Castro was still trying to recover from the loss of his country's top benefactor, the Soviet Union, when it collapsed in 1991. He saw Chávez's ascendance as a turning point, the baseball game epitomizing the ideological union between Havana and Caracas. The relationship proved so symbiotic that it outlived both Castro and Chávez, surviving decades of geopolitical tumult and hostility from Washington."
In November 1999 a sold-out baseball game in Havana presented Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro in a public display of camaraderie and ideological kinship. Chávez, newly elected, appeared in Venezuela's colors while Castro largely directed play from the manager's box. Castro treated Chávez as a loyal protégé committed to a Bolivarian vision of Latin American unity. Cuba, weakened by U.S. sanctions and the Soviet collapse, viewed Venezuela's alliance as a strategic lifeline. The Havana–Caracas relationship became deeply symbiotic and endured decades of geopolitical turmoil and U.S. hostility. Contemporary pressures, including U.S. actions against Nicolás Maduro, are testing that long-standing alliance.
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