... I begin to wonder if we are simply being lead down the garden path by Chavez....

Probably not Chavez - more likely to be members of the various layers of "government" that tend to spring up in a corrupt dictatorship, finding that graft-taking is the only way to make a living within the system.

Mind you - I am slightly encouraged by the amount of official activity that seems to be underway in Vennie-land. Officialdom down there seems to go into a nuclear winter from about November 30 to January 31 - not this time, it seems.