Donna Santiago, an unemployed single mother from the Kensington section of Philadelphia, never thought much about Venezuela before January, when she received a load of discounted heating oil courtesy of the South American nation.
Santiago was so ecstatic - her family was among a lucky 181,000 low-income households in the Northeast that received 40 million gallons of discounted oil - she told the program organizers she wanted to thank Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez personally.
Much to her surprise, she got her wish.
Last month, Santiago and her two daughters - none of whom had ever traveled abroad before - were flown to Caracas with about 60 other heating-oil beneficiaries at Venezuela's expense. After a two-day whirlwind tour of Chavez's accomplishments, the American visitors got an audience with the charismatic president himself.
"All I had heard about Chavez was that he was a dictator," Santiago, 38, said after returning to Philadelphia. "The man is far from that. He's a really warm person. I wanted to bring him home and stick him in the White House."
Oh, Si! It would be a big improvement over what we're stuck with now.
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