How to tell when you are really, really unpopular

Not even Castro defends Chávez

It appears that this time Venezuelans are going to put Hugo Chávez out on the street. The work of the Democratic Coordinating Committee has been magnificent. The opposition democrats needed 2.4 million signatures to request a referendum to revoke the president's mandate; they collected 3.6 million.

After the sovereign people are consulted, Chávez presumably will leave power along with 27 legislators out of 33 who remained faithful to him. This is a smashing blow that delegitimizes the Chávez administration and his chaotic "Bolivarian revolution.''

"Presumably" is a big stretch when it comes to ole Hugo.

The proof of this tremendous impact on the ranks of power was the reaction essayed by Chávez, Vice President José Vicente Rangel and Infrastructure Minister Diosdado Cabello. Right after the gathering of signatures ended, the top leaders proclaimed that the exercise had been a failure because barely two million signatures had been collected.

A few hours later, aware that they couldn't keep up that charade under the watchful eye of international observers, they pulled out of their sleeves a purported ''mega- fraud,'' a statement that not even Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, has dared to defend.

It's hard to imagine a lie so bald-faced that Granma wouldn't sign up.

Why the lack of enthusiasm by the Cuban government toward Chávez after the recall signatures were gathered? According to some not-so-secret analyses by Castro's intelligence services -- including the opinion of the Cuban ambassador in Caracas, and if we are to believe the latest defectors (one of them, journalist Uberto Mario Hernández, who refers to the Chávez echelon as an assemblage of drug addicts and cretins) -- Chávez is a loquacious and bizarre madman surrounded by people who are exceptionally incompetent.

That's always what it looked like.

These are people with whom you can set up a gambling den, a bawdy house or a dominoes tournament, but not a drastic and rigorous revolution in the Leninist fashion, with firing squads, dungeons and obligatory silence. The Cubans would have preferred Rangel, an unscrupulous Stalinist, a survivor of the Cold War. But history saddled them with ''Crazy Hugo,'' as they call Chávez in private.

And I thought that was just what I called him!

But wait, there's a silver lining!

Castro, who is a realist and used to failures on the international scene, is gearing up for the worst of all possible news: Chávez's departure from power four months from now. To this end, Castro's orders are clear: Milk the Bolivarian cow down to the last drop of oil.

Instead of receiving 53,000 barrels of crude per day, Castro seems to be receiving 70,000 -- a bit more than one third the amount that the island consumes. He will try to raise the number to 100,000. He will take all he can, even the ashtrays.

Simultaneously, Castro's agents are reviving old contacts with Venezuela's Marxist left, which, paradoxically, opposes Chávez. Castro's message sotto voce is: ''Chávez has been a disappointing failure, but that doesn't invalidate our revolutionary project.''

If all you have is lemons, make lemonade, eh Fidel?