Venezuela's way ahead

摘要

The opportunities currently opening up for Venezuelan science should not be squandered. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, suffered his first electoral defeat for a decade on 2 December, when he unexpectedly lost a referendum on constitutional change that was supposed to cement his powers and accelerate socialist reform. The opposition was spearheaded by protest marches of hundreds of thousands of students, along with their professors. But the left-populist president, for all his flaws, has broadly supported universities and scientific research in Venezuela.