Venezuelan politics get personal, divide families

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A portrait of Hugo Chavez stared down from a black metal frame as Jose Pastano sipped coffee after dinner with his sons in the slum house he shares with 17 relatives on the western edge of the capital.

Leaning forward in his chair, the retired bus mechanic chided his children for backing Venezuela’s opposition, calling them ungrateful for all that the late president had done for the country during his 14 years in power. The ruling party’s narrow win in last month’s presidential vote, Pastano declared, was the only thing keeping U.S. firms from taking over Venezuela’s state oil company.