Poverty is at last falling under Hugo Chavez, but not nearly as much as it should have given his country's vast oil windfall. Twice a day, a queue forms outside the barracks of the presidential guard, across the street from the Miraflores palace in Caracas. In the pre-dawn chill, and in the midday heat, hundreds of mainly poor supplicants line up to deliver their petitions. Let down by the state bureaucracy or cheated by corrupt officials, most believe Hugo Chavez, the former army officer who has been Venezuela's president since 1999, is their only chance of salvation. Mr Chavez, who was elected on a promise to end poverty and "social exclusion", has sworn his socialist revolution will achieve this by 2021. The queue in the street hints both at the hope he has inspired and at the inadequacy of his methods.
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