Well, it looks like a significant portion of the Venezuelan population dislikes Chavez almost as much as we do.

From the Associated Press:

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans packed a major highway Saturday in a rally for opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, one of the largest demonstrations against President Hugo Chavez in years.

Shouts of “Dare to change!” rose up from the dense crowd filling the highway for several miles and spilling into nearby overpasses and streets in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. The rally came eight days before the country’s presidential election on Dec. 3.

Remember it was Chavez who called President Bush “The Devil” back in September. He is no friend of America and Venezuela, under his rule, is moving away from Democracy and into a Marxist / Socialist dictatorship.

The crowd appeared to number in the hundreds of thousands. Organizers claimed more than 1 million people attended.

Rosales, the governor of the oil-rich western state of Zulia who favors a free-market economy over Chavez’s brand of socialism, trailed the Venezuelan president by a wide margin in an AP-Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month.

However, his candidacy has managed to galvanize Venezuela’s fractured opposition, reviving a movement that had struggled to recover from a crushing defeat in a 2004 recall referendum against Chavez.

Unfortunatly, it may not be enough.

Despite the revived opposition movement, Chavez remains hugely popular among the poor, especially those who see benefits from oil-funded social programs ranging from free health care to heavily subsidized government grocery stores.

Rosales lashed out at Chavez for wanting to be “president all his life, until he dies like Fidel Castro - indefinite re-election.”

“This country doesn’t want that. It wants modernity,” he said.

It is nice to see, however. If Rosales wins and adopts a less “anti-American” policy, I may have to take down the all the calls to Boycott Citgo.