Vilma Gonzalez, a single mother from Petare, a poor barrio of Caracas, is as thankful to Fidel Castro as she is to Hugo Chávez that her daughter Yulacey no longer cries with pain in the middle of the night.

Yulacey's broken tooth was fixed for free by a Cuban dentist, one of thousands dispatched from the island to work in Venezuela's poorest neighbourhoods under a programme backed by the Chávez government.