By JUAN O. TAMAYO
 Herald Staff Writer

 CARACAS -- Retired air force Gen. Manuel Andara likes to tell the story of a
 friend who decided to invest in Cuba as he watched Venezuelan President Hugo
 Chavez grow more and more powerful.

 Andara says he asked the friend if he wasn't worried about Cuban President Fidel
 Castro's communism. ``Yes,'' the friend replied, ``but over there it's ending, and
 over here it's just beginning.''

 Ever since Chavez's December election on a left-of-center platform, comparisons
 between Chavez and Castro have been a staple of Caracas chatter. But now, after
 his party's crushing victory in July 25 elections for an assembly that will write a
 new constitution, the comparisons have taken on renewed urgency.

 ``Now we have a permanent revolution!'' Chavez said Tuesday as he addressed
 the Constituent Assembly's opening session, adding that he favored a ``humanist''
 society in which the government has the controlling role in the nation's economy.

 With absolute control of the Constituent Assembly, opponents charge, Chavez
 will now show himself for what he really is -- a young version of Castro, a dictator
 at heart who abuses the very tools of Venezuela's 42-year-old democracy to
 crush all opponents.

 Defenders say the 45-year-old Chavez is a well-meaning patriot under unfair
 attack by entrenched, corrupt enemies who are forcing him into policies and
 language far more radical than he would like.

 Similarities and a strong friendship do exist between Chavez, a former army
 lieutenant colonel who led a failed coup in 1992 and was elected in December,
 and Castro, who led a 1959 revolution and has ruled Cuba ever since.

 Like Castro, Chavez advocates an almost naive vision of a moral, egalitarian
 society and a strong central government that by dint of good intentions alone will
 erase his nation's myriad troubles.

 References to Bolivar

 He is a nationalist who embraces a pan-Latin American ideology, tinged with an
 anti-Americanism that sees the United States as a foreign power. He calls his
 thinking ``Bolivarian,'' after Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan general who helped free
 several South American nations from Spain in the 19th Century.

 Chavez brands all supporters as patriots and all critics as corrupt traitors. He
 promises to respect his opponents but almost in the same breath threatens them
 with violence if they try to block his designs.

 ``They have been knocked out, and if they know what's good for them, they will
 stay down,'' Chavez said last week in reference to opponents who were badly
 defeated in the July 25 vote.

 Chavez is messianic in his sense of personal mission, a militarist who admits
 feeling more comfortable among soldiers, and a fanatic follower of baseball.

 Violent imagery

 His fiery speeches might not reach Castro's marathon lengths -- one to two hours
 is normal, against four to six hours for the Cuban leader -- but they are laden with
 the same imagery of violent struggles over everything from high food prices to
 political cronyism.

 Chavez, like Castro, likes to make a show of the ``independence'' of government
 agencies and politicians he in fact controls, and makes public ``suggestions'' that
 he knows are virtual orders to his followers.

 One Chavez proposal for the creation of Bolivarian Youth Brigades remains
 undefined but has already sparked comparisons to the Cuban and Soviet
 Pioneers, highly politicized versions of the Boy Scouts.

 As in Castro's early days in power, Venezuela's poor are ardently supporting
 Chavez and his vows to demolish an old political system notorious for corruption
 and for frittering away the country's vast natural wealth.

 As in Cuba circa 1959, Venezuela's ruling elites are solidly opposed to Chavez
 and considering exile, mostly in Miami, while the middle classes endlessly
 debate the reality behind his extremist rhetoric.

 And like Castro in his early years, Chavez has been frustratingly vague on the
 exact details of his future plans.

 ``He's clear that he has to knock down a building and construct another. But he's
 not clear on what he wants to build,'' said Fausto Masso, a Cuban-born political
 analyst who has lived in Venezuela since 1962.

 Some differences

 But there are also differences between Chavez and Castro -- at least for now.

 Chavez does not appear to be a classic Marxist who insists on total state control
 over the means of production, though he has opposed the privatization of large
 public enterprises and agencies.

 He has not resorted to Leninist control methods such as neighborhood watch
 groups, media censorship, travel restrictions, ration cards or loyalist ``mass
 organizations'' of groups such as women or workers.

 Perhaps most significantly, Castro and Chavez came to power under vastly
 different circumstances that made their challenges and their possible replies
 different.

 While Castro stepped into the vacuum left by the violent collapse of the Batista
 regime, Chavez was elected and, last February, assumed the reins of stable
 government institutions ruled by civilians since 1958.

 Although Castro began destroying what was left of the old Cuban system as soon
 as he reached power, Chavez has so far pushed the envelope and broken some
 laws by appointing military officers to government jobs, but stayed largely within
 the bounds of the Venezuelan game.

 In contrast to Cuba, Venezuela's Roman Catholic Church is strong and
 conservative, and its newspapers and periodicals, largely dominated by
 free-market advocates, regularly carry articles attacking Chavez policies.

 On good terms with U.S.

 Unlike Castro, Chavez has managed so far to stay on good terms with the United
 States, which imports from Venezuela almost 20 percent of all its crude and
 refined petroleum products.

 And while the Soviet Union stood ready in 1961 to provide financial and political
 support for Castro's swing toward communism, today there is no communism to
 speak of, no Soviet Union at all.

 But if all those differences mean that Chavez is unlikely to follow Castro's path,
 there's nothing to keep him off the roads traveled by traditional Latin American
 strong men, or caudillos, such as Argentina's Juan Peron.

 ``I don't think he is going to impose a socialist system,'' Masso said. ``Chavez is
 winning by following the rules. . . . But if he runs into a roadblock, if someone
 says `no' to him, he'll stage a coup and sweep away all his opposition.''