Hugo Chavez launches mobile phone with rude name
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, has launched the Vergatorio, one of the world's cheapest mobile phones and probably the only one with a rude name.
By Our Foreign Staff
Last Updated: 1:19PM BST 12 May 2009
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and the vergatario mobile phone: Hugo Chavez launches mobile phone with rude name
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez shows a cell phone called 'El vergatario' during his weekly radio and television show Hello President Photo: AP
Costing $15 (about £10), and rivalled for price only by the very cheapest phones on sale in Asia, the Vergatorio's name has its origins in
a venezuelan slang term for penis.
Mr Chavez, who nationalised the company that has produced the phone, unveiled the product, only to be condemned for the choice of name.
He has described the Vergatorio, which has all the features of a more expensive phone such as WAP and an MP3 player, as "light, beautiful, good and cheap".
"It is science and technology at the service of the people not the elites ... the day will arrive when we manufacture phones for Cuba and Latin America," he said.
"This telephone will be the biggest seller not only in Venezuela but the world. Whoever doesn't have a Vergatario is nothing."
He even telephoned his mother during the launch ceremony.
But critics have described the choice of name given to the phone as vulgar and in bad taste.
