Nikolas Kozloff

Read or listen to the mainstream media these days and you get the impression that Sunday’s coup in Honduras was all about a simple disagreement over the constitutionality of presidential term limits. But as the coup unfolds it’s becoming clear that the authorities want something more: the restoration of Honduras’s conservative political order and an end to President Manuel Zelaya’s independent foreign policy which had reached out to leftist countries like Cuba and Venezuela.

As part of their effort to consolidate power officials have moved quickly to restrain the free flow of information, in particular by cracking down on progressive leaning media. Only TV stations sympathetic to the newly installed coup regime have been left alone while others have been shut down. The climate of repression is similar to what we have seen elsewhere in Latin America in recent years. Specifically, there are eerie parallels to the April, 2002 coup in Venezuela when the briefly installed right wing government imposed a media blackout to further its own political ends.

Perhaps somewhat tellingly, the Honduran army cut off local broadcasts of the Telesur news network which is sponsored by leftist governments including Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina and Cuba. Adriana Sivori, Telesur’s correspondent in Tegucigalpa, was in her hotel room speaking on the telephone to her network when ten soldiers arrived with rifles drawn. The men unplugged Telesur’s editing equipment in an effort to halt the network’s coverage of protests in support of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

When a soldier lightly slapped Sivori’s hand so she would hang up, the journalist grew alarmed. “They’re taking us prisoner at gunpoint,” she remarked. Sivori along with producer María José Díaz and cameraman Larry Sánchez were taken to an immigration office in a military caravan. There, the authorities beat them and demanded to see their Honduran visas. Shortly later, the journalists were released. However, the authorities have warned Telesur journalists to cease transmitting images in support of Zelaya or face further detention.

What is so important about Telesur in particular? In my latest book, Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008) I devote considerable attention to the rise of the new station, itself a product of South America’s stormy political battles and contested media landscape. First launched in 2005, Telesur represents Venezuela’s effort to counteract the power of the right wing media establishment which played a role in the short-lived April coup of 2002 against the Chávez government. Seen as South Ameica’s answer to Al Jazeera and CNN, the station has been spearheaded by Andrés Izarra, up until recently the station’s president. A rising star in the Chávez administration, Izarra got his start as a journalist at NBC and CNN. Disgusted by right wing media coverage of the 2002 coup, he started to work for Telesur.

Since its launch, Telesur has given CNN en Español a run for its money and now has slick production values. Station Director Aram Aharonian says the news industry has gone through a dumbing down since the Gulf War. Journalism, Aharonian remarked to me during our interview in Caracas, had become instantaneous but also devoid of any investigation, analysis or debate. Telesur, by contrast, was “rescuing” journalistic ethics by providing context and opinions about goings-on. While you can expect to see more critical coverage of the Iraq War on Telesur than most mainstream U.S. media outlets, Aharonian says Telesur is independent and doesn’t have any particular political axe to grind.

Such assurances aside, the conservative establishment views Telesur as a threat. When the station announced a content-sharing agreement with Al Jazeera in 2006, Connie Mack, a right-wing Republican congressman from Florida, remarked that the decision was designed to create a “global television network for terrorists.” In light of Sivori’s recent detention, one may surmise that the Honduran coup regime agrees with Mack’s hysterical views.

In Latin America, media has become a crucial fault line in the battle between the pro-U.S. elite and the incipient left “Pink Tide” which has been sweeping into power. In Honduras, the coup regime has not only gone after Telesur but also Channel 8, the official broadcaster of the Zelaya government. The moves prompted Venezuela’s official Bolivarian News Agency as well as Cuba’s Granma newspaper to issue formal letters of protest. Meanwhile a climate of fear and intimidation reigns throughout the capital, with networks providing scant coverage of political protest. Soldiers are reportedly guarding local television and radio stations.

In recent years Zelaya had been embroiled in a war with the conservative private media in the country. Now that the President is gone, these outlets have rallied in defense of the coup regime. Honduras’ two leading radio networks, Radio América and Radio HRN, have urged Hondurans to resume their normal routine and not to protest. Even as hundreds of protesters rallied at the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa to demand Zelaya’s reinstatement, radio and TV stations made little reference to the demonstrations. Instead of reporting on political goings-on, the Honduran media outlets played tropical music or aired soap operas and cooking shows.

It’s reminiscent of the April, 2002 coup against Chávez when conservative media station Venevisión refused to cover pro-Chávez demonstrations and preempted its normal news coverage with a day-long marathon of American films such as Lorenzo’s Oil, Nell, and Pretty Woman. Venevisión, which substituted nonstop vitriolic anti-Chávez propaganda for its regular programming in the days leading up to the coup, was owned by billionaire media magnate Gustavo Cisneros, himself a leading figure in the Chávez opposition who reportedly bankrolled the opposition’s takeover of government.

In Venezuela, conservative coup leaders misjudged the popular mood. Amidst street protests, Chávez was reinstated in two days. In the wake of the coup Venevisión began to moderate its strident tone and the Venezuelan President went on the political offensive by spurring the creation of Telesur as well as other media outlets. If you flip the TV dial today you can still watch rabidly anti-Chávez stations like Globovisión, though the playing field has been leveled considerably. In addition to Telesur Venezuelans can also watch Venezolana de Televisión, a government channel, as well as state sponsored Vive which provides discussion on Venezuelan culture and politics. Chávez has his own TV talk show, Aló, Presidente, and there are dozens of pro-government papers including a tabloid called VEA.

The antagonistic media environment in Venezuela is echoed in other left-leaning countries in South America. Indeed, the newly elected Pink Tide regimes have taken on the private media with a vengeance: in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa has proposed that the constitution disallow bankers from financing media outlets. According to him, Ecuadoran television is controlled by powerful interests and the Association of Television Channels is nothing more than a “bankers club.” In Bolivia, indigenous President Evo Morales launched a weekly radio show called The People Are News. The show airs for two hours each week on the Patria Nueva (New Fatherland) state network.

If Zelaya returns to power in Honduras, which seems likely, then we could see the government take on the power of private TV, radio and the like more significantly, perhaps by emphasizing more state media. It will be merely the latest chapter in the ongoing information war between the conservative, globalizing elite and more left-leaning leaders who are coming to power throughout the region.

Could the diplomatic thaw between Venezuela and the United States be coming to an abrupt end? At the recent Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Barack Obama shook Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s hand and declared that he would pursue a less arrogant foreign policy towards Latin America. Building on that good will, Venezuela and the United States agreed to restore their ambassadors late last week. The diplomatic overtures provided a stark contrast to the miserable state of relations during the Bush years: just nine months ago Venezuela expelled the U.S. envoy in a diplomatic tussle. At the time, Chávez said he kicked the U.S. ambassador out to demonstrate solidarity with left ally Bolivia, which had also expelled a top American diplomat after accusing him of blatant political interference in the Andean nation’s internal affairs.

Whatever goodwill existed last week however could now be undone by turbulent political events in Honduras. Following a military coup d’etat in the small Central American nation on Sunday, Chávez accused the U.S. of helping to orchestrate the overthrow of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. “Behind these soldiers are the Honduran bourgeois, the rich who converted Honduras into a Banana Republic, into a political and military base for North American imperialism,” Chávez said. The Venezuelan leader urged the Honduran military to return Zelaya to power and even threatened military action against the coup regime if Venezuela’s ambassador was killed or local troops entered the Venezuelan Embassy. Reportedly, Honduran soldiers beat the ambassador and left him on the side of a road in the course of the military coup. Tensions have ratcheted up to such an extent that Chávez has now placed his armed forces on alert.

To be sure, Chávez has a certain taste for hyperbole and has not provided any proof that the U.S. could be behind the coup in Honduras. On the surface at least it seems unlikely that Obama would endorse an interventionist U.S. foreign policy in Central America. Over the past few months the U.S. President has gone to great lengths to “re-brand” America in the eyes of the world as a reasonable power engaged in respectful diplomacy as opposed to reckless unilateralism. If it were ever proven that Obama sanctioned the overthrow of a democratically elected government this could completely undermine the U.S. President’s carefully crafted image and lead many to conclude that he is just as cynical as his predecessor.

Officially the military removed Zelaya from power because the Honduran President had abused his authority. On Sunday Zelaya hoped to hold a constitutional referendum which could have allowed him to run for reelection for another four year term, a move which Honduras’ Supreme Court and Congress declared illegal. But while the controversy over Zelaya’s constitutional referendum certainly provided the lightning rod for military intervention, it’s no secret that the President was at odds politically with the Honduran elite for the past few years and had become one of Washington’s fiercest critics in the region.

The Rise of Zelaya

Zelaya, who sports a thick black mustache, cowboy boots and large white Stetson hat, was elected in late 2005. At first blush he hardly seemed the type of politician to rock the boat. A landowner from a wealthy landowning family engaged in the lumber industry, Zelaya headed the Liberal Party, one of the two dominant political parties in Honduras. The President supported the Central American Free Trade Agreement which eliminated trade barriers with the United States.

Despite these initial conservative leanings, Zelaya began to criticize powerful, vested interests in the country such as the media and owners of maquiladora sweatshops which produced goods for export in industrial free zones. Gradually he started to adopt some socially progressive policies. For example, Zelaya instituted a 60% minimum wage increase which angered the wealthy business community. The hike in the minimum wage, Zelaya declared, would “force the business oligarchy to start paying what is fair.” “This is a government of great social transformations, committed to the poor,” he added. Trade unions celebrated the decision, not surprising given that Honduras is the third poorest country in the hemisphere and 70% of its people live in poverty. When private business associations announced that they would challenge the government’s wage decree in Honduras’ Supreme Court, Zelaya’s Labor Minister called the critics “greedy exploiters.”

In another somewhat jarring move that must have raised eyebrows in Washington, Zelaya declared during a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean anti-drug officials that drug consumption should be legalized to halt violence related to smuggling. In recent years Honduras has been plagued by drug trafficking and so-called maras or street gangs which carry out gruesome beheadings, rapes and eye gouging. “Instead of pursuing drug traffickers, societies should invest resources in educating drug addicts and curbing their demand,” Zelaya said. Rodolfo Zelaya, the head of a Honduran congressional commission on drug trafficking, rejected Zelaya’s comments. He told participants at the meeting that he was “confused and stunned by what the Honduran leader said.”

Zelaya and ALBA

Not content to stop there, Zelaya started to conduct an increasingly more independent foreign policy. In late 2007 he traveled to Cuba, the first official trip by a Honduran president to the Communist island in 46 years. There, Zelaya met with Raul Castro to discuss bilateral relations and other topics of mutual interest. But what really led Zelaya towards a political collision course with the Honduran elite was his decision to join the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (known by its Spanish acronym ALBA), an alliance of leftist Latin American and Caribbean nations headed by Chávez. The regional trade group including Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Dominica seeks to counteract corporately-friendly U.S-backed free trade schemes. Since its founding in 2004, ALBA countries have promoted joint factories and banks, an emergency food fund, and exchanges of cheap Venezuelan oil for food, housing, and educational investment.

In an emphatic departure from previous Honduran leaders who had been staunch allies of the U.S., Zelaya stated “Honduras and the Honduran people do not have to ask permission of any imperialism to join the ALBA.” Speaking in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa before a crowd of 50,000 unionists, women’s groups, farmers and indigenous peoples, Chávez remarked that Venezuela would guarantee cheap oil to Honduras for “at least 100 years.” By signing onto ALBA, Zelaya was able to secure access to credit lines, energy and food benefits. As an act of good faith, Chávez agreed to forgive Honduran debt to Venezuela amounting to $30 million.

Infuriating the local elite, Chávez declared that Hondurans who opposed ALBA were “sellouts.” “I did not come here to meddle in internal affairs,” he continued, “but…I cannot explain how a Honduran could be against Honduras joining the ALBA, the path of development, the path of integration.” Hardly content to stop there, Chávez lambasted the Honduran press which he labeled pitiyanquis (little Yanqui imitators) and “abject hand-lickers of the Yanquis.” For his part, Zelaya said “we need no one’s permission to sign this commitment. Today we are taking a step towards becoming a government of the center-left, and if anyone dislikes this, well just remove the word ‘center’ and keep the second one.”

It wasn’t long before private business started to bitterly attack Zelaya for moving Honduras into Chávez’s orbit. By joining ALBA, business representatives argued, the President was endangering free enterprise and the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Former President Ricardo Maduro even claimed that the United States might retaliate against Honduras by deporting Honduran migrants from the United States. “Don't bite the hand that feeds you,” Maduro warned, alluding to Washington. Zelaya was piqued by the criticisms. “When I met with (U.S. President) George W. Bush,” he said, “no one called me an anti-imperialist and the business community applauded me. Now that I am meeting with the impoverished peoples of the world, they criticize me.”

Zelaya’s Letter to Obama

In September, 2008 Zelaya further strained U.S. relations by delaying accreditation of the new U.S. ambassador out of solidarity with Bolivia and Venezuela which had just gone through diplomatic dust ups with Washington. “We are not breaking relations with the United States,” Zelaya said. “We only are (doing this) in solidarity with [Bolivian President] Morales, who has denounced the meddling of the United States in Bolivia's internal affairs.” Defending his decision, Zelaya said small nations needed to stick together. “The world powers must treat us fairly and with respect,” he stated.

In November, Zelaya hailed Obama’s election in the U.S. as “a hope for the world,” but just two months later tensions began to emerge. In an audacious letter sent personally to Obama, Zelaya accused the U.S. of “interventionism” and called on the new administration in Washington to respect the principle of non-interference in the political affairs of other nations. According to Spanish news agency EFE which saw a copy of the note, Zelaya told Obama that it wasn’t his intention to tell the U.S. President what he should or should not do.

He then however went on to do precisely that. First of all, Zelaya brought up the issue of U.S. visas and urged Obama to “revise the procedure by which visas are cancelled or denied to citizens of different parts of the world as a means of pressure against those people who hold different beliefs or ideologies which pose no threat to the U.S.”

As if that was not impudent enough, Zelaya then moved on to drug trafficking: “The legitimate struggle against drug trafficking…should not be used as an excuse to carry out interventionist policies in other countries.” The struggle against drug smuggling, Zelaya wrote, “should not be divorced from a vigorous policy of controlling distribution and consumer demand in all countries, as well as money laundering which operates through financial circuits and which involve networks within developed countries.”

Zelaya also argued “for the urgent necessity” of revising and transforming the structure of the United Nations and “to solve the Venezuela and Bolivia problems” through dialogue which “yields better fruit than confrontation.” The Cuban embargo, meanwhile, “was a useless instrument” and “a means of unjust pressure and violation of human rights.”

Run Up to June Coup

It’s unclear what Obama might have made of the audacious letter sent from the leader of a small Central American nation. It does seem however that Zelaya became somewhat disenchanted with the new administration in Washington. Just three months ago, the Honduran leader declined to attend a meeting of the System for Central American Integration (known by its Spanish acronym SICA) which would bring Central American Presidents together with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in San José, Costa Rica.

Both Zelaya and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua boycotted the meeting as they viewed it as a diplomatic affront. Nicaragua currently holds the presidency of SICA, and so the proper course of action should have been for Biden to have Ortega hold the meeting. Sandinista economist and former Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Trade Alejandro Martínez Cuenca declared that the United States had missed a vital opportunity to encourage a new era of relations with Central America by “prioritizing personal relations with [Costa Rican President] Arias over respect for Central America's institutional order.”

Could all of the contentious diplomatic back and forth between Tegucigalpa and Washington have turned the Obama administration against Zelaya? In the days ahead there will surely be a lot of attention and scrutiny paid to the role of Romeo Vasquez, a General who led the military coup against Zelaya. Vasquez is a graduate of the notorious U.S. School of the Americas, an institution which trained the Latin American military in torture.

Are we to believe that the United States had no role in coordinating with Vasquez and the coup plotters? The U.S. has had longstanding military ties to the Honduran armed forces, particularly during the Contra War in Nicaragua during the 1980s. The White House however has rejected claims that the U.S. played a role. The New York Times has reported that the Obama administration knew that a coup was imminent and tried to persuade the military to back down. The paper writes that it was the Honduran military which broke off discussions with American officials. Obama himself has taken the high road, remarking “I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms [and] the rule of law…Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.”

Even if the Obama administration did not play an underhanded role in this affair, the Honduran coup highlights growing geo-political tensions in the region. In recent years, Chávez has sought to extend his influence to smaller Central American and Caribbean nations. The Venezuelan leader shows no intention of backing down over the Honduran coup, remarking that ALBA nations “will not recognize any [Honduran] government that isn't Zelaya’s.”

Chávez then derided Honduras’ interim president, Roberto Micheletti. “Mr. Roberto Micheletti will either wind up in prison or he'll need to go into exile… If they swear him in we'll overthrow him, mark my words. Thugetti--as I'm going to refer to him from now on--you better pack your bags, because you're either going to jail or you're going into exile. We're not going to forgive your error, you're going to get swept out of there. We're not going to let it happen, we're going to make life impossible for you. President Manuel Zelaya needs to retake his position as president.”

With tensions running high, heads of ALBA nations have vowed to meet in Managua to discuss the coup in Honduras. Zelaya, who was exiled to Costa Rica from Honduras, plans to fly to Nicaragua to speak with his colleagues. With such political unity amongst ALBA nations, Obama will have to decide what the U.S. posture ought to be towards the incipient "Pink Tide" sweeping across Central America, a region which Washington traditionally viewed as its own “backyard.”

As Iran heads into a hotly contested presidential election on June 12th, a most unlikely issue stands to exert a political impact upon the race: Latin America. What’s that you say, Latin America? How could a region which is so geographically, culturally, and politically removed from Iran have any bearing on the upcoming election in the Islamic republic? On the surface at least such a connection might seem far-fetched or bizarre yet on a certain level it’s not too surprising that the Iranian political debate has come to center around foreign affairs.

In an effort to undermine Washington, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has befriended Third World countries which are resisting U.S. political hegemony. In particular Iran has carried out an aggressive foreign policy effort in Latin America, a region which has seen the emergence of so-called leftist “Pink Tide” regimes in recent years.

Iran is divided into two political camps which have divergent views about foreign policy. On the one hand conservatives allied to Ahmadinejad would like Iran to continue its bellicose approach towards Washington; reformists meanwhile urge a more moderate and cautious posture. The reformists are pinning their hopes on former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi who seems to have the greatest chance of staging an upset against Ahmadinejad.

Slamming his opponent in a televised speech, Mousavi said “Instead of investing in Iran’s neighboring countries, the government has focused on Latin American states. The President has obviously failed to get his priorities right.” Apparently pining away for antiquity and the lost days of Darius and Xerxes, Mousavi lamented the fact that Iran had ignored its own backyard of the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East in favor of Latin America. “We have neglected civilizations in which Iran has played a role,” he said. “We have forgotten cities we lost in wars between Iran and Russia and cling to countries such as Venezuela and Uruguay,” Mousavi thundered. Iran should have invested in neighboring countries instead of “pouring money” into Latin America, the reformer exclaimed.

The comments seemed to hit a nerve. Afraid that he might lose support amongst his cherished nationalist base, the Iranian President lashed back at Mousavi. “One of these gentlemen [rival candidates] still cannot understand world affairs and this is why he asks us why we have focused on Latin America,” Ahmadinejad declared, his comments oozing condescension. “When the Western countries were trying to isolate Iran, we went to the U.S. backyard and I even delivered my strongest anti-U.S. speech in Nicaragua,” he added.

It’s fascinating that top Iranian statesmen are arguing about Latin America — in a presidential election cycle no less. Yet both candidates are unbelievably — I would argue even woefully — wrong in their approaches towards Latin America. The point is not that Iran is inherently mistaken in reaching out to Latin America but that its diplomacy is cynical and has nothing to do with promoting a shared political and social belief system.

To be sure Ahmadinejad has made plenty of trips to Latin America over the past couple of years and has used the junkets to publicize his supposedly anti-imperialist credentials. In Bolivia, Ahmadinejad promised $1 billion to help develop the Andean nation’s oil and gas sector. Making skillful use of its petrodollars, Iran has also entered into various economic agreements with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Ahmadinejad has made particular efforts to cultivate political and diplomatic support from Venezuela, a fellow OPEC member. Today Iran and Venezuela are putting together a joint tractor production plant and President Chávez plans to promote the sale of Iranian designed “anti-imperialist cars” for local consumption. Ahmadinejad meanwhile has opened a trade office — in Quito of all places. Iran’s push into Latin America forms part of what Ahmadinejad calls his “counter lasso” of the U.S. The moves have alarmed the likes of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who has called Iran’s inroads into Latin America “disturbing.”

Despite his speechifying against the U.S., Ahmadinejad’s Latin American diplomacy has little to do with advancing progressive social and political ideals. For the Iranian leader it’s all about getting diplomatic support from the likes of Venezuela and Brazil for Iran’s nuclear energy program. In this sense Ahmadinejad is square and politically narrow minded. Latin America is the one region of the world where the left has made significant gains in recent years, yet Ahmadinejad has little interest in such developments.

If he truly sought to promote Iranian-Latin American solidarity, Ahmadinejad might have fought for women’s and labor rights. As I discuss in considerable detail in my book Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008), both groups have advanced exponentially in a political and social sense in countries ranging from Argentina to Venezuela to Brazil.

Unfortunately however Ahmadinejad has led his country in the opposite direction from Latin America. In Iran, the President’s “morality police” stop, beat and arrest young girls for simply walking with their boyfriends in public. When hundreds of women and men marched to commemorate International Women’s Day, police and plainclothes agents charged and attacked the crowd. The security forces then dumped cans of garbage on the heads of women who were seated in a public park and beat protesters with batons for good measure.

When bus drivers in Tehran went on strike to protest working conditions, Ahmadinejad’s security forces attacked and arrested laborers. Bravely, the workers refused to end their strike. That’s when state thugs targeted the workers’ wives and children. Busting into the home of one of the strike leaders, the authorities kicked and beat the man’s wife. In response, labor unions in 18 world capitals took part in protests outside Iranian embassies.

You might have thought that Mousavi would have attacked Ahmadinejad’s hollow “anti-imperialist” politics in advance of the Iranian presidential election. Mousavi himself has stated that he would review discriminatory laws against women if he won the election. Speaking to female supporters in Tehran, he added that he would disband the morality police which enforce strict standards of Islamic dress on the streets.

Mousavi might have praised South American nations for advancing women’s rights. He could have held up Latin countries as a beacon of progress and a model worth aspiring to. Instead he suggested that Iran scrap its Latin American foreign policy in favor of Central Asian diplomacy. Presumably, Mousavi would prefer warm ties with the likes of Uzbekistan, a human rights hellhole where battered women can’t count on any protection from the authorities.

These are the kinds of friends Mousavi would like to cultivate? If so, then this candidate doesn’t offer much of a bold or “reformist” agenda when it comes to charting his country’s future foreign policy.

As Obama dithers on changing the backwards and retrograde “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy dealing with gays in the military, South America has zoomed past the United States in new landmark legislation. Just weeks ago Uruguay, a tiny nation of some 3.5 million sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil, lifted a ban on homosexuals joining the armed forces. Historically, homosexuality was defined as a mental illness under Uruguayan law and as such gays were considered unsuitable to serve in the military.

Uruguay’s turnaround is all the more remarkable in light of the South American country’s recent history and the brutal role of the military. During the 1950s Uruguay was gripped with economic stagnation, inflation, and political corruption. As labor unrest mounted, Uruguayan society saw the rise of an urban Marxist guerrilla movement known as the Tupamaros. During the 60s, rebels carried out a number of spectacular actions including kidnappings and jailbreaks of fellow imprisoned insurgents. Seeing themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods, the Tupamaros robbed banks and distributed the money to the poor.

Long before Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the Nixon administration responded to political chaos in Uruguay by training the South American country’s police in interrogation and torture techniques. Dan Mitrione, a former policeman from Richmond, Indiana and an FBI agent, was sent to Uruguay in 1969 as an advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development. In Uruguay, Mitrione was affiliated with the Uruguayan police’s Office of Public Safety and instructed his students in how to torture using electrical implements. Mitrione is reported to have said, “The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise moment, for the desire effect.”

As tensions with the Tupamaros escalated the rebels kidnapped Mitrione and tried to use him as a bargaining chip, demanding the release of a large number of prisoners in exchange for the FBI man’s life. When the government refused the Tupamaros murdered Mitrione. The dramatic story was later immortalized by radical director Costa Gavras in his film State of Siege. In the movie, Yves Montand played the role of Philip Michael Santore, modeled after Mitrione.

In the midst of anti-Communist hysteria and its fight against the Tupamaros, the Uruguayan military became intoxicated by its own power and in 1973 took over the government in a coup. Uruguay soon had the dubious distinction of having the world’s highest percentage of political prisoners to the general population [Uruguay would not return to democratic rule until 1985 when jailed Tupamaros received amnesty and got out of jail]. Needless to say, the military was deeply conservative and threatened by gays. The armed forces banned anyone with “open sexual deviations” from attending military academies. In a number of highly publicized cases, the military dishonorably discharged officers for homosexual practices.

Though Uruguay is a rather conservative society, the country has not been immune from social and political changes sweeping through the rest of South America. In 2004, voters elected socialist Tabaré Vazquez of the left Broad Front coalition to the presidency. Three years later, Vazquez made history by signing a congressional bill granting civil unions to same-sex couples who had been living together for at least five years. Under the new law, gay couples were provided with similar rights to those enjoyed by married couples on matters like inheritance, pensions and child custody. The ruling made Uruguay the first Latin American country to legalize civil unions for gays and lesbians.

Though some retired Uruguayan military officers have warned that reversing the ban on gays joining the military will undermine morale and discipline, in general protest has been muted. Perhaps that’s not too surprising when you consider how much political and social attitudes have shifted within the Southern Cone’s military establishment, a point I discuss at considerable length in my new book Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008).

When he first came into office, Obama pledged to end “don’t ask don’t tell.” Polls show that many U.S. soldiers are comfortable with the idea of lifting the ban on gays serving in the ranks. Recently however Obama has backpedaled: the White House’s civil rights Web site has watered down the strong language it had used to signal its desire to scrap “don’t ask don’t tell.” When West Point graduate Dan Choi, an Iraq veteran and Arab linguist, was discharged from the military for disclosing that he was gay, the U.S. President failed to utter even a whisper of protest.

If Uruguay, a country which up until fairly recently was run by a repressive, macho and paternalistic military can institute landmark legislation dealing with gays in the military then what is Obama’s problem?

As if U.S.-Venezuelan relations could become no more bizarre, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has now donated an island to the state of New Jersey. No, what you are reading is not an article for The Onion or a conceptual skit for Comedy Central. The 392 acre property called Petty Island lies along the Delaware River. For decades it belonged to Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company PdVSA. Tucked between heavily industrial sections of Camden County and the city of Philadelphia, Petty Island is home to a plethora of shorebirds including a nesting pair of bald eagles.

Yes, that’s right: Chávez is now helping to save the national symbol of the United States from environmental degradation. Strange as it may seem, this latest move is merely the latest in a series of surreal twists and turns between the Obama and Chávez administrations. Confounded by the new resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Chávez has treated Obama schizophrenically. At one point the Venezuelan President called Obama “a poor ignoramus.” Laying it on pretty thick, he added that Obama had “the same stench” — the smell of sulfur that Chávez said he smelled on the floor of the United Nations in 2006 after “devil” President Bush addressed diplomats — as his predecessor.

Before he traveled to the Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Trinidad Chávez explained that he was preparing his verbal “artillery.” “What will Mr. Obama come with? I don’t know. We’re going to see.” Chávez, a big baseball aficionado, added “We’ll see what the pitcher throws.” Later reversing his hostile posture, Chávez greeted Obama warmly at the summit. As Chávez provided Obama with a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Michele Bachelet of Chile looked on in disbelief.

An astute politician, Chávez has recognized that the U.S. has now “re-branded” itself and that fiery confrontation with Washington will not work as effectively as it did during the Bush years. For Chávez, donating an island to the state of New Jersey is no “petty” or trivial matter. Indeed, Petty Island is yet the latest chapter in Chávez’s ongoing public relations efforts in the United States. Key to Chávez’s outreach has been oil company Citgo, headquartered in Houston, Texas. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the company set up disaster relief centers in Louisiana and Texas and provided humanitarian to thousands of victims. Volunteers based at Citgo refineries in Lake Charles, Louisiana and Corpus Christi, Texas, provided medical care, food and water to approximately 5,000 people. In Houston meanwhile, Citgo volunteers provided similar assistance to a whopping 40,000 victims. As a result of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, refineries closed all over the Gulf of Mexico and this in turn led to lower oil production and higher oil prices. Visiting Bronx, New York in 2005, Chávez offered to sell discounted heating oil to poor families in the area. Following through on his pledge, the Venezuelan President had Citgo send 20 million gallons of oil to 181,000 families in eight states, including thousands in New York. Today, Citgo donates 100 million gallons of oil to 224,000 poor families within 23 states.

Four years after his announcement of the Citgo program in the Bronx, Chávez continues to pursue his oil diplomacy in the United States. Choosing to make a splash, the Venezuelan leader announced the Petty Island deal during the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Today, Citgo does not conduct any commercial operations on the island, merely environmental restoration projects. About half of Petty Island still has old tankers, a refinery, storage facilities and vehicles dating from Citgo’s old days.

Elizabeth Kinsey, a Quaker, acquired the island from Lenni-Lenape Indians in the late 17th century and later transferred the property to William Penn. Petty Island has had a long and colorful history; indeed it’s been home to a slave depot and possibly even pirates. The island takes its name from John Petty who owned it around the time of the American Revolution. During the 19th century schooners were built here and a summer resort flourished before industrial operations took root in the early 1900s.

As I point out in my recent book Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008), the environment has not always been Chávez’s strong suit. Indeed, the Venezuelan oil producing area of Lake Maracaibo has become an ecological disaster in recent years, overrun by patches of noxious duckweed. By donating Petty Island to New Jersey, Chávez may hope to burnish his environmental credentials.

Compared to other U.S. oil companies which refuse to accept responsibility for contamination, Citgo has stood out as a result of its handling of the Petty Island affair. In 2004, the oil company offered to carry out an environmental cleanup of the island and transform the place into a wildlife refuge. In making his offer, Chávez was actually adopting a more environmentally friendly posture than then New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, who actually blocked Citgo’s offer.

According to the New York Times the Governor, supported by Democrats in South Jersey, wanted to give “the island to developers for a hotel, a conference center, a golf course and 300 homes.” Prospective home buyers would be drawn to Petty Island, which is said to offer impressive views of both Philadelphia and Camden. Reportedly a Raleigh, North Carolina-based development company called Cherokee Investment Partners would have overseen the development but the proposal was shelved once the real estate market softened.

Had McGreevey succeeded with his development agenda this would have constituted an environmental tragedy: Petty Island is in the path of a major flyway for migrating birds and passing songbirds find cover within the island’s woods and wetlands. What’s more, the island is surrounded by 140 acres of ecologically important riparian lands. In addition to the pair of American bald eagles — the only ones of their kind in Camden County — the island also provides habitat for both the great blue heron and endangered black-crowned night-heron.

In 2005, during his first gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey, Jon Corzine jettisoned the environmentally unfriendly policies of his predecessor and pledged to preserve Petty Island. Just this week during Earth Day Corzine accepted Chávez’s donation, remarking “Petty’s Island has become an important home to bald eagles, kestrels, and a wide variety of waterfowl. We are opening a new chapter in the island’s long history by restoring it and giving it back to nature and the people of New Jersey.”

Under an agreement Citgo must remove structures associated with former oil development and complete cleanup of industrial contamination before the island is transferred to the state of New Jersey. Eventually, it is hoped that the island might become suitable for recreational activities such as hiking, fishing, birding, kayaking, and canoeing. As part of its commitment, Citgo will provide $2 million to New Jersey to maintain Petty Island as a nature preserve and $1 million to set up a cultural and educational center. The transfer cannot take place until 2020 at the earliest, three years after a current lease for the island expires.

The Petty Island affair has not been immune from political controversy. At the last minute, Corzine cancelled a ceremony designed to commemorate the environmental deal. One Corzine official said the governor feared that Chávez was planning to issue a video statement complimenting the New Jersey governor which would have proven politically problematic for Democrat Corzine who is facing reelection this year. The official added that the concern was that Republicans might use the Chávez statement to depict Corzine as a “socialist.” “Even the event for getting an island for free turned petty,” lamented Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club, who declared he had received an invitation to the Petty Island ceremony only to learn at the last minute from Corzine staffers that the event had been scrapped.

Judging from the debate at apporea.org, a pro-Chávez Web site, people are similarly conflicted on the issue in Venezuela. While some posters commended Chávez for seeking to extend an olive branch to the United States, others wrote that the Venezuelan leader was wasting his time trying to appease ignorant gringos who displayed scant regard for Latin America.

Whatever his motivations, Chávez deserves credit for the Citgo deal on Petty Island. Though it’s a largely symbolic move, the affair could help to mend tattered relations between the United States and Venezuela. The question however is why the burden should solely be on Chávez to reach out to the United States? After all, Venezuela never allied with political forces determined to unseat the U.S. government while the Bush administration certainly offered support to the Venezuelan opposition which briefly unseated Chávez from power in April, 2002.

So far, Obama has offered platitudes about the need for the United States to respect its Latin American neighbors without offering much in concrete terms. What about calling for a shedding of light on the U.S. role during the April, 2002 coup in Venezuela? The U.S. President has long extolled the virtues of political transparency and the American public surely wants to rekindle its democracy right now. Obama should reciprocate to Chávez’s overtures by cleaning house, in the process demonstrating that there is still accountability in Washington for foreign policy ventures run amok.

The Summit of the Americas, to be held this week in Port of Spain, Trinidad, should in theory offer Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez a great opportunity to enhance his political profile. The war in Iraq, never popular in Latin America, lingers on and Washington is gearing up for a long fight against insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile the financial meltdown on Wall Street threatens to wipe out many of the positive social and economic gains achieved throughout Latin America in recent years as the region is hard hit by recession.

It sounds like fertile ground for the colorful Chávez, who has long criticized U.S. economic and military interests. The Venezuelan leader travels to Trinidad in the context of long-simmering grievances, including ongoing U.S support for the futile drug war which has resulted in nothing but violence and mayhem in Colombia and Mexico; no progress on U.S. immigration reform which angers many Latino residents in the United States as well as their relatives abroad; U.S. stalling on climate change which has exacted a heavy toll on Latin America in recent years; no substantial change in official U.S. policy towards Cuba with the trade embargo still firmly in place.

Given that the U.S. will not change any of its fundamental policies at Trinidad, could Chávez ignite the conference in opposition to the United States? The Venezuelan leader certainly has a colorful history of such activities. In 2001, when he was not nearly as known on the world stage, the Venezuelan leader attended the Summit of the Americas in Quebec. Surrounded by anti-globalization protesters, George Bush stayed holed up in his hotel. Chávez, who attacked U.S.-style free trade as inadequate, later remarked that the event was an epiphany for him and that protesters were unjustly subjected to “gas warfare” at a police “wall of shame” surrounding the city center. At the summit, the Venezuelan leader was repulsed by the bullying attitude of Bush and his entourage, intent upon ramming through the corporate-friendly Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA.

Four years later, Chávez again roiled the waters in Mar del Plata, Argentina during another summit of the Americas. Having by now deflected a U.S.-sponsored coup d’etat, Chávez was now much more confident and well known on the international circuit. Speaking before a crowd of 25,000 at a local stadium, Chávez famously baptized the site as the “graveyard of the FTAA.” The summit ended in fiasco: Bush returned to Washington empty handed without any trade deal.

Today the U.S. free trade agenda is in tatters and Chávez has significantly pushed his own more socially progressive trading arrangements. Indeed, just this week in advance of the Trinidad summit Chávez hosts his own meeting of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (known by its Spanish acronym ALBA) in the Venezuelan city of Cumaná. Since its inception in 2004, ALBA has enhanced solidarity and reciprocity amongst governments in the region including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Caribbean island nation of Dominica.

The Cumaná summit should be Chávez’s coup de grace: after years of battling the U.S. free trade agenda, the Venezuelan leader seems to be building up something of a regional constituency. Indeed, one might argue that the meltdown on Wall Street vindicates Chávez’s more progressive economic philosophy since the Venezuelan leader has long railed against the excesses of market capitalism and deregulation.

Yet, ALBA is ironically foundering at precisely the moment when it should be ascendant.

With the exception of Venezuela ALBA nations don’t have much economic clout and it’s unclear whether the regional alliance will be embraced by major countries. While a host of small nations such as Antigua, Barbuda, El Salvador and possibly Ecuador and Paraguay may join ALBA in future this probably won’t alter fundamental power dynamics within the region.

What happened?

At this point, Chávez may be running up against the political limits of his own populist model. Like other Latin American populists, the Venezuelan leader has developed a highly emotional and paternalistic relationship towards his followers. In his rhetoric, the Venezuelan leader stresses his own personal crusade against vaguely defined internal and external threats. Through such rhetoric and his skillful mastery over the media, Chávez has been effective in politically mobilizing Venezuelan society and attracting attention from afar.

In the absence of perceived threats however populists run into trouble. While Venezuela still has a vibrant political opposition Chávez handily defeated his enemies in a recent constitutional referendum which will allow him to stand for indefinite reelection. Internationally, Chávez no longer faces the Bush White House and many Latin leaders want nothing more than to be granted a photo-op with President Obama in Trinidad.

Thrown off his game, Chávez has dealt with Obama schizophrenically. A recent article for The Hill about the upcoming Trinidad summit, amusingly titled “Chávez loves Obama, loves him not, loves him,” catalogues the Venezuelan leader’s contradictory statements. Prior to the November presidential election in the U.S., Chávez was upbeat about the prospect of a Democratic victory and remarked that he was looking forward to meeting “on equal and respectful terms” with Obama.

Reaching out to the “black man,” Chávez declared “Tomorrow the U.S. will have an election. The world awaits the arrival of a black president to the United States, we can say this is no small feat. ... We don't ask him to be a revolutionary, nor a socialist, but that he rise to the moment in the world.”

Days before Obama’s inauguration however, Chávez attacked Obama for linking Venezuela to Marxist guerrillas in Colombia. “We need to be firm when we see this news, that Venezuela is exporting terrorist activities or supporting malicious entities like the FARC,” Chávez remarked. “He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: The least I can say is that he's a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality,” Chávez added. Later on, the Venezuelan didn’t sound much more optimistic. “I don't have much hope, because behind him [Obama] is an empire. He's the president of an empire.” Laying it on pretty thick, he added that Obama had “the same stench” — the smell of sulfur that Chávez said he smelled on the floor of the United Nations in 2006 after “devil” President Bush addressed diplomats — as his predecessor.

Bizarrely pivoting back however, Chávez later said “There is still time for [Obama] to correct these views, though. We will wait and see, we will know him by his actions. He is really an unknown. No one should say that I threw the first stone at Obama; he threw it at me!” As Obama turned his attention to the economic recession, Chávez said “It’s regrettable, the crisis that the U.S. is living through. I recommend to Obama — they’re criticizing him because they say he’s moving toward socialism — come, Obama, ally with us on the path to socialism, it’s the only road. Imagine a socialist revolution in the U.S. Nothing is impossible.”

In advance of the Trinidad summit, Chávez has confounded the public once more with his contradictory views. At one point he said he would like to “reset” relations with the United States and that Obama had “good intentions.” Then however, Chávez explained that he was preparing his verbal “artillery” in advance of the Trinidad summit. “What will Mr. Obama come with? I don't know. We're going to see. We'll see what the pitcher throws,” Chávez declared. Calling the U.S. embargo against Cuba “absurd and stupid,” Chávez then switched into English and remarked cryptically that the upcoming summit would be “very interesting.”

What’s with all of the indecisive back and forth? As long as Bush was in power Chávez’s populist style politics served the Venezuelan politician well. Thriving on political conflict, Chávez was effective at mobilizing public opinion both domestically and abroad in support of such initiatives as ALBA. But now that the U.S. has “re-branded” itself, Chávez is in a quandary. Because the wider Latin American public may not view the United States as much of a threat anymore, Chávez will have to come up with a second act. Can Chavismo survive in the absence of obvious political threats? Over the past couple of months Chávez has seemed unsure about how to navigate the new political milieu.

When you can’t stamp out progressive social change, the next step is to try to desperately derail it or otherwise water it down. That’s exactly the kind of strategy pursued by the likes of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who concluded a South American tour a year ago designed to ostracize the bad countries, namely Venezuela, Bolivia, and increasingly Argentina, and to cultivate ties with the good countries such as Brazil and Chile. Having woken up to the fact that its free trade and neo-liberal agenda for the region lay in tatters, and that wielding a Big Stick to defang its enemies could not work politically, the Bush White House pursued stealthy diplomacy. Rice’s strategy was to divide and rule, to contain radical social change and to steer it within acceptable boundaries. Because South America was headed on a new trajectory which was more independent of Washington, Rice hoped that the "responsible" left as exemplified by Brazil’s Lula and Chile’s Bachelet would steer the region away from the likes of Venezuela’s Chávez and Bolivian President Morales.

One year later with a fresh Democratic administration in Washington, what is the U.S. attitude towards different left leaning regimes in South America? That is the question posed by a recent article in Time magazine, provocatively headlined "Brazil’s Lula: A Bridge to Latin American Left?" The article implies that Bush did not dutifully look out for U.S. interests in South America, and this created "a problem" because it allowed for the expansion of the anti-U.S. left throughout the region.

Thankfully for Time magazine, it now looks as if Brazil will act as a broker between the United States and Venezuela, paving the way for a possible diplomatic rapprochement. In his first meeting with a Latin leader, Obama sat down with Brazilian President Lula da Silva in Washington on Saturday. During the encounter, Lula told his U.S. counterpart that America should do its utmost to improve ties with Venezuela and Bolivia and to build a relationship based on trust and not interference.

Publicly, Lula and Chávez have been political allies for the past several years. Nevertheless, it needs to be said that the Brazilian leader has adopted a more conservative approach towards politics and economics than his Venezuelan counterpart. Both Venezuela and Brazil are energy giants and see themselves as natural political leaders in the wider region. Behind the façade therefore, there may be a slight geopolitical rivalry between the two South American nations. Lula surely does not want a return to the Big Stick of the Bush years, but he would probably like to supplant Venezuela as a regional power so that Brazil can assume its natural place in the South America sun.

Lula may get his wish. The economic picture has shifted dramatically recently and Brazil stands to benefit most in the new geopolitical equation. A year ago the U.S. was not in the midst of a frightening economic mess and Venezuela was getting a much better financial yield on its oil exports. Despite Chávez’s recent victory in his country’s constitutional referendum — which allowed the Venezuelan leader to run indefinitely for reelection — Venezuela is no position to assume a greater regional role right now. Formerly, Chávez was wont to throw around development aid to Bolivia and other nations with reckless abandon, but within the new economic milieu he will be severely constrained in his wider ambitions because of the lower price of oil.

A year ago, Brazil was certainly an important diplomatic player but it has now emerged as perhaps the dominant strategic force in the region. Though Brazil has suffered as a result of the world economic slowdown, the country is still in a better position than many other nations. Indeed, as noted by a recent report by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, "while most of the developed world is undergoing a financial crisis, Brazil still retains some positive strength, with the country still recording significant economic and social achievements at home. For this and other reasons arising from the Brazil’s impressive statistics, Lula is emerging as the de facto spokesman for Latin America."

Brazil, the report goes on, is "far better off than the European and American economies. Its banks are solvent, credit, though increasingly viscous, is still flowing from BNDES, Brazil’s national development bank, to favored companies such as Petrobras [the Brazilian state oil firm] and consumers remain more confident than their North American counterparts. The absence of these negative factors that are primarily propelling the crisis abroad is helping to shield Brazil from the worst of the downturn." Interestingly, the report concludes, Brazil may be the only one of 34 major economies to avoid recession in 2009.

With its newfound clout, what does Brazil seek on the international stage? Lula has long coveted a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and may want to become a world energy powerhouse. Indeed, Brazil might seek to supplant Venezuela as the main South American oil supplier to the United States. "Such observations that Obama would welcome Lula as an alternative energy supplier," notes the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, "seem to run counter to Lula’s putative pledge to Hugo Chávez, in which he promised to act as an advocate for Venezuela during his meeting with Obama. Is Lula positioning himself as Latin America’s Otto Von Bismarck?"

Within this new "Bismarckian" game of chess Lula may wish to appear as Venezuela’s paternalistic protector while simultaneously looking out for wider Brazilian interests. If Lula could ever bring off a meeting or summit with Chávez and Obama, it would constitute a huge political coup and Brazil’s diplomatic prestige would be enormously enhanced.
There is some indication that Obama might be somewhat amenable to Lula’s entreaties.
Back during the U.S. presidential campaign, Obama was vague about what U.S. foreign policy towards Venezuela ought to be. Reluctant to tackle this hot potato, Obama issued rather contradictory statements about his attitude towards the Andean nation. Now that he has been swept into office, what is Obama’s policy? Judging from the contradictory statements put out by the State Department, the administration is conflicted.

At first, the State Department praised Venezuela’s recent constitutional referendum as free and fair. But then, diplomats reversed course. According to the Wall Street Journal, the positive remarks "set off a furor among Venezuelan opposition activists and some commentators because the description of Venezuela’s referendum seemed markedly different from the tone set by the Bush administration, which repeatedly voiced worry that Mr. Chávez was undermining Venezuela’s democracy."

As the right laid into Obama, the State Department quickly backpedaled. As noted in the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. officials are scrambling to assert that the Obama administration hasn’t softened U.S. policy toward Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez recently won a controversial referendum allowing him to run for office as many times as he wants." The reports suggest that there may be disagreement within the State Department about how to handle Chavez; different factions may not see eye to eye. Like the Carter administration, which had somewhat contradictory policies at different times towards left wing movements in Latin America, Obama has not quite figured out what course he wants to chart.

This lack of coherence in official U.S. policy towards Venezuela suggests that Lula might be able to at least nudge the U.S. in another direction. Given Brazil’s new economic and political clout, and the U.S.’s reduced position world-wide, Lula is in an ideal position to reform regional politics in a dramatic way. Within the new diplomatic triangle between Venezuela, Brazil and the United States, Lula wants his country to be paramount. In the new arrangement, the United States will cease its political interference in South American affairs while Venezuela will become a junior partner to Brazil. If Lula can achieve these ends, he will indeed emerge as a very important figure on the world stage.

In light of the Salvadoran right's fear-mongering campaign in advance of the Central American nation's Sunday presidential election, which has sought to portray leftist candidate Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Martí Liberation Front (FMLN) as a kind of dangerous foreign agent of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, perhaps it's instructive to consider the political history of the past four years.

 

Bolivia, Presidential Election of 2005: Chávez and "Terrorists"

During the country's presidential election, Evo Morales of the Movement Towards Socialism or MAS campaigned on a progressive platform stressing resource nationalism. His opponent, conservative Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga of the PODEMOS or We Can party (no relationship to Barack Obama) claimed that Morales had ties to drug smugglers, terrorism, Hugo Chávez and Cuba's Fidel Castro. Quiroga, who pledged to pursue free trade policies, went down to ignominious defeat and got trounced by Morales, 54% to 28%.

Peru and Presidential Election of June, 2006: "Flagrant and Persistent" Meddling

After meeting with Chávez and Morales, the leftist Ollanta Humala, a former officer in the Peruvian army, declared himself part of "a Latin America with new leaders, in which the perception is that the neo-liberal economic model is exhausted." Adopting a nationalist platform, Humala pledged to nationalize Peru's hydrocarbons industry and said he strongly opposed the free trade agreement that his country had signed with Washington.

When Chávez injected himself into the presidential contest by saying that Humala was the voice of the downtrodden and conservative Lourdes Flores was "the candidate of Peru's oligarchy," the Peruvian government briefly withdrew its ambassador from Venezuela in protest. During a runoff vote Flores was eliminated, thus leaving Humala and Peru's former President Alan García of the APRA Party or American Popular Revolutionary Alliance to face off against one another.

García finished second in that vote trailing Humala. During his first presidency García had espoused some progressive positions but now he referred to Chávez and Morales as spoiled children and "historical losers" when they criticized Peru's free-trade agreement with the United States. Chávez shot back that García, whose previous presidency was marred by hyperinflation, food shortages and guerrilla violence, was a "thief" and a "crook."

 

"I hope that Ollanta Humala becomes president of Peru," Chávez declared. "To Ollanta Humala, go comrade! Long live Ollanta Humala! Long live Peru!" the Venezuelan leader added. Chávez's comments prompted Peru to recall its ambassador from Venezuela in protest. The Venezuelan leader, Peruvian authorities charged, was persistently and flagrantly intervening in their country's internal affairs.

 

García, who had languished behind Humala by more than ten points in opinion polls, exploited the diplomatic spat by accusing Chávez of political interference. When the APRA man painted Humala as a puppet of Chávez and Morales, Humala was unable to launch an articulate counteroffensive. When the votes were finally counted, García edged out Humala, 53% to 47%. The vote, García remarked, was a blow to Chávez. "Today, the majority of the country has delivered a message in favor of national independence, of national sovereignty," García said. "They have defeated the efforts by Mr Hugo Chávez to integrate us into his militaristic and backwards expansion project he intends to impose over South America. Today, Peru has said no," García added proudly. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick was also pleased with the result, proclaiming that "the best response is that of the Peruvian people (who) decided to vote for President Garcia and not for [Hugo] Chávez's candidate."

Mexico and Presidential Election of July, 2006: López Obrador Is a "Danger"

 

Even though Chávez was not a candidate in the Mexican election which followed one month after Peru's contest, he was certainly a political specter. The election pitted leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the PRD or Party of the Democratic Revolution against two conservative candidates, Roberto Madrazo of the PRI or Institutional Revolutionary Party and Felipe Calderón of the PAN or National Action Party. In early polling López Obrador, a populist mayor of Mexico City who had instituted socialist-style handout programs and who had spoken of his desire to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA, had a clear lead over both candidates.

Trailing in public opinion surveys, Madrazo sought to take down his leftist challenger by linking him to Chávez. "There are clear similarities between Chávez and López Obrador," Madrazo said. "I see authoritarianism in them both." The PRI candidate added that López Obrador and Chávez did not respect the rule of law and that foreign investors would avoid Mexico if the PRD candidate ever came to power. Madrazo declared, "I foresee the capital flight that happened in Venezuela with Chávez's government that I don't want to happen here." Going even further, Madrazo accused López Obrador of being in contact with Chávez aides and charged that the Venezuelan leader was trying to influence the election.

Pro-business candidate Calderón joined in the pummeling. In his TV ads, he linked Obrador to Hugo Chávez and claimed that the PRD candidate was "a danger to Mexico." "Hugo Chávez is not running for president of Mexico," remarked the Washington Post. "But some days it's been hard to tell. The Venezuelan president's face has been all over Mexican television at critical stages in this country's bitter mudfest of a presidential race." A little known political activist group put Chávez on TV, surrounded by machine guns and soldiers, and accompanied by an ominous voice-over which intoned: "In Mexico, you don't have to die to define your future -- you only have to vote!"

 

The Federal Electoral Commission ruled that Calderón's ads TV ads violated its rules and ordered him to withdraw them but only after the scare-mongering message had set in and Calderón had shot up in the polls. Encouraged by the successful result of Calderón's dirty campaign, the candidate's aides claimed that the Venezuelan Bolivarian circles -- small community groups supported by the Chávez government – were secretly working on behalf of López Obrador.

The leftist candidate of the PRD was known for his combative political style. Bizarrely however, López Obrador barely responded to the fear mongering campaign against him. Weeks passed until he finally disavowed a relationship with Chávez. Cowed by the right wing attacks, one presidential aide finally remarked "It's absurd. Andrés Manuel López Obrador doesn't know Chávez, nor have they ever spoken."

 

The election itself was plagued with irregularities. When Calderón claimed victory, López Obrador cried fraud and called for street protests. The Electoral Tribunal ultimately ruled that Calderon had won the election by a very narrow margin and rejected Obrador's allegations.

 

Ecuador Presidential Election of October, 2006: "Colonel Correa"

The next setback for Chávez came in Ecuador, where the Venezuelan leader's would-be protégé, Rafael Correa, came in second against Álvaro Noboa in the first round of the country's presidential election. Correa, a leftist economics professor who criticized U.S.-style free trade, denied that Chávez had funded his campaign and the Venezuelan leader, chastened by his defeats in Mexico and Peru, was uncharacteristically quiet about the Ecuador election. However, it was no secret that the two had a personal rapport. Correa in fact visited Chávez's home state of Barinas, where he met with the Venezuelan leader and spent the night with Chávez's parents.

As the presidential campaign heated up, Noboa, a banana magnate, sought to label Correa as a Chávez puppet. In an allusion to Chávez's former military background, Noboa called his adversary "Colonel Correa." Correa, the Noboa campaign charged, was being financed by Venezuela. In a bombastic tirade Noboa even declared, "the Chávez-Correa duo has played dirty in an effort to conquer Ecuador and submit it to slavery."

If he were elected, Noboa promised, he would break relations with Caracas. Correa denied that his campaign was financed by Chávez and in a biting aside declared that his friendship with the Venezuelan leader was as legitimate as President Bush's friendship with the bin Laden family. "They have pursued the most immoral and dirty campaign against me in an effort to link me with communism, terrorism, and Chavismo," Correa explained. "The only thing left is for them to say that Bin Laden was financing me."

Chávez, perhaps fearing that any statement on his part might tilt the election in favor of Noboa, initially remained silent as regards the Ecuadoran election. But at last the effusive Chávez could no longer constrain himself and broke his silence. The Venezuelan leader accused Noboa of baiting him in an effort to gain the "applause" of the United States. Chávez furthermore expressed doubts about the veracity of the voting result in the first presidential runoff, in which Correa came in second.

 

In his own inflammatory broadside, Chávez accused Noboa of being "an exploiter of child labor" on his banana plantations and a "fundamentalist of the extreme right." In Ecuador, Chávez said, "there are also strange things going on. A gentleman who is the richest man in Ecuador; the king of bananas, who exploits his workers, who exploits children and puts them to work, who doesn't pay them loans, suddenly appears in first place in the first [electoral] round." The Noboa campaign, in an escalating war of words, shot back that the Venezuelan Ambassador should be expelled from Ecuador due to Chávez's meddling.

In the end however, Noba's fulminations came to nothing: the Banana King came in second to Correa, losing 43% to 56% for Correa.

 

Nicaragua Presidential Election of November, 2006: Chávez's "Lieutenant" in Central America

In 2005, when Nicaraguan Sandinista leader traveled to Venezuela for a meeting with Chávez, the friendship between the two began to bear fruit. During the meeting at Miraflores, the presidential palace, Ortega remarked that Latin American unity was necessary to confront globalization. Ortega later alarmed Washington by remarking that if he won the election he would make sure that Nicaragua would join ALBA, Chávez's Bolivarian Alternative for The Americas. Chávez's trading plan, which is designed to sideline traditional corporate interests and Bush's Free Trade Agreement of The Americas (FTAA), is based on barter agreements between Latin American countries. Ortega later added that he opposed U.S.-backed trade deals such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement or CAFTA. "Central America's trading future lies not with the U.S. but with Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina," he said.

Such statements put Ortega at odds with the likes of U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick. "CAFTA is the opportunity of a lifetime," Zoellick remarked in an address given at the Heritage Foundation. "If we retreat into isolationism, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chávez and others like them, leftist autocrats will advance."

As per Peru, the Nicaraguan right sought to link its Sandinista opposition to Chávez in an effort to instill fear in voters. Presidential candidate Jose Rizo remarked that Chávez and Ortega were "a threat to regional and hemispheric stability," and claimed that the Venezuelan leader was financing Ortega's campaign [both Venezuela and Ortega denied the accusation]. "Ortega will become Chávez's lieutenant in Central America and the Caribbean in the same way that he represented the extinct and failed Soviet Bloc," Rizo added.

In the end however, Rizo's red-baiting was unsuccessful: the veteran Sandinista leader edged out his opponent by 10 points to win the election.

 

El Salvador: Chávez and His "Totalitarian" Projects

To listen to the Salvadoran right in advance of Sunday's presidential election, you'd think Mauricio Funes was leading El Salvador on the march towards Stalinist dictatorship. While campaigning near the Honduran border recently, his opponent Rodrigo Ávila claimed that the Funes campaign was being funded by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. "There's a saying that 'Whoever pays the mariachi decides what song is going to be played,'" Ávila remarked. "And that's going to happen with them," he added. "No matter what they say, what they do, their campaign is being financed by Venezuela."

Funes himself denies having any political links with the Chávez government and has said that Venezuela will not meddle in Salvadoran internal affairs if he wins the presidential election. Furthermore, the FMLN leader has distanced himself from some of the more enthusiastic pro-Chávez members of his party. Despite Funes's disavowals however, ARENA has continued to press on with its hysterical red baiting even though the rightist party has no proof that Funes has received financial support from Chávez.

Both Funes and Chávez, said outgoing President Antonio Saca, were trying to spread "totalitarian projects" and wanted to "stick their noses" in anti-democratic practices. It was "no secret" Saca added hyperbolically, that the FMLN received "its ideological nourishment from Havana" and its economic nourishment "from some other place." In yet another ridiculous and over the top aside, Saca declared "I am sure that there's some kind of working group in Venezuela which seeks to take over El Salvador."

 

Latin American Right: Running On Empty

From Bolivia to Peru to Mexico to Ecuador to Nicaragua and now El Salvador, a clear pattern has emerged. The Latin American right knows that while it was in power, inequality and poverty increased and people hardly benefited economically from the extraction of natural resources. This put rightist politicians in a bind, since campaigning on U.S. - style economic policies and free trade was never going to be popular amongst electorates throughout the wider region.

 

In this sense, the Latin American right is in a similar dilemma to the Republicans in 2008. Like discredited John McCain, who represented the past and did not have any progressive economic ideas, today's conservatives in Latin America are running on empty and hence their desperate moves to insert Chávez into the political equation. Sometimes, as in Peru and Mexico, the right's strategy has succeeded whereas in other countries the tactic has failed. Arguably, Chávez's inflammatory rhetoric may have backfired in certain cases and wound up hurting progressive candidates.

 

Ironically, despite the right's claims, Chávez is hardly promoting revolution. Like other Latin American populists, Chávez has pushed economic redistribution but only up to a certain point. What's more, Venezuela is probably not in the position right now to advance an ambitious geopolitical agenda due to the fall in world oil prices. That hasn't stopped the right however from going negative and to claim that left candidates are intimately associated with Venezuela. For Latin American conservatives, it's probably the only card they have left.

Facing a serious electoral debacle in advance of Sunday’s presidential election, and recognizing that it cannot win the election based on practical ideas, the right-wing ARENA (or Nationalist Republican Alliance) party has launched an ugly campaign to link leftist FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) candidate Mauricio Funes with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

There are many similarities between ARENA’s position and the Republican Party prior to the November, 2008 election. Like the GOP, ARENA has now been entrenched in power for a long time. To many Salvadorans, ARENA seems like a colossal dinosaur mired in the past. Founded by right wing death squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson, held to be one of the instigators of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980, ARENA is still fervently anti-Communist. ARENA, whose colors are red, white and blue, models itself on the U.S. Republican party but is even more explicitly nationalist. The hymn of the party touts El Salvador as the tomb where “the Reds will die.”

While such heated rhetoric may have appealed to some in the midst of the country’s bloody civil war between the right and left in the 1980s, ARENA now looks increasingly bereft. Salvadorans want practical solutions to the country’s intractable social problems and are hardly in the mood for more of the same anachronistic Cold War rhetoric.

Even if ARENA were to run a novel and innovative campaign however, the party would still face a huge uphill battle. ARENA has been in power now for twenty years. During this time the small Central American nation has descended into violent lawlessness with robbery and homicide rates flying off the charts. ARENA candidate Rodrigo Ávila, the country’s former head of national police, has pledged to combat violent crime. Only Funes however has said he would purge elements of the police force linked to organized crime.

Adding to Ávila’s worries, ARENA has mismanaged the economy. In recent years, the party has eagerly followed Washington’s dictates by privatizing social services and public utilities. The outgoing administration of Antonio Saca signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the United States, but the deal has not led to social harmony. The country is still plagued by extreme inequality while 37 per cent of Salvadorans live in poverty and can’t pay high food prices. This fuels the crime wave which has proven so worrying to poor Salvadorans.

Funes is hardly what one might call a fire breathing leftist. A former media commentator, he seeks to remake the FMLN into a pragmatic political party. At rallies, he doesn’t sing the party’s anthem or wear its traditional red colors, preferring to campaign in a crisp white guayabera shirt. It’s a symbolic move designed to contrast himself with many in the party who still wear fatigues and brandish pictures of Che Guevara and Soviet flags at campaign rallies.

Meanwhile he has bent over backwards to placate the U.S. and has met with State Department officials as well as members of Congress, reassuring them that he is no radical. In addition, Funes has declared that El Salvador should not scrap use of the dollar by returning to its previous currency, the colón. Funes says that “dollarization” and the adoption of the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2006 have had negative effects such as inflation and unfavorable competition for small-scale farmers but that it is too late to scrap these policies.

To listen to the Salvadoran right you’d think Funes was leading El Salvador on the march towards Stalinist dictatorship. While campaigning near the Honduran border recently, Ávila claimed that the Funes campaign was being funded by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. “There’s a saying that ‘Whoever pays the mariachi decides what song is going to be played,’” Ávila remarked. “And that’s going to happen with them,” he added. “No matter what they say, what they do, their campaign is being financed by Venezuela.”

Funes himself denies having any political links with the Chávez government and has said that Venezuela will not meddle in Salvadoran internal affairs if he wins the presidential election. Furthermore, the FMLN leader has distanced himself from some of the more enthusiastic pro-Chávez members of his party. Despite Funes’s disavowals however, ARENA has continued to press on with its hysterical red baiting even though the rightist party has no proof that Funes has received financial support from Chávez.

Both Funes and Chávez, said outgoing President Antonio Saca, were trying to spread “totalitarian projects” and wanted to “stick their noses” in anti-democratic practices. It was “no secret” Saca added hyperbolically, that the FMLN received “its ideological nourishment from Havana” and its economic nourishment “from some other place.” In yet another ridiculous and over the top aside, Saca declared “I am sure that there’s some kind of working group in Venezuela which seeks to take over El Salvador.”

As evidence of the supposed Chávez-FMLN conspiracy, ARENA points to Chávez’s Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (known by its Spanish acronym ALBA). The plan, initiated by Chávez several years ago, seeks to counteract corporately driven free trade schemes backed by Washington and to promote barter trade and solidarity amongst left wing Latin American countries. Chávez himself has been a rather bombastic critic of CAFTA, remarking that ARENA was “making deals with the devil, the devil himself.”

As a party, the FMLN has historically opposed CAFTA and U.S.-backed free trade while approving of Chávez’s barter schemes. El Salvador does not produce oil, and in 2006 FMLN mayors set up a joint venture energy company with Venezuela called ENEPASA. The initiative is designed to provide less expensive fuel to El Salvador’s drivers. The oil is sold by gas stations bearing a special non-corporate, “white flag” emblem.

When FMLN mayors signed the agreement in Caracas, Chávez suggested that money the Salvadoran municipalities saved on energy could be used to subsidize public transport and food prices. Under the terms of the agreement, cities pay 60 per cent of their fuel bill within 90 days. The rest may be paid in barter for agricultural and other locally made products or in cash over a 25-year period.

While it’s certainly true that Venezuela has increased its diplomatic and political visibility in El Salvador over the last few years, ARENA’s claims about Chávez’s insidious designs are uproarious. Since the inception of the ENEPASA deal, Venezuela has only sent modest amounts of diesel to El Salvador. Moreover, it’s not clear whether Venezuela can continue to sell discounted oil to the FMLN. In years past, Chávez has been able to increase his geopolitical standing throughout the region by providing cheap oil to poor and impoverished nations. But now, with world oil prices falling, Venezuela may be forced to curtail its ALBA program.

As an issue, Venezuela is a red herring in Sunday’s Salvadoran election. But that hasn’t stopped ARENA from launching a full frontal assault on Funes for having alleged political ties to another foreign power. It’s a sign of political desperation from a party bereft of any coherent ideas about how to solve El Salvador’s enduring social and economic problems.

A couple of days ago I finally got round to seeing Steven Soderberg's new film Che, about the life of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara. Set almost entirely in Cuba during the revolution against dictator Fulgencio Batista, the film chronicles Che's rise to prominence during the guerrilla warfare in the Sierra Maestra Mountains.

Unlike Soderbergh's slick "Ocean" films starring such celebrities as George Clooney, this movie is rather mannered and stripped down stylistically. Soderbergh clearly wanted to give the audience a sense of what it takes to be a successful revolutionary, and the kinds of physical and emotional sacrifices this entails. We get lots of scenes of grueling jungle marches and bloody skirmishes with government troops.

It makes for a rather brutal and unrelenting two and a half hours. A lay audience which is unfamiliar with this particular chapter of history might be turned off by the pacing and docu-drama feel of this movie. It's certainly a far cry from Motorcycle Diaries, an earlier film about Che Guevara which had an easier and more commercial feel about it. Unlike Motorcycle Diaries, which had a folkloric Latin American soundtrack, this movie does not have much music.

Benicio del Toro, who plays Che, depicts the Argentine revolutionary as a rather psychologically aloof and impenetrable character. From my own readings that rendering may be somewhat accurate, but it may not make the movie any more accessible to a general audience. On another note, I found Soderbergh's editing to be jarring: the director frequently cuts from color scenes of the Sierra Maestra mountains to black and white scenes of Che Guevara giving a speech to the United Nations after the conclusion of the Cuban Revolution.

Despite the problems, I still found Che riveting. To his credit, Soderbergh gives the audience a sense of Che's own political evolution in the field. Towards the beginning, Che is unsure of himself as a military commander and defers to other Cuban rebel leaders who consider him a foreign interloper in their land. Over time however Fidel gives Che more authority. The Argentine gains confidence and becomes more and more ruthless towards his subordinates. In one scene he oversees the execution of a disobedient guerrilla fighter who has raped a local campesina woman. Del Toro plays the scene cold and methodical.

The climactic final half hour of the movie chronicles Che's military descent from the Sierra Maestra mountains and into the lowland plains. There is an extraordinary scene in which Che's troops derail a train full of Batista's troops. In the city of Santa Clara, Che confronts a local police commander. In a dispassionate tone of voice, our protagonist tells his opponent that he must surrender or the rebels will launch a costly and bloody assault.

Soderbergh's Che may not be blockbuster Hollywood fare, but the director's depiction of this iconic political figure has a sense of historical accuracy about it. That is my impression at least after reading My Life With Che (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008) a memoir written by Hilda Gadea, the Argentine revolutionary's first wife. Here's what I had to say about the book when Palgrave asked me to write a blurb:

"Gadea's life story is not as well known as her husband's, but in many ways it was even more extraordinary than that of the famous revolutionary. A political refugee from Peru, she was exiled not once but twice -- first to Guatemala and later to Mexico. Frequently harassed and jailed by the police for her political beliefs, Gadea’s stoic resolve in the face of great odds was remarkable. My Life With Che is a revealing, compelling insider look at the life of Che Guevara, at the corrupt and compliant right wing authorities who did Washington's bidding in South America, and at a daring group of Latin American revolutionaries who dedicated their lives to the furtherance of a higher cause."

If Gadea's depiction of Che is to be believed, the Argentine revolutionary was stoical. My Life With Che is set in Guatemala and Mexico during the mid-1950s and discusses Che's interactions with Fidel and the other Cuban revolutionaries as they plotted the overthrow of the Batista regime. Che, who is determined not to commit the same mistakes of the Guatemalan left which failed to head off a U.S.-backed coup in 1954, emerges as a somewhat ruthless character who will sacrifice anything for his ideals.

In Soderbergh's movie, there is one scene in which Fidel and Che quietly talk on the balcony of a Mexico City apartment building. Fidel turns to Che and asks, "are you coming to Cuba?" Guevara responds, "Yes, as long as you give me permission to launch revolution throughout Latin America if we win in Cuba." Non-plussed, Fidel tells his new comrade that he is a little touched in the head.

I don't know if Soderbergh's scene is made up or embellished, but in light of later history and the depiction of Che in Hilda Gadea's memoir, the conversation doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility.