Haiti blowback

After Haiti, Venezuela is wary of US interference
The US response in Haiti has divided Latin Americans over US policy - especially in politically torn Venezuela.
By Mike Ceaser | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

CARACAS, VENEZUELA - Whether Washington is a hero or hangman of democracy in Latin America may be a matter of political perspective.

Haitians watched last week as US agents whisked leftist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide off to the heart of Africa in what Mr. Aristide describes as a kidnapping. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, another leftist who has antagonized Washington, has harshly accused the White House of backing coup-plotters against him. Critical of US action in Haiti, he warned the US on Friday to "get its hands off Venezuela."

The Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, an organization of mostly English-speaking nations, is calling for Aristide's departure to be investigated. More than a dozen Caribbean nations have refused to join any peacekeeping force there.

Washington has reformed from the days when it supported vicious Latin American dictatorships, but it has not embraced democracy unreservedly, says Robert Fatton, a Haitian-American professor of politics at the University of Virginia.

"There have been changes in support for democracy, but they have to be democracies that the US likes," he says.

Haitians and Venezuelans alike are divided over US actions. What Chávez and Aristide loyalists may consider American intrusion and coup-mongering is simply support for democracy in the eyes of many of their opponents, who have accused both presidents of ruling authoritatively and violating human rights.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on March 8, 2004 - 1:10pm :: News
 
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Chavez got into to office by becoming famous for trying to overhrow a democratic government in order to set up a leftist military junta.

He sells most of Venezuela's oil production to American oil companies but runs around the world hugging anti-American dictators in a desperate attempt to provoke the U.S. government, thereby raising his own political profile. Bush should continue to ignore Chavez until the Venezuelans get tired of his antics and vote him out of office.

Chavez is a thug but he's also a known goof and won't last without a great yanqui threat to point at.

Posted by  mark safranski (not verified) on March 8, 2004 - 11:46pm.

Pardon me, but Venezuela's turn at the chair of OPEC occurred in '99 the year Chavez first assumed the presidency. If you will recall, the price of oil that year was very low; $12/brl. By Nov. 2000 it hit $34.40/brl (West TX Intermediate; all data from FRED II site at St Louis Fed).

It was an unintended consequence, no doubt, that the near-tripling of oil prices (the highest level since 1990) led to the slump, but that's a shortcoming of cartels generally, not Chavez. Chavez's object was to rebuild OPEC diplomatically, which he accomplished quite successfully. Traditionally most 3rd world leaders have a resentment of the USA because they're always spoken down to by American diplomats. But OPEC members tend to show it because of the rents from oil--cultivation of US markets is not a preoccuation.

Chavez's method involved effusiveness and erroneous notions about the brand-new euro as a successor to the USD (this is something which cannot happen).

Posted by  James R MacLean (not verified) on March 9, 2004 - 3:15am.