Word: bolivarian
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...carry the same swagger into this weekend's Americas summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad? At first glance, his decade-old Bolivarian Revolution (named for South America's 19th century independence hero, Simón Bolívar) seems as potent as it was four years ago. Chávez, still Venezuela's most popular political figure, just won a referendum that will let him run for re-election as long as he wants. His small but radical leftist bloc of Latin American nations (including Bolivia and Nicaragua) has helped blunt U.S. hegemony and ushered non-hemispheric allies like Russia...
...make the same five-decade-long mistake his nine predecessors made with Castro and needlessly alienate the hemisphere by trying to isolate Chávez. Says Bernardo Alvarez, Chávez's former ambassador to the U.S. and now head of the development bank for Chávez's Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA): "Chávez has changed the hemisphere, and the U.S. has had to change with it. Obama will have to change...
...like Castro, looks set to remain in power for a long time. But unlike Castro, he's likely to do so on the basis of a democratic mandate, as his decisive win in Sunday's referendum suggested. Many poor Venezuelans see his Bolivarian revolution, despite its polarizing effects on the country, as a safeguard against the looming economic pain of falling oil prices. Analysts like John Walsh, a senior associate at the independent Washington Office on Latin America, may worry that indefinite re-election would allow Chávez to accumulate excessive power, but Walsh credits Chávez with...
...these undergraduates were pouring out of campuses to oppose the new standard bearer of the Latin left. And they weren't all children of right-wing oligarchs. Many were leftists themselves, with first names like Stalin. Their beef, they said, wasn't so much with Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution, which many of them acknowledged had finally enfranchised the poor in a country that has the hemisphere's largest oil reserves but one of its most shamefully inegalitarian societies. Rather, they were part of the first Latin American generation raised on a democratic political diet, and they feared, fairly...
That wasn't quite the result Chávez got. The PSUV did win 17 of 22 state governorships, the lion's share of mayoral posts and 53% of the total vote, proving that Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolution are still the nation's most potent political force. But el comandante's celebration was blunted by the fact that the opposition won governor seats in three of the most populous states, including Zulia, the nation's oil powerhouse, and Carabobo, an important automobile producer. (Earlier last month, Chávez had threatened to send in tanks...