Word: chavez
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...Even if Chavez were to turn Caracas into Havana, there is little Washington could do. The U.S. depends on Venezuela as its fourth largest foreign-crude supplier, which all but precludes swinging the trade embargo stick Washington has used against Castro for 45 years. Political isolation is a weak bet, too. In a region with the world's widest gap between rich and poor, Chavez's gospel of Latin American self-determination has spawned a resurgent left and unusually coordinated anti-Yanqui sentiment, evidenced by the region's rejection of President Bush's hemispheric free-trade proposal. Warns Luis Vicente...
...Instead, the Bush Administration may finally realize that it's smarter to beat Chavez at his own game. That means rather than building multibillion-dollar fences against Mexican migrants, forcing the drug war on Bolivian coca farmers or hard-selling free-trade pacts to Nicaraguan street vendors who aren't likely to see their benefits, the U.S. is sending signals that it's ready to embrace the kind of policies that matter to Latin voters. Bush himself made a surprise phone call this month to Washington's bitter cold war enemy, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, to congratulate him on winning...
...folks in the Yucatan and the Andes thought Washington was really engaging those needs, it might well give Chavez and his ilk less of an excuse to move further left. It might also help Latin America find its own third way between radical socialism and reactionary capitalism, extremes that pulled the region like a torture rack for most of the 20th century...
...recent TIME interview, Chavez insisted, "I no longer think a third way is possible. Only socialism." Yet the fruits of materialism are alive and well in Venezuela: thanks to booming demand fueled by high oil prices, sales of BMWs jumped some 30% there last year. And Chavez will need foreign investors when oil prices drop far enough to make socialist dreams like state-run phone companies not viable...
...Until then, says Leon, the U.S. should avoid the kind of diplomatic warfare that is Chavez's political oxygen. It made a start this month by finally indicting (at least on immigration charges) Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro Cuban exile accused by Cuba and Venezuela in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner as it left Venezuela. Chavez has pointed to the U.S.'s failure to prosecute Posada as evidence of Washington's double standard on terrorism. That charge could ebb if Bush puts Posada away - just as Chavez's anti-U.S. harangues have slowed ("Go to hell...