One would be hard pressed to find anyone who misses the presidency of George W. Bush more than the Venezuelan chafarrote, Hugo Chavez. While George W. Bush was president and remained fixated on the Middle East, Washington all but ignored Latin America during that last decade. Our neglect permitted the opportunistic leftist blustering eight hundred pound gorilla, Hugo Chavez, to bolster his standings at home and throughout the region by flashing his new oil wealth and mocking Bush, whom he described as producing sulfurous emissions like the devil himself, and by warning of the threat from “the empire,” which has become Chavez’s usual term for these United States of America.
Bolivarianism, the socialist ideology and methods honed by Hugo Chavez during the Bush years, began making inroads and spreading like a malignant tumor into other parts of Latin America. In great part, Chavez's success was in great part due to the oil dollars that Chavez doled out to his supporting factions in this or that country's electoral process. The Venezuelan chafarrote seizing his moment in the sun, then proceeded to consolidate his power by modifing the Venezuelan Constitution to permit him the presidency indefinitely. This same Chavista, Bolivarian model for usurping power from the people, by first using and then trampling their democratic values has become the modus operandi of Hugo Chavez’s Alba acolytes such as Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and later, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras.
The Honduran people, by ousting the pro Chavez socialist, Manuel Zelaya, have in fact have succeeded in creating a precedent that the ALBA socialists can not let stand. The Honduran crisis has served as a dire prediction and warning to these would be leftist dictators, that they and their benefactor, Hugo Chavez, can be plucked clean, one feather at a time, and the people themselves can regain their usurped freedoms and their democratic ideals toward peace and prosperity.
Recently, and since the decline of the oil prices that had propped-up dictators like Chavez, we have seen how the Honduran people have risen in unison against the false promises of the ALBA alliance, and throughout Latin America leaders who emulate Chavez and have received strong financial support from Venezuela, are beginning to run into strong resistance from within and are showing lower and lower approval ratings from the people.
Before the removal of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power, less than one-third of the population approved of his rule, and this discontent threatened to bubble over -- as it ultimately did -- as he tried to take a page from Chavez’s book to extend his own term of office. At the same time we witness that In Argentina, the Chavez-aligned Kirchner administration has also suffered a devastating defeat in the midterm elections on June 28th.
In Nicaragua, former guerrilla leader, current president and Chavez acolyte Daniel Ortega, also faces strong opposition, along with scandals over electoral fraud and the heinous sexual abuse charge by his his own daughter-in-law. In the Bolivarian mold, Ortega is also plotting the perpetuation of his rule, perhaps by changing Nicaragua from a presidential to parliamentary system so he can become prime minister.
Chavez and his leftist Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas is being rejected by people like the Hondurans themselves, who have demonstrated that Chavez and his lackeys can be plucked clean, one feather at a time, and until our entire American continent will be free to live and prosper in the democratic freedom and happiness we all aspire and dream of.
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