The timely Honduran conflict has succeeded plucking the first ALBA bird and has opened the eyes to the long overlooked the political tensions and posturing between Washington and Caracas, and put aside President Obama’s naïve and premature promises of moderation and open handedness toward Latin America, promised at the onset of his mandate.
It's interesting to note that the ideological rivalry between Colombia and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, was dramatized when Colombia ceded to the U.S. the use of seven military bases on its territory. A fuming and boisterous Hugo Chavez complained that, “The yanquis, were the most aggressive nation in the history of mankind.” The North American giant has awakened from the Obama stupor, and the realignment of forces and the balance of power is now clearly shifting in Latin America, and the socialists are up in arms to the relief of the democratic loving people of the continent.
It is of little importance that Colombia and Venezuela are neighboring countries and members of Unasur, the Andean Community (CAN), the Rio Group and the Organization of American States (OAS). The democratic government in its confrontation with Hugo Chavez’s socialist Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), is once again on the principle pages of major regional newspapers and being targeted by Hugo Chavez and his principle acolytes: Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa and the Bolivian Evo Morales.
In Central America the situation continues conflictive, with Manuel Zelaya de deposed Honduran president and Daniel Ortega the fraudently elected president of Nicaragua, trying to push forward the Hugo Chavez threat to destabilize the interim Ricardo Marcheletti government in Honduras. Costa Rica and Panama favor the continued negotiations and Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli has promised to struggle against the intervention and expansionism of Hugo Chavez in the region. Meanwhile, the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador have said they are more intent on their own internal issues and do not plan to become embroiled in the regional dichotomy, but instead they will follow the moderate pragmatism of Lula de Silva of Brazil and Michelle Bachelet in Chile.
The Latin American region is clearly divided and does not speak with one unified voiced. We can classify the Latin American governments into three groups: governments who favor progress and dynamic commercial interaction, while maintaining political stability; those who make use of democratic values to reach power and then turn 180 degrees and attack those values from within, reforming the constitutional guarantees government freedom of speech, private property, Etc. and the opening the usual barrage of critical and banal leftist attacks against the U.S.: then there are those in the bipolar game the try to maintain equal distances between Washington and Venezuela. This is a grey area that is used by big and small countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile or El Salvador.
During the Bush administration years, U.S. efforts were mostly focused on Middle Eastern oil and on chasing Osama bin Laden around the block, Latin America was for the most part neglected and all but forgotten. It was during this period that opportunistic leaders, such as Hugo Chavez, his pockets bulging with oil wealth, stepped into the void handed him by the lack of U.S. presence, allowing the creation of his Boliviarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) socialist alliance to challenge U.S. ideological supremacy in the region and intervene in the internal affairs of neighboring countries.
President Obama’s hands off approach only further encouraged Chavez that the U.S. was not in the mood to stop him, and was willing to turn over to the Chavez ALBA group the entire South American continent. During this time Russia, the EU, and China saw the opportunity and since have made important commercial and economic inroads into the area.
It was at this time that the U.S. Foreign Affairs Committee saw the danger in Obama’s weak and undefined foreign policy toward Latin America and the threat of more narco terrorists states in the region, luckily pulled in Obama’s reins and the U.S. has now responded by initially collaborating with Colombia in their efforts of drug interdiction by establishing military bases in that country.
The outcries and bellowing reactions of the socialist ALBA countries is on key and as expected, many of them already running for cover.
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