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Flush Chavez hopes to bolster anti-US coalition in Latin America
By Victor Flores
AFP
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com 01 10 07In the course of a week, Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez will be sworn in for a new term, followed by leftist allies Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael Correa in Ecuador whom he hopes will form an anti-US axis of the left.
Flush with petrodollars that allow him to court allies with attractive cooperation deals, the leftist-populist Chavez is convinced he can lock in Managua and Quito as new members of the alliance he already has formed with Cuba, the Americas' only communist-ruled country, and Bolivia.
"On January 15, (Ecuador's) Rafael Correa takes power, a socialist who has declared himself Bolivarian (sympathetic to Chavez's government); I have spoken with him and we have many common interests particularly on oil," Chavez said recently.
Chavez also sees the return of Ortega and his Sandinista Front -- after almost 17 years in opposition -- as "a great development." While Chavez views the former Marxist as an ally, Ortega has taken a more conciliatory tone with the United States, the IMF and foreign investors.
The Venezuelan president, a former paratrooper who has clashed with his country's former political class, was reelected December 3 for a 2007-2013 term. He has called for expanding Venezuelan-style socialism, citing Marxist-Leninist principles and Christian ideas as inspirations.
Chavez has touted to allies a bevy of massive development and cooperation projects: a Bank of the South, Gas Pipeline of the South, Petrosur and Petrocaribe, the regional TV network Telesur and social programs he deems worthy of emulation, in literacy, housing, and health care.
And Chavez no doubt would like to see allies follow his lead on tough talk on the economic front, though the reality is often a long way from the posturing.
Chavez for example often threatens to cut off oil supplies to the United States but never has actually done it.
In the coming years, "I imagine (US-Venezuelan) relations will still be strained on the political front, yet trade and sale of the petroleum will continue, as before," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.
Indeed, many analysts are quick to point out that Ecuador and Nicaragua are likely to welcome Venezuelan cooperation, but cannot afford to run roughshod over their economic ties with the United States.
"More (Venezuelan) economic cooperation (with Managua and Quito) does not mean a radical shift in their ties to the US," said Peter DeShazo, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Ortega and Correa "are going to take their economic and other relationships with the US very much into consideration," he said.
But Chavez's confrontational style with the United States, and his political and economic changes in the name of socialism, look likely to intensify.
Chavez said Monday he would ask the legislature to approve the "mother of all revolutionary laws" giving him the power to nationalize the power and telephone sectors.
The proposed legislation would also allow Chavez to end foreign control of refineries of heavy crude from the Orinoco region in the east, he said.
"In the Orinoco region ... international companies control and dominate the refining processes of heavy crude," Chavez said at the swearing in of the cabinet for his new government's six-year term.
"That has to be passed on to Venezuela," he added without giving further details of the reform he intends for Venezela's chief revenue-making sector.
Venezuela, which produces mostly heavy crude, relies on foreign companies, mainly from the United States, to refine much of its oil.
Chavez also announced a "deep reform" of the constitution in order to create the "Socialist Republic of Venezuela" to replace the current official name, The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, established in the 1999 constitution.
AFP 09 1642 GMT 01 07
Copyright© 2001 AFP.All Rights Reserved.
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