MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chávez: more bark than bite

By Guillermo Hánskel



Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is spearheading a Socialist revolution throughout Latin America with a wallet full of petrodollars, but his real influence has been overestimated, with key economies Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and others unimpressed by his fiery anti-US preaching.

After winning reelection by a landslide early this month, the former coup-monger army colonel embarked in a tour which culminated on Saturday 9th in a South American summit in Bolivia. But regional integration is facing so many stumbling blocks that at the closing of the gathering he complained: "We need a political Viagra." Electoral roller coasterChávez's strategy of seeking to influence virtually every election in Latin America has been more for the media than effective and, in fact, in some cases even seems to have backfired. "His 'achievements' on the electoral arena have been overestimated, and he has suffered resounding 'defeats' that have been underestimated," Juan Tokatlian, an international politics professor at Argentina's San Andrés University told MercoPress. Chávez publicly backed left-leaning Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was defeated by conservative Felipe Calderón, and many observers say that his support for Peruvian candidate Ollanta Humala only contributed to Humala's defeat by President Alan García (Now Chávez is seeking to mend fences with García). Also, the Venezuelan president has never been able to wield his influence on Colombia. Some observers said that neither Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva nor his Argentine peer Néstor Kirchner were very happy with Chávez's public support for them. Lula recently won reelection and Argentina is holding presidential elections next year although Kirchner has not said yet whether he will run for office again. However, Chávez predicted that Kirchner will be reelected. "Chávez's influence of the media can act as a boomerang because his statements are used by rival candidates to mark a distance from him," Tokatlian said. Influence on Bolivia. But Chávez has indeed managed to extend Venezuela's influence â€" which had been traditionally limited to some Central American and Caribbean countries on the back of soft energy contracts â€" to Bolivia, where Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president, is facing fierce opposition. Chávez and Morales in May signed a cooperation accord which envisages the construction of Bolivian military bases on the nation's borders, something that has raised concern in countries such as Chile, Peru and Paraguay. The accord included a clause whereby Venezuelan forces could intervene in Bolivia to help ensure "democratic stability." Venezuela this year was admitted to the Mercosur trade bloc and one of Chávez's first proposals was the creation of a regional military force. But the suggestion was flatly rejected by Argentina, which at the time held the rotating presidency of the bloc. "There are some left-leaning anti-military sectors in Latin America that seem to forget than far from being democratic, Chávez's model can only be explained on the basis of its military structure," said Carlos Pérez Llana, a former Argentine ambassador to Paris. Chávez suffered another blow when Venezuela recently failed to gain a seat in the United Nations's Security Council. Mammoth oil revenue Venezuela is the only Latin American nation that is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and with the current high international oil prices, Chávez has lots of money to seek support for the expansion of his political model. Venezuela also has gas reserves four times larger than those of gas-rich Bolivia. Chávez's flagship project to foster integration â€" and hence political influence â€" is an about 8,000-kilometre-long 23-billion-dollar pipeline to take gas from Venezuelan oilfields to Brazil and Argentina. But many experts describe the project as unfeasible from the economic point of view and predict that it would never leave the drawing board. "Chávez has been trying to sell the pipeline idea in Brazil but I think that Lula, despite playing the game, will never make Brazil dependent on Chávez's gas," Pérez Llana said. "Chávez influence on Brazil is nil." However, Tokatlian said that Venezuela's greater role in South America was possible thanks to a political vacuum left by Lula during his first mandate. "The Brazilian president will have to look more to the region in his second term," he said. Former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, asked recently by reporters about Chávez's political leading role, bluntly replied: "Ask Lula." There are some social groups from Mexico to Brazil and Argentina who â€" in the face of the decline of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, feel identified with Chávez's philosophy, although that support has no electoral weight. Kirchner-Chávez links Regarding the relationship between Kirchner and Chávez, Tokatlian said that "it should continue as it has been so far, much more pragmatic than ideological. So far, the relationship has been favourable to Argentina without any conditionings for the Kirchner administration." Amid Chávez efforts, Venezuela has bought hundreds of millions of dollars in Argentine bonds, Caracas ordered at least four oil tankers to be built in Argentine shipyards at a cost of at least 200 million dollars and last week offered to lend 80 million dollars to the dairy group SanCor so that Argentina can retain control of the troubled company. But Toklatian pointed out that also Argentine interests in Venezuela are large, with Argentine companies having invested more than four billion dollars in Venezuela. Early this month Chávez was forced to sack his ambassador to Buenos Aires Roger Capella after complaints from the Kirchner administration. The reasons for the removal were not disclosed, but Capella had voiced support for Iran amid a diplomatic dispute between Argentina and Iran. An Argentine court last month issued arrest warrants for nine Iranian former officials â€" including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani â€" on charges that they participated in a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people in Buenos Aires. The experts were at odds over whether Capella had a green light from Chávez to support Iran, a close ally of Venezuela. A diplomatic source said that Capella could have never expressed support for Iran without Chávez's consent. "That is simply unthinkable." Tokatlian said that it was usual for Chávez to fire ambassadors, as has happened also in the cases of Chile and Colombia. "Venezuelan envoys are more political cadres than diplomats. They are not very familiar with protocol." And writing about protocol, a diplomatic source said that a reflection of some ot the influence of Chávez on Argentina was his personally "picking" Alicia Castro as ambassador to Caracas who, the source added, signs documents simply as 'Alicia'. Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Guevara, when heading Cuba's National Bank, used to sign documents with his nickname 'Che'.