Venezuela has resuscitated a project that was initiated several hundred years ago by Simon Bolivar, who envisaged a united Latin America after the war of independence with Spain.

Venezuela with a government that ploughs the economic advantages of being resource rich back into social programs rather than seeing it all go off-shore as had occurred with previous governments.

It is also ‘sharing’ this bounty with other Latin American countries by setting up a financial system that is freeing them from the historical hegemony of the US, the IMF and the World Bank. It bought Argentina’s foreign debt, a few years ago, is setting up trade and development networks with other Latin American countries, and established the ‘Banco del Sur’ (Bank of the South), that enables Latin America to break its former dependence on the IMF and the World Bank. This project is called ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America).

The election of a series of ‘left wing’ governments in Latin America is no coincidence. It is a demonstration of the way Latin American would really like to go once free of the economic blackmail and pressures applied in the past. It is a direct result of ALBA. (Which is virtually ignored by the anglophile ‘western’ media).

Now, to get back to the ‘little backwater’ of Honduras. The coup in Honduras came directly on the heels of the inauguration of FMLN supported President Mauricio Funes in neigbouring El Salvador. El Salvador was seen as the last bastion of the neo fascist right in Central America (and indeed, most of Latin America). El Salvador, while not breaking away from CAFTA (the US brokered Central American Free Trade Agreement), is about to become part of the ALBA bloc. Nicaragua is already reaping benefits, and Zelaya, the deposed President of Honduras made a surprise move toward ALBA and support for, and from Venezuela over a year ago. (Zelaya was originally supported as the candidate for the Conservative Party, but once elected made a surprise swing to the left).

Starting to get the picture? The right in El Salvador ran their campaign on a ‘fear and smear’ TV blitz, warning that a vote for the FMLN candidate would deliver El Salvador into the hands of the ‘dictator’ Hugo Chavez. The US is losing its tight grasp on Latin America.

The coup in Honduras is probably meant, among other things, as a warning to Funes not to get too close to Hugo Chavez. A friend who spoke with some US diplomatic personnel said that many of them refer to Nicaragua as ‘having been lost’.

Now as for Obama - he is very courteous and polite, and is probably trying to assess just how much damage the Bush administration has done to US/Latin American relations, before he makes any decisive moves. However he is being carefufl not to step on the toes of the right either, and he is not going to abandon US interests in Latin America lightly. Hence, the fact that he has reopened diplomatic relations with Venezuela might look as though he wants to ‘restore relations with the latin american left’ (whatever that might mean), but from the Venezuelan point of view, appointing an ambassador who was runnning the mission in Chile at the time of the Pinochet coup is not promising, and might even be viewed as provocative. There have been several appointments like this that indicate that Obama is not exactly doing a U turn, in terms of US policy in Latin America. And of course there are still a majority of Bush appointees in place (like the current ambassador to Honduras) and ideologues in the State Department. He is not likely to carry out a purge, and the recent ambassadorial appointees indicate that he is not likely to do so.

Let’s not forget that the Bay of Pigs invasion took place under the Kennedy administration, and he is regarded as one of the US’ more ‘benign’ Presidents, too.

Warwick

It was the US/Britain/ Australia and others that supported the bloodbath in Indonesia, that could have resulted in the killing of 3 million people in the 60’s, and remained silent while over 180,000 were murdered in East Timor in latter years. Where were the cries of anguish by the right then, or again now? I’m yet to be convinced, that the military in Honduras haven’t at least had their actions sanctioned (quietly) by the US. The US has form for just this type of behaviour, and a list of presidents at best ALLOWED it to happen. We learnt in later years, that they did much more than that. I’ve also been reading about CIA money and Iranian demonstrators? Why wouldn’t that surprise me either?