That’s why Latin America’s fledgling Bolivarian movement should be taken seriously. Chavez sees himself as the logical successor to Simon Bolivar–the 19th-century Venezuelan independence hero who tried to unite South America under a single government–and the launch of a movement bearing the Liberator’s name dovetails with Chavez’s ambition of becoming the 21st-century benefactor of the Latin left. The 49-year-old Chavez has plenty of cash with which to play that role: as president of Venezuela he controls the largest oil reserves this side of the Middle East. “Chavez is launching a mass-based struggle,” says Alberto Garrido, author of several books about the Venezuelan leader. “The most radical movements, the street organizations, now belong to the Bolivarian movement.”
The United States is certainly aware of Chavez’s challenge. In the waning months of the Clinton administration, a senior State Department official publicly accused Chavez of funding the MAS as well as the political party of Lucio Gutierrez, the former Ecuadoran Army colonel who staged a coup against then President Jamil Mahuad in February 2000 and was himself elected president last year. Chavez indignantly denied those charges at the time, but he has allowed Colombian leftist guerrillas to take refuge in Venezuelan territory in the past.
It would be stretching matters to say that Chavez is poised to inherit the mantle of Fidel Castro, who spent much of the 1960s and 1970s fomenting unrest in places like Bolivia, Colombia and, for that matter, Venezuela. But Chavez continues to play the anti-American card with relish. Last week he threatened to withdraw from the ongoing FTAA talks, which he dismissed as a “gigantic” waste of time. In addition, Chavez is putting the finishing touches on a regional energy initiative, called PetroSur, which would integrate all of South America’s energy resources in a massive, transnational operation largely free of U.S. corporations.
None of this will count for much if Chavez loses his own grip on power. He narrowly survived a coup last year, and opposition forces last week gathered signatures again for a petition demanding a recall referendum next year. If successful, the campaign would put an early end to his term of office, which is scheduled to conclude in 2007. Opposition leaders hope to collect the 2.4 million signatures needed to force a California-style referendum. But Chavez thwarted a previous attempt to oust him via a national vote, and his standing in the polls has recovered somewhat in recent months. Political analysts in Venezuela say it’s much too early to draft his political obituary. Meantime, the Bush administration and its allies in Latin America might want to start paying closer attention to the ambitions of Venezuela’s would-be Bolivar.
