Americas Summit: Will Chavez Steal the Show Again?

Tim Padgett Thursday, Apr. 16, 2009

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez U.S. President Barack Obama
l. to r.: Chip Somodevilla / Getty; Hassan Ammar / AP
Hugo Chavez owned the last Summit of the Americas in 2005. Thanks to rising oil prices, the Venezuelan President, who controls the hemisphere's largest crude reserves, suddenly had the petro-wherewithal to spread his gospel of a more socialist Latin America free of Washington's imperialist interference. At that summit in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Chavez led large and raucous demonstrations against President George W. Bush and U.S. plans for a hemispheric free-trade pact, which effectively died at that gathering.
 

Can Chavez carry the same swagger into the next Americas summit this weekend in Port of Spain, Trinidad? At first glance, his decade-old Bolivarian Revolution (named for South America's 19th-century independence hero, Simon Bolivar) seems as potent as it was four years ago. Chavez, still Venezuela's most popular political figure, just won a referendum that lets him run for re-election as long as he wants. His small but radical leftist bloc of Latin American nations (including Bolivia and Nicaragua) has helped blunt U.S. hegemony and ushered non-hemispheric allies like Russia, China and Iran into America's backyard. His backers insist the Wall Street implosion has vindicated Chavez's rejection of free-market capitalism as the solution for Latin America. And his critics, who call him a neo-Fidel Castro, still have to acknowledge that he's been thrice democratically elected.(Is Chavez one of the most influential people in the world? Vote for the TIME 100.)

Yet in contrast to Mar del Plata, Chavez isn't expected to hold the regional reins in Port of Spain or breathe the same anti-U.S. fire. More moderate leftists like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are regarded as Latin America's standard bearers today. Even if the global economic crisis has borne out Chavez's condemnation of capitalism, it has also sent oil prices plummeting - and his populist largesse along with them. At the same time, even some supporters worry that as Chavez accumulates more power at home, he's jeopardizing his democratic cachet. This month he prodded Venezuela's Chavista-dominated National Assembly to pass a law that virtually eliminates the elected office of Mayor of Caracas, the capital - which was recently won by an opposition candidate - and replaces it with an administrator appointed by Chavez. (See behind-the-scenes pictures from President Obama's visit to Europe.)

But perhaps the key difference for Chavez at this summit is that he doesn't have George W. Bush to kick around anymore. Barack Obama, in fact, is the anti-Bush, a liberal welcomed by most of Latin America and far harder for Chavez to attack as a yanqui imperialista. "I think Chavez may be trapped at the Trinidad summit," says Nikolas Kozloff, who endorses Chavez's social policies and is the author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. "Populism thrives on conflict, but now with Obama in power, that's more difficult to achieve." After Washington and Caracas expelled each other's ambassadors last year, Kozloff adds, "Chavez faces a difficult choice: either proceed with his rhetorical strategy against the U.S. and risk alienating those in Latin America who want to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, or come to a diplomatic understanding with the White House."

Chavez appears to be groping for the right approach to Obama, oscillating in recent weeks between acerbic criticism and conciliatory praise. When Obama said that Chavez aids Colombia's Marxist guerrilla violence (which Chavez in fact has renounced), Chavez shot back that Obama had "the same stench" as Bush. But when the U.S. Coast Guard last week called Venezuelan authorities for permission to board a Venezuelan boat involved in a cocaine bust, Chavez called it "a positive signal that never would have happened" under Bush.

Not that Obama can dismiss Chavez in Trinidad. Chavez may end up being around as long as Fidel Castro was; and like Castro, he is still well regarded in Latin America for enfranchising the poor and for his willingness to stand up to Washington. No one is asking Obama to embrace Chavez and his strident anti-Americanism; but it would behoove him not to make the same, five-decade-long mistake his nine predecessors made with Castro and needlessly alienate the hemisphere by trying to isolate Chavez. Says Bernardo Alvarez, Chavez's former ambassador to the U.S. and now head of the development bank for Chavez's Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), "Chavez has changed the hemisphere, and the U.S. has had to change with it. Obama will have to change, too."

Chavez, however, will need to make changes as well. In years past, say his critics, he could get away with some of his more authoritarian impulses because Bush was getting away with so many of his own. But Bush's exit may throw a brighter international spotlight on measures like the new Caracas government law - which to many observers makes Chavez look as if he's nullifying a democratic election to spite his opponents. In recent weeks he's also moved to wrest control of ports and other infrastructure from opposition governors and mayors, declaring corruption charges against some of them while seemingly ignoring complaints about official venality among Chavistas.

Caracas' opposition mayor, Antonio Ledezma, who is a holdover from the discredited Venezuelan elite Chavez overthrew a decade ago - but who won the capital last December because of voter anger over rampant violent crime and deficient city services - calls the new law "an atrocity" and "the final blow against decentralization." Chavistas like National Assembly Deputy Carlos Escarra say that's a "grand falsehood" and insist the law was a constitutionally legitimate move "to strengthen the federal district's administration."

Those same Chavistas add that the U.S. has scant right to criticize Venezuela's policy on its national capital when residents of Washington, D.C., still aren't allowed representation in Congress. But it's the sort of two-wrongs-make-a-right rebuttal that won't fly as well in the post-Bush era, says Larry Birns, head of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, a think tank that has often been sympathetic to Chavez. Birns feels Chavez needs more than ever now to guard against his "self-destructive tendencies and not risk his democratic credibility" if he wants to stay relevant. "One of the things at stake in Trinidad," says Birns, "is whether Chavez remains a hemispheric factor to be reckoned with." He most likely will. He just won't own the stage the way he did in 2005.

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