january 19, 2006

Big Trouble South of the Border

Watch for Latin America to become one of America’s top foreign policy problems later this year.

On July 2nd, Mexico could elect as president an anti-American, pro-Castro leftist named Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The popular former mayor of Mexico City still leads in the polls, although his lead has shrunk.

Add to that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the biggest single problem facing the U.S. in this hemisphere. He views Fidel Castro as a father figure and pilfers cash from his state oil monopoly PDVSA (the owners of Citgo) to fund his role as sugar daddy for revolutionaries and leftists throughout Central and South America. Mexico’s possible next President, Lopez Obrador, could conceivably try to take Mexico into the Chavez-Castro axis.

That would put two of America’s top four oil suppliers, Mexico and Venezuela, in an active alliance with Cuba.

Argentina's Nestor Kirchner has recently buddied up with Chavez. Bolivia’s run by a Chavez payee named Evo Morales, a former coca farmer who once described himself as Washington's "nightmare." And some say that Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas, once the political equivalent of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, could once again control Nicaragua, thanks in large part to money from Chavez.

After 9/11 the White House turned its attention away from Latin America almost completely. The rise of Chavez has changed that, but it won’t be enough to stop a rising wave of anti-Americanism in the region that has tremendous momentum and continues to build.