U.S.-Latin America

Last January, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a weeklong tour of Latin America, visiting Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and finally Ecuador. In the U.S. media, where there are no two greater villains than Ahmadinejad and Chávez, it was not hard to predict that the coverage of the first stop on the tour would result in an onslaught of negative headlines filled with hysterics at what such a meeting could mean for U.S. national security.

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President Obama's crass comments about newly-elected Chavez only serve to further alienate himself from Latin America, argues Weisbrot.

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In spite of surprises in the lead-up to the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, on April 14–15, the results of the conference were predictable. The United States and Canada found themselves distanced from their neighbors to the south. The newly created regional organizations that exclude the United States were at least partially responsible for this shift.

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This week Latin American television network teleSUR expanded its distribution capacity to allow the Caracas-based news channel to reach over 100 million homes across the United States.

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On Wednesday the Venezuelan Foreign Minstry informed the international community that the founding meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations (CELAC) - an "OAS without the U.S. or Canada" as Ecuadorian President Rafael Correo once put it - has been suspended, citing the health of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as the principal cause of the meeting's postponement. 

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US Latin Americanist Cold Warriors and their far-right allies in the region kicked off a propaganda campaign in May to influence Congress and US citizens against Venezuela and fellow ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas) countries. 

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Greg Grandin and Miguel Tinker Salas analyze the attempt by conservative thinktank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) to reheat widely discredited Colombian military claims about ties between Colombia's FARC rebels and the Chavez government, calling it "pure black propaganda."

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Following the announcement by the U.S. government that its forces had supposedly killed Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda, in Pakistan, the Venezuelan government released an official statement, rejecting the use of “terror to fight terrorism”.

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An important part of Washington's strategy in Venezuela is to maintain tension between Colombia and Venezuela. The current spat with Ecuador is symptomatic of Washington's failure to grasp that it no longer exercises regional hegemony

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On Saturday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez told South Americans on VTV and TeleSur that the attack on Libya by the West’s “men of war” is aimed at seizing the North African country’s oil reserves.

Also over the weekend, Venezuelan students and representatives of the Latin American left expressed their open rejection of the NATO attack on Libya's national sovereignty. SEE: Editor's Note.

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