United Press International. NewsMax.com Wires Friday, May 30, 2003

CARACAS, Venezuela – In an upscale neighborhood of eastern Caracas, demonstrators this week continued to congregate in Altamira Plaza to protest against President Hugo Chavez. A hotbed of Venezuela's political opposition during the opposition petroleum strike, the desolate plaza now looks a lot like an abandoned circus. But opposition leaders are just as agitated as they were at the height of the strike.

"He is a terrorist and a communist," says Gustavo Ramírez, 32, a student who showed up at the gathering. "He has people in the country going hungry, and he wants to ensure that there's no freedom of expression."

Though opposition sympathizers frequently levy similar accusations against their embattled left-wing president, Ramirez's condemnation was not aimed at the embattled Chavez, but rather at Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

"President Chavez wants to turn Venezuela into another Cuba," says Ramirez, "but we can't let that happen."

Statements such as these show how Chavez's open admiration of Castro's communist revolution has infuriated Venezuela's conservative sectors and raised eyebrows in the international community. Even as the government and opposition Thursday signed a cooperation agreement that could help ease the crisis, the opposition resentment over the Cuban issue remains high.

Since the arrival of Chavez, Venezuela has signed dozens of cooperation agreements with Cuba, increased cultural exchange and provided subsidized petroleum to the Caribbean nation, much to the chagrin of Venezuelans already unnerved by what they see as Chavez's leftist agenda. Government leaders defend the new cooperation with Cuba as a way of consolidating Venezuela's social changes. But with Cuba once again in the eye of the world, the relationship may prove costly for Chavez.

A former paratrooper turned populist president, Chavez became a household figure in Venezuela after leading a failed coup in 1992. Released from jail on a presidential pardon, Chavez swept elections in 1998 on an anti-poverty, anti-corruption platform dubbed the "Bolivarian Revolution" in honor of the Venezuelan founding father, Simon Bolivar.

With a core constituency of Venezuela's burgeoning lower classes, Chavez has become a hero to the poor by promising to remake Venezuelan society. Although he has promised a peaceful revolution, Chavez often seems ideologically linked to the Latin American armed left. Faithful to his revolutionary roots, Chavez quickly increased diplomatic ties with Castro, a father figure for the Latin American left who in the 1960s sponsored Marxist guerrilla activity in Venezuela.

A year after taking office, the Chavez government signed an agreement to sell 53,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba at subsidized rates in exchange for medical treatment by Cuban doctors. Since then, the Venezuelan government has entered into numerous cooperation agreements with Cuba, covering everything from sports training programs to urban gardens overseen by Cubans. As a result, Venezuela has become Cuba's largest trading partner.

There was little initial backlash to the new cooperation during Chavez's first years in office, when he enjoyed popularity ratings as high as 80 percent. But his excessively confrontational manner, his willingness to insult his adversaries and his decision to legislate by decree led to a steady decline in his popularity during 2001.

Watching his approval slip, Chavez' adversaries pounced on his friendship with Castro, insisting that Chavez was trying to impose a model of "Castro communism" in Venezuela. Although there is almost nothing about Chavez's economic policy that could be described as communist, his friendship with Castro has made it easy for his enemies to label him as such.

According to journalist and political commentator Clodosvaldo Hernandez, Venezuelans have such a primordial fear of communism that Chavez's flirtations with Cuba have greatly contributed to his decline in popularity.

"Chavez approaching Fidel has awakened Venezuelans terror of communism, which was successfully instilled during the era of guerrilla fighting in the 1960s," says Hernandez. "In addition, Venezuela is a very materialist society, which makes communism all the more threatening."

Hernandez points out that many poor Venezuelans, the president's core constituency, have moved away from Chavez for precisely this reason.

But government leaders such as pro-Chavez legislator Tarek William Saab say the opposition has exaggerated Venezuela's relationship with Cuba.

"We have similar cooperation agreements with dozens of other countries," says Saab, "but since it's Cuba, political leaders like to make it into an ideological issue. The issue has been magnified and exaggerated, in particular with the help of the anti-Castro lobby in Miami."

Miami, in the U.S. state of Florida, is a stronghold of anti-Castro Cuban emigres.

Nonetheless, it's hard to describe the relationship as a simple commercial exchange. The two leaders clearly share an ideology, and Chavez's move toward Cuba is an open challenge to the U.S. embargo of the island. Indeed, while U.S. authorities in May were declaring Cuba a terrorist sympathizer and expelling Cuban diplomats, Venezuela was signing 15 new agreements with the communist island.

Many speculate that the fear of encroaching communism helped drive military leaders to oust Chavez on April 11 of 2002, when 19 people were killed as an opposition march approached the presidential palace. Businessman Pedro Carmona was installed as president, but Chavez was restored to power two days later by supporters and loyalist troops.

During Carmona's government, opposition protesters surrounded the Cuban Embassy, cutting off the power and water to force hiding Chavez allies to leave the compound. The incident is frequently cited as one of the opposition's excesses, and served to strengthen ties between Castro and Chavez.

Government sympathizers such as Wilmar Perez, 42, a former taxi driver, have been drawn to the Chavez government through exchange programs with Cuba.

"The opposition criticizes Cuba because they don't know anything about it," says Perez, who was sent to Cuba for six months to receive medical attention for a gunshot wound he received on April 11. "They should continue the exchanges with Cuba. It is helping us to consolidate the revolution."

'Revolutionary Army' ... Trained in U.S.

However, political analyst Alberto Garrido insists that popular approval or discontent is not the primary issue for Chavez.

"The real problem here is the armed forces," says Garrido. "Officers fear that Venezuela's armed forces are going to be turned into a revolutionary army. And you have to remember that many of these officers have been through the U.S. School of the Americas. They were trained to fight against communism."

Garrido adds that by embracing Castro too closely, Chavez also risks upsetting the United States, which buys most of Venezuela's oil exports.

"Staying tied to Castro is an enormous liability for Chavez," says Garrido. "It means confronting people that should be his allies. How far can he really take this?"

Widespread criticism of Cuba within Venezuela indicates that Garrido has a point. But Chavez shows no sign of distancing himself from Castro, even in the face of international condemnation of Cuba's recent abuses of human rights. And Chavez, much like Castro, has never been afraid of a little healthy confrontation, meaning the Cuban issue is unlikely to disappear from the Venezuelan horizon any time soon.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Castro/Cuba Latin America Editor's note: Discover and use the CIA’s secrets Click Here Now

DCMilitary.com - Pentagram May 30, 2003 (Editor's note: This is the second of a three part series on unsung American efforts on the war on terrorism in the western hemisphere.)

The political climate in Honduras is not as volatile as parts of South America, but conditions could lead to political upheavals such as those facing Venezuela, where oil strikes and protests have crippled the economy and the government's ability to rule. Poverty and the increasing lawliness in Honduras could create a breeding ground for terrorists.

"The economy is bad and getting worse. This creates a lot of crime. I know many people are scared and feel that something needs to be done," said Carmen Suyapa Euceda, a mother of three who lives near Soto Cano. "Things are at a point where people are not sure what can be done."

Honduran president Ricardo Maduro in April called on the U.S. to be more active in Central America, or risk the region slipping to the left after years of moving toward free-market democracies. He said the region is at "a very critical point," according to The Washington Times.

This is nowhere clearer than in Comayagua Valley, a wide cut through the mountains and home to Soto Cano. In hills east of the valley April 3, Army Chinook helicopters dumped water on forest fires which threatened to raze a mountain village. To the west ? within sight of the smoking palm trees ? thousands of demonstrators congregated in the town of Comayagua against a U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Master Sgt. Charles Warren said the U.S. military's presence is generally welcome despite such protests ? or a message spray-painted beneath a Coca-Cola sign bragging "Osama Bin Laden lives." Joint Security Forces rate the threat of terrorism against Americans low, yet they've beefed up security on Soto Cano.

"Terrorist groups have shown an ability to reach out and hit those places where the threat is considered low, or where they have not hit in the past. In that sense, you could say Central America is in the line of fire," said Warren. He believes a peacetime mission in a friendly nation advertises a "soft" target. The installation is hardening by setting up more physical barriers, installing video surveillance, increasing perimeter patrols, and improving cooperation with Honduran authorities.

Criminal danger

Authorities rate the threat of crime in Honduras high, which presents other reasons to be cautious of political violence and an emergence of home-grown terrorism.

Teen-age gangs wield machetes and home-made firearms called "chimbas" to control territories and extort or steal money. The gangs are a symptom of destitution and an element of rebelliousness similar to conditions in some Middle Eastern communities where terrorist organizations have successfully recruited.

"It is very dangerous. In every city, there are gangs. You hear about 18 or 20 people die every day because of the violence. There seems to be no control over them," said Nuri Yolany Alvarado.

Honduras is a constitutional democracy, but is staggering under the weight of widespread crime. "The judiciary is poorly staffed and equipped, often ineffective and subject to corruption and political influence," said a March 31 State Department report.

Half of Honduras' 6.5 million residents are under age 18.

Many children are turning to crime, and the prisons are filled beyond capacity.

Many businesses employ private security teams who stand guard with sawed-off shotguns, pistols and machetes, closely eyeing teenagers hollering from the beds of passing pick-up trucks.

A scenario in which Hondurans become anti-American terrorists is highly unlikely right now, yet worth U.S. concerns, especially if Americans disappear from humanitarian missions in Latin America and economic conditions worsen, Warren said.

Fuel prices in Honduras, one of the poorest nations in a crippled region, stand at over $3 a gallon, one of the highest prices in the hemisphere. With the daunting cost of owning a private vehicle, public transportation is overburdened, and relies heavily on retired school buses from the U. S.

Honduras' poverty takes a toll on public health.

Nancy Etheridge, wife of Southern Command's Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Etheridge, helped in March at several medical clinics organized through Soto Cano.

"It's overwhelming. I never dreamed there was this many people in need of basic medical care," she said. "It's good for them to see the military helping in this way, because right now they are seeing so much of the fighting in Iraq. They need to know we do more than fight."

There is also a fear that Honduras' proximity to the U.S. could kick up sibling rivalry among poor nations. Hondurans may feel their friendly ties with the U.S. are not bettering their position at a time when news reports show American soldiers handing out food and medicines to vanquished Iraqis and Afghanis.

"Wherever the Americans are, the area does better economically. The people here feel Honduras is close to America, but don't understand why that doesn't improve things for the whole country," said Alvarado.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have crowded front pages and video clips in Honduras' news outlets, whose reports also closely follow the humanitarian efforts in the wake of war. Many Hondurans don't grasp why so much money is spent helping the U.S.'s adversaries.

"It is a weird war. Iraq is very bad, but when they lose, the United States will help them rebuild," said Euceda.

It can be a strained logic for U.S. personnel as well as Honduran officials.

"These are our neighbors, this is our backyard. If we are going to help anywhere in the world, these are the people we should be helping," said Warren.

"We have to provide the people with some real gains quickly. However, the attention we are getting from the international community is not up to the full task," the Honduran president told Washington Times editors.

The challenges facing U.S. forces at Soto Cano steadily increase. Just over 500 military personnel on the base attempt to improve the lot of over 37 million people across Central America. To many in the region, the task force represents the U.S.'s commitment to staving off economic disaster in Central America.

This commitment can be viewed as either weak or strong.

(Wagner is a Pentagram staff writer supporting Task Force-Bravo. Next week -- Maintaining the ties.)

By Brian Ellsworth Published 5/30/2003 9:33 AM

CARACAS, Venezuela, May 30 (<a href=www.upi.com>UPI) -- In an upscale neighborhood of eastern Caracas, demonstrators this week continued to congregate in Altamira Plaza to protest against President Hugo Chavez. A hotbed of Venezuela's political opposition during the opposition petroleum strike, the desolate plaza now looks a lot like an abandoned circus. But opposition leaders are just as agitated as they were at the height of the strike.

"He is a terrorist and a communist," says Gustavo Ramírez, 32, a student who showed up at the gathering. "He has people in the country going hungry and he wants to ensure that there's no freedom of expression."

While opposition sympathizers frequently levy similar accusations against their embattled left-wing president, Ramirez's condemnation was not aimed at the embattled Chavez, but rather at Cuban President Fidel Castro.

"President Chavez wants to turn Venezuela into another Cuba," says Ramirez, "but we can't let that happen."

Statements like these show how President Chavez's open admiration of Castro's communist revolution has infuriated Venezuela's conservative sectors and raised eyebrows in the international community. Even as the government and opposition on Thursday signed a cooperation agreement that could help ease the crisis, the opposition resentment over the Cuban issue remains high.

Since the arrival of Chavez, Venezuela has signed dozens of cooperation agreements with Cuba, increased cultural exchange and provided subsidized petroleum to the Caribbean nation -- much to the chagrin of Venezuelans already unnerved by what they see as Chavez's left-agenda. Government leaders defend the new cooperation with Cuba as a way of consolidating Venezuela's social reforms. But with Cuba once again in the eye of the international community, the relationship may prove costly for Chavez.

A former paratrooper turned populist president, Chavez became a household figure in Venezuela after leading a failed coup in 1992. Released from jail on a presidential pardon, Chavez swept elections in 1998 on an antipoverty, anticorruption platform dubbed the "Bolivarian Revolution" in honor of the Venezuelan founding father, Simon Bolivar. With a core constituency of Venezuela's burgeoning lower classes, Chavez has become a hero to the poor by promising to remake Venezuelan society. Although he has promised a peaceful revolution, Chavez often seems ideologically linked to the Latin American armed left. Faithful to his revolutionary roots, Chavez quickly increased diplomatic ties with Castro, a father figure for the Latin American left who in the 1960s sponsored Marxist guerrilla activity in Venezuela.

A year after taking office, the Chavez government signed an agreement to sell 53,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba at subsidized rates in exchange for medical treatment by Cuban doctors. Since then, the Venezuelan government has entered into numerous cooperation agreements with Cuba, covering everything from sports training programs to urban gardens overseen by Cubans. As a result, Venezuela has become Cuba's largest trading partner.

There was little initial backlash to the new cooperation during Chavez's first years in office, when he enjoyed popularity ratings as high as 80 percent. But his excessively confrontational manner, his willingness to insult his adversaries and his decision to legislate by decree led to a steady decline in his popularity during 2001.

Watching his approval slip, Chavez' adversaries pounced on his friendship with Castro, insisting that Chavez was trying to impose a model of "Castro-communism" in Venezuela. Although there is almost nothing about Chavez's economic policy that could be described as communist, his friendship with Castro has made it easy for his enemies to label him as such.

According to journalist and political commentator Clodosvaldo Hernandez, Venezuelans have such a primordial fear of communism that Chavez' flirtations with Cuba have greatly contributed to his decline in popularity.

"Chavez approaching Fidel has awakened Venezuelans terror of communism, which was successfully instilled during the era of guerrilla fighting in the 1960s," says Hernandez. "In addition, Venezuela is a very materialist society, which makes communism all the more threatening."

Hernandez points out that many poor Venezuelans, the president's core constituency, have moved away from Chavez for precisely this reason.

But government leaders such as pro-Chavez legislator Tarek William Saab say the opposition has exaggerated Venezuela's relationship with Cuba.

"We have similar cooperation agreements with dozens of other countries," says Saab, "but since it's Cuba, political leaders like to make it into an ideological issue. The issue has been magnified and exaggerated, in particular with the help of the anti-Castro lobby in Miami."

Miami, in the U.S. state of Florida, is a stronghold of anti-Castro Cuban émigrés.

Nonetheless, it's hard to describe the relationship as a simple commercial exchange. The two leaders clearly share an ideology, and Chavez's move toward Cuba is an open challenge to the U.S. embargo of the island. Indeed, while U.S. authorities in May were declaring Cuba a terrorist sympathizer and expelling Cuban diplomats, Venezuela was signing 15 new agreements with the communist island.

Many speculate that the fear of encroaching communism helped drive military leaders to oust Chavez on April 11 of 2002, when 19 people were killed as an opposition march approached the presidential palace. Businessman Pedro Carmona was installed as president, but Chavez was restored to power two days later by supporters and loyalist troops. During Carmona's government, opposition protestors surrounded the Cuban Embassy, cutting off the power and water to force hiding Chavez cohorts to leave the compound. The incident is frequently cited as one of the opposition's excesses, and served to strengthen ties between Castro and Chavez.

Government sympathizers such as Wilmar Perez, 42, a former taxi driver, have been drawn to the Chavez government through exchange programs with Cuba.

"The opposition criticizes Cuba because they don't know anything about it," says Perez, who was sent to Cuba for six months to receive medical attention for a gunshot wound he received on April 11. "They should continue the exchanges with Cuba, it is helping us to consolidate the revolution."

However, political analyst Alberto Garrido insists that popular approval or discontent is not the primary issue for Chavez.

"The real problem here is the armed forces," says Garrido. "Officers fear that Venezuela's armed forces are going to be turned into a revolutionary army. And you have to remember that many of these officers have been through the U.S. School of the Americas, they were trained to fight against communism."

Garrido adds that by embracing Castro too closely, Chavez also risks upsetting the United States, which buys most of Venezuela's oil exports.

"Staying tied to Castro is an enormous liability for Chavez," says Garrido. "It means confronting people that should be his allies. How far can he really take this?"

Widespread criticism of Cuba within Venezuela indicates that Garrido has a point. But Chavez shows no sign of distancing himself from Castro, even in the face of international condemnation of Cuba's recent human rights abuses. And Chavez, much like Castro, has never been afraid of a little healthy confrontation -- meaning the Cuban issue is unlikely to disappear from the Venezuelan horizon any time soon.

<a href=www.nytimes.com>nytimes.com May 25, 2003 By LARRY ROHTER

BUENOS AIRES, May 24 — In the past 18 months, Argentina's enduring political and economic crisis has consumed five presidents and plunged millions of people into poverty. Now it is Néstor Kirchner's turn to try to set things right, and the demands for a new direction are more insistent than ever.

After hitting bottom, leaving a fifth of the work force unemployed and thousands of businesses bankrupt, the economy at least has begun to bounce back. But Mr. Kirchner, 53, will take office on Sunday with the country's future still clouded, Argentines' faith in institutions and leaders shattered and the deeper moral malaise that underlies and fuels the crisis very much intact.

What is not yet clear to Argentines, though, is whether Mr. Kirchner, the obscure Peronist governor of a remote province until he was catapulted into power in an unlikely turn of events, is the great reformer and renovator he claims to be or just another slick politician who will let the country down.

Mr. Kirchner finished second in the first round of the presidential election late last month, capturing just 22 percent of the vote. He was to have faced a former president, Carlos Menem, in a runoff on May 18. But Mr. Kirchner won by default when Mr. Menem withdrew, alarmed by opinion polls that showed him losing by more than 40 percentage points and hoping to discredit Mr. Kirchner's victory.

"This country must change because it desperately, urgently needs to change," said Marcelo Blanco, a 36-year-old graphic designer who voted for Mr. Kirchner in the first round of the election last month. "The expectations are great, but we don't know if Kirchner is going to be up to the challenge."

The departing interim president, Eduardo Duhalde, has sought to assuage those doubts, describing Mr. Kirchner last week as "a fresh breeze blowing up from Patagonia." Mr. Kirchner has also stoked the hopes for renewal by appointing a cabinet notable for its youth.

"Kirchner has a historic opportunity to break with the past, rebuild this country with a new model and initiate a new era," said Roberto Bacman, a pollster and sociologist here. The social contract that held the country together during the 1990's has fallen to pieces, Mr. Bacman said, with nothing to replace it.

In a regional context, Mr. Kirchner is part of a broader move to the left, beginning with the rise of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. The leftist movement gathered force in the last year with the election of two other candidates sharply critical of the political and economic status quo — in Brazil and Ecuador — and the emergence of similar forces in Bolivia, Peru and Uruguay.

"The agenda of demands has changed, and Latin American electorates are turning from center-right to center-left," said Graciela Romer, a political consultant who works both here and in other countries of the region. "If the 90's were marked by a rejection of state intervention, today people want a greater presence of the state and a greater focus on social services."

The shift in attitudes can be felt in places like Quilmes, a once thriving industrial center south of the capital that has been left despondent and nearly destitute by Mr. Menem's decade-long experiment with free market policies. Factories there have been abandoned to crumble, shuttered stores are festooned with "for rent" signs and the mood is so glum that the mayor has been reduced to putting up posters that urge, "Let's get Quilmes back on its feet."

Yet there is also support for Mr. Kirchner and the hope that he can somehow bring better times. "If they'll just let him govern, maybe we can get out of this mess," said Júlio Álvarez, 37, a former factory worker who now sells scarves on the platform of the local train station. The "they" he cited referred to the others within the Peronist party, labor unions and the business elite who have supported Mr. Menem and benefited from his government.

"We need to believe, to be able to support something and to think that he is going to be able to do it," said Nora Cuéllar, a 40-year-old nurse. "We don't want to go back to the past, to presidents who are dishonest and rob the country blind or who are so weak they don't finish out their term of office."

Because he led an interim government, installed by congressional decree at the peak of the crisis in January 2002 after President Fernando de la Rúa resigned, Mr. Duhalde postponed many decisions on pressing economic and social issues. That means the tests will come early and often for Mr. Kirchner, beginning with negotiations with the International Monetary Fund to achieve a long-term accord that would allow investment and credit to resume.

In newspaper interviews this week, he minimized the importance of reaching such an agreement early on. "Argentina has already shown it can survive without an I.M.F. deal," he said. The economy, he added, "has little or no chance of paying the amounts sought" by creditors.

He has also taken a tough stance on corruption and human rights. He has indicated that he favors reopening impeachment proceedings against a Supreme Court that is seen as loyal to Mr. Menem and has presented himself as a representative of the generation that was brutalized under the old military dictatorship and now wants justice.

"This is a time bomb for the military," Mr. Bacman said, adding that Mr. Kirchner "can't find anybody to take the Army commander's post because so many of the military are worried about" the possibility that legal proceedings could be reopened against people accused of human rights offenses during the dictatorship more than two decades ago.

Today, newspapers here reported that Mr. Kirchner has decided to force the retirement of more than half of the armed forces' generals and admirals.

Because Mr. Duhalde decided to leave office nearly seven months early, the country must also face congressional, mayoral and gubernatorial elections in the next few months. While that gives Mr. Kirchner an opportunity to strengthen his support in a divided Congress, he has little in the way of patronage to offer potential adherents, and some of the country's powerful provincial governors are already expressing misgivings about him.

There is an old saying here that the country's dominant Peronist party always quarrels during an election and then makes up in order to divide the spoils. But the party had never been through an election like the last one, in which internal differences forced it to run three candidates.

"In Néstor Kirchner, Peronism has its last chance," said Joaquín Morales Solá, a columnist for the conservative daily La Nación. "If he has a fairly decent administration, they will remain united. But if Kirchner fails, the conditions for fragmentation and fracture are there."

Mr. Menem has made it clear that he intends to make life as difficult as possible for the new president. He remains the nominal Peronist party leader and has predicted that Mr. Kirchner will not survive his four-year term and that the country will again turn to Mr. Menem.

But Mr. Menem's own actions have reduced his capacity to make mischief. He is despised not only for having run the economy into the ground during his decade in power, but also for having quit this election when it became obvious he would suffer a humiliating loss.

Mr. Duhalde, Mr. Kirchner's nominal ally, is a more serious concern, political analysts here say. Mr. Duhalde, 61, has said he will never run for executive office again, but he remains the boss of the Peronist party machine in Buenos Aires Province, without which Mr. Kirchner could not have been elected.

"Of the old-school politicians, Duhalde is the only one who has anything left, and that is because he leaves the country in better condition than he received it," Mr. Morales Solá said. "Kirchner is going to need Duhalde, whose strategy has always been to wait until he is needed and then — well, everything has its price in politics."

Nonetheless, Mr. Kirchner has made it clear he wants to shake things up. Asked in interviews with Argentine news organizations whom he views as role models, he said that Bill Clinton was the American president of the past 50 years that he admires most and expressed admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the way he pulled the United States out of a depression that threatened both the stability and prosperity of a democracy.

"Let's hope Kirchner can really turn out to be the Argentine Clinton," said Mr. Blanco, the graphic designer. "And we could certainly use a New Deal here."

By MICHAEL E. KANELL The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With Nestor Kirchner scheduled to be inaugurated Sunday as the new president of Argentina, U.S. policy-makers now face left-of-center leaders in a trio of key Latin American nations.

Kirchner, a member of the party created by Juan and Eva Perón, joins Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former labor leader who is now Brazil's president, and Hugo Chavez of oil-rich Venezuela as potential thorns in the southern side of the United States.

A few decades back, that notion would be enough to give then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger a cow -- if not a coup.

In 1973, Kissinger was instrumental in a U.S.-supported military revolt that overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile and set off years of bloody oppression. It was thousands of lives and almost two decades later before free elections were held again.

Is the stage now again set for conflict -- whether it be diplomatic tension, trade penalties or even something more forceful?

Even if relations sour, President Bush probably cannot take action that overtly contradicts years of U.S. policy, said Vicki Gass, senior associate for economic issues at the Washington Office on Latin America. "The U.S. has been pushing democracy building. They can't go in there and do what they did with Allende."

Since the Monroe Doctrine, Latin America has been treated by the United States as a key zone of interest. Washington dispatched troops to Argentina to protect U.S. interests as far back as the 1830s. During the Cold War, Latin America was viewed as a battleground in the struggle against the Soviet Union -- a "back yard" requiring tending, covert action and support of proxy forces such as the Contras in Nicaragua pitted against governments backed by the former Soviet Union such as Fidel Castro in Cuba and the Sandinista regime of Nicaragua.

But since the fall of the Soviet Union, Latin America has mostly been out of the U.S. spotlight. Certainly, the Bush administration's foreign policy has been more focused on terrorism and Iraq.

Latin America is one of the few issues on which Bush has not aggressively pursued policies far from those of the Clinton administration, which hammered away at free trade, Gass said. "As far as the administration has any policy toward Latin America, it is about trade."

And that is where to find the most likely point of contention, said Robert B. Ahdieh at Emory Law School, a specialist in emerging markets and international trade. The leftward drift of regional leaders will up the ante on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, U.S.-sponsored negotiations aimed at a hemispheric trade pact.

"This administration -- like Clinton's -- [has] made the FTAA something of a priority," Ahdieh said.

Atlanta officials have been lobbying to have the trade organization's headquarters located here. The city faces a tough challenge: Miami is regarded as the front-runner in the United States, while Panama City, Panama, and Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago are also keen to host the secretariat.

Analysts have likened the economic spinoff for the successful city as somewhat akin to the billions of dollars a year pumped into the Brussels economy as a result of the Belgian capital's hosting the headquarters of the European Union.

The trade talks offer a chance for Kirchner to partner with Silva and Chavez, hoping for more leverage than any would have solo, Ahdieh said. For the United States, having tougher bargainers on the other side of the table is not a deal breaker, but it may slow down an agreement and will probably mean modifications to the U.S. vision.

"It may derail some elements," he said. "It may be narrower than the original."

Rhetoric mellows

The new wave of leaders may also be more interested in alliances with their neighbors than with the superpower to the north. That may not please the United States, but the challenge is far less radical than that of Allende, or even of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua during the 1980s.

None of the three recently elected presidents now calls for radical reshaping of their economies. Moreover, both Kirchner and Silva have softened their reputations by choosing mainstream advisers and economic managers.

"They are left of center, but they are committed democrats -- and they are both very realistic about the economic constraints they face," said Carol Graham, vice president and director of government studies at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Kirchner hasn't yet shown how he intends to wield power, but his hints so far echo the performance of Silva -- a good sign for hemispheric relations, she said. "The nuts and bolts of Lula [Silva] -- it's Washington consensus policies."

Pragmatism dictates moderation -- and most leaders get the message, said David Bruce, professor of international business at Georgia State University. "Both Lula [Silva] and Kirchner have emitted a lot of continuity vibrations. My guess is, there is not all that much excitement about them in Washington."

Oil production rebuilt

But Chavez is different.

He has expressed support for Fidel Castro and other villains in the American pantheon. He has used virulent anti-U.S. rhetoric, and his fiscal policies have infuriated Venezuela's business community.

That mix puts him in a different category, Bruce said. "He is annoying on the international stage, and he controls a big source of oil."

Yet even Chavez's radicalism has been more rhetorical than real rebellion -- at least when it comes to the crucial components of trade and finance that connect Venezuela to the global economy. Most critical to his relations with the United States, he has managed to rebuild much of the nation's oil production despite a bitter strike. Chavez's realism is a matter of survival -- a realism shared by the other two, say experts.

Like Argentina and Brazil, Venezuela depends on assistance from funding agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank or the World Bank, but also on the huge private institutions that shift billions of dollars around the planet each day in search of lucrative returns.

"As those institutions play a stronger role, that puts countries in an economic straitjacket," Gass said.

A year ago, the Bush administration seemingly welcomed a coup in Venezuela, only to be embarrassed when it fizzled. There has been no evidence that Washington actually backed the plotters.

"But there is a perception -- whether accurate or not -- that Bush is using more stick relative to carrot," said Ahdieh.

A potential showdown?

More recently, the United States said it would delay signing a free trade agreement with Chile -- apparently because that nation, a member of the U.N. Security Council, did not support the war against Iraq. "The message is that we are big enough to do without you. Are you big enough to do without us? And unfortunately for them, the answer is no," said Ahdieh.

The most likely spot for a high-stakes showdown is Venezuela -- and then, only if Chavez cancels or ignores a referendum on his rule slated for August.

Kissinger once said the United States would not stand by while a nation foolishly chooses a socialist path -- however democratically. And certainly all three of these leaders came to office via the ballot box. But there's a potential complication.

What happens if Chavez this summer defies the democratic rules? Would the United States move against him?

Most experts think retaliation in Venezuela would be low-key.

"I don't think it's merely rhetoric -- we would prefer democracy," Ahdieh said. "But I don't think the United States feels it's in our vital strategic interests that there be democracy in Venezuela. Whether the oil is flowing -- that is a serious concern."