Latin America: US involvement a decade too late....

So, Bush wraps up a 5-day tour in Latin America, but brings back nothing with him.

This tour has come too late at a moment when US diplomacy is at its weakest in decades, even in recent weeks of renewed diplomatic talks with countries in the Middle East and China, and only thanks to Rice, who has been eargely making the rounds, in a move to clear up and wash out the Bush Administration's lack of foreign diplomatic overtures.

Latin America, with all its complexities and problems, seems to be hanging tough, as they have waited years to see trade agreements finalized, economic aid disembursed, and political commitments materialized. South America has for now found their guy in Venezuela's Chavez, who is more than willing to fill in the vacuum and which has plenty of cash and free advice to give.

This is exactly the danger and the frivolity of territorial politics, and the Bush Administration never seemed to capitalize on it. As Lebanon fell to Hizballah when Syria pulled out, everyone seemed too busy with the 'terrorists' and insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the US.

Now, it is too late for US deals and cheap talk; China has moved in to provide trade and aid and Chavez has continued to engulf South America and Central America with his populist rethoric. Today, Venuezuela's political and economic influence in the region is proportioned to Russia's oil supply to China's economy. China is always shopping for oil suppliers and has found a loyal one in Venezuela, which only helps to fuel Chavez's regional agenda.

I say this to Bush: go back to your drawing board and come up with a new set of economic and political policies that can efficiently compete with Chavez's own.

The new Latin American Populism has been split

First it was Chavez, the ex-military "caudillo" from the Venezuelan army, who took many by surprise when he was elected president in 1998. He led an attempted coup six years before being elected president but failed, was jailed, and later pardoned. He then came back, formed a political party, and was elected president in 1998, after growing and widespread poverty and plummeting confidence in the traditional political parties of Venezuela during the 1990's. Since then many other countries have followed similar political paths including Bolivia's Evo Morales, who has recently announced the government takeover of oil and gas industries. Peru's Ollata Humala has joined Bolivia's Morales in the standup against big business. But we also see it in Argentina and Brazil, and now Chile has elected a woman president, more aligned towards the left than the right, even though she supports the corporate environment in Chile.

Brazil's Lula da Silva has managed to play down Chavez's and Morales' influence in Latin American politics, mainly because they part from the same ideological framework. Lula da Silva has been the advocate for promoting political and economic alliances in the region. Even Chavez's "bolivarism" has not taken flight as expected. Brazil has been pushing for Mercusor and EU multilateral treaties and has made regional cooperation its top priority while Chavez prefers bilateral negotiations where Venezuela's involved and avoids making the rounds with countries that trade with the US.

It's amazing how not long ago regional cooperation was the main agenda for many of these leaders, it seems now that they are backstabbing each other and undermining a set of ideas that got them elected in the first place. With da Silva's term coming to an end and Chavez can certainly not govern forever, the Populist experiment in Latin American could be experiencing a bold makeover in the face of nationalism and global market influences.