BOGOTA: Charismatic and tireless, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has spent much of his 14 years in power building a Latin American bloc free of US influence, relying in part on his country’s vast oil wealth.
Indeed, after a series of political alliances led to strong economic ties, Latin America distanced itself from Washington. But absent Chavez, who has cancer, the movement may fall apart and it is unlikely another Latin American leader could fill Chavez’s shoes.
“What distinguished Chavez from the beginning was that Venezuela was too small for him. He was looking for an international stage,” said analyst Michael Shifter, of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.
“Chavez has a very particular, provocative style. He has worked hard to engender a Latin America that is more sure of itself in facing the US,” Shifter told AFP.
For Christopher Sabatini, of the Council of the Americas lobby in Washington, “Chavez gave strength and personality to an openly anti-American alliance in the region, but this coalition doesn’t have anyone to replace him” in case his illness definitively keeps him from picking back up the reins in Venezuela.
Chavez, elected in 1999, has focused on aggressive diatribes against with Washington, and, helped by the country’s enormous oil reserves, has forged alliances and implemented mechanisms for cooperation and integration in the region, such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.
Re-elected on Oct. 7, Chavez will not be able to be sworn in as planned for his new term on Thursday. He has not appeared in public since he left for Cuba a month ago for his fourth and most complicated round of cancer surgery since he was diagnosed a year and a half ago.
For Sabatini, if any figure at the heart of his movement could play the same role as Chavez on the international stage, “the Venezuelan oil sponsorship could continue. This has always been part of his diplomatic strategy,” he assured AFP.
Asked about the president’s political heir apparent, Nicolas Maduro, Shifter said he expected he would largely maintain the existing agreements with countries in the region, but that we would not have “neither the commitment nor the momentum.”
In addition, a “very acute fiscal crisis” is emerging in Venezuela, Shifter said, adding that Cuba and Nicaragua will be the most affected.
Under Chavez, Caracas and Havana developed very close political and economic ties, which have been crucial for Cuba following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Venezuela supplies Cuba with some 100,000 barrels of oil a day under very favorable terms.
In return, Cuba supports Caracas with 40,000 doctors, paramedics and nurses, as well as advisers and technicians in a variety of fields, which brings the Communist island a windfall of some $6 billion a year.
“Given the level of its relationship with Venezuela, Cuba can’t expect anything positive to come from political instability in Caracas,” said Arturo Lopez Levy, a professor at the University of Denver, in Colorado.
For his part, Everleny Omar Perez, an economic expert at the University of Havana, says it is unlikely there will be a sharp reduction in economic cooperation between the two countries.
But, he said, Cuba “is looking for forms of international rehabilitation, for new commercial partners.”
