Chavez Punishes his Enemies

Bloomberg notes that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is making sure that those who forced him to face a recall election in 2004 are punished. Thousands of government employees have been fired from among the 3.4 million that signed the recall petition.

It seems only a few years since the United States celebrated a new dawn in Latin America - with more or less freely elected regimes everywhere but Cuba and with the region increasingly looking to the US for friendship and support. Now however, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is proving increasingly successful at forging an anti-American alliance among leftist leaders throughout the hemisphere. As the BBC recently noted, the United States is losing Latin America.

This July will see a Presidential election in Mexico, where the stakes are higher than ever before. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (or AMLO, or the 'pejelegarto') is the candidate of the PRD, and it's alleged that Chavez has been funding his campaign. Should AMLO be elected, Chavez will have a powerful potential ally.