Q&A: Sweig on U.S.-Venezuela relations

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Interview with LatAm expert Julia Sweig on what's happening in LatAm.

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...Relations between Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez and the United States have been frosty for the last couple of years. What's going on now?

The relations really began to deteriorate substantially after the April 2002 coup . Many Venezuelans believe the United States winked at the incident. Although the Venezuelan government and Chavez initially played down an alleged American role in the coup, relations have since gotten worse. Chavez and the government have revived not only accusations that the United States was behind the coup, but also, more recently, that the United States may be planning an assassination attempt on Chavez. This war of words has escalated.

Partially, that's because the Bush administration's Latin America hands have a kind of gut rejection of Chavez. He has provided and does provide subsidized oil to Castro's Cuba. He is taking on, rhetorically, the traditional American hegemony in Latin America and using his astronomical oil revenues not only to boost his political base at home, but also to build diplomatic capital in Latin America and internationally.

Would you say that Chavez is trying to become another Castro, except he has oil and Castro doesn't?

No. You can say that Castro had the Soviet Union as his insurance policy, and Chavez has oil, but it's a different era and a different country. And although Chavez increasingly uses the language of socialism and revolution, especially since Chavez won the referendum last August, he has really felt vindicated. It's the fifth election that he's won. His poll ratings are higher than they've ever been, and he has felt politically vindicated, and therefore, has escalated his rhetoric and also his spending on social programs, the kinds of social programs that Castro also invested in. And so there are parallels, for sure, in terms of the aura of class conflict that one would have felt in the 1960s in Cuba and the palpable feeling of class conflict in Venezuela today.

http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/international/slot1_033005.html?pagewanted=1