What to Do About Hugo? by Tom Barry

Chavez is right to evoke the politics of independence and unity heralded by Simon Bolivar. For centuries, the region has been mired in dependency and self-defeating nationalism. Whether his Bolivarian rhetoric is opportunistic or populist in the worst sense is not the issue. What Washington needs to understand is that this rhetoric resonates throughout the region because the time is right for a new approach—just as it was right in the early 1800s when Bolivar dreamed, fought, and agonized in his quest to bring political independence and unity to South America.