Hugo Chavez, the president of oil-rich Venezuela, has replaced Fidel Castro of Cuba as Latin America’s new bogeyman

Hugo Chavez, the president of oil-rich Venezuela, has replaced Fidel Castro of Cuba as Latin America’s new bogeyman. But according to Judith Ewell, Newton Professor Emeritus at the College of William & Mary, who specializes in Latin American history and is the author of three books on Venezuelan history, as well as of countless scholarly papers on Latin America, the Chavez regime must be seen “in the context of all Venezuelan governments since 1945.”
She explained that most Venezuelan leaders have aspired to active foreign policies as a way to achieve their goals at home and have been inspired by the days of Bolivar, when Venezuela led the hemisphere.
“With respect to oil policy, from the founding of OPEC, Venezuela has wanted to gain the maximum return from petroleum in order to allow them to fulfill domestic promises,” Ewell said. “When oil revenues are high, Venezuela is more expansive and ambitious in foreign and domestic policy.”
With higher revenues and stronger reserves now amounting to $25 billion, Chavez is swinging the pendulum back to seizing more national control of the oil fields and changing the rules of the game on foreign companies.