Haiti: A trial run for Venezuela?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his supporters certainly seem to think that's a real possibility.  This article gives a decent brief overview of the internal conflict there, including the way in which the managers of the state-owned PdVSA oil company used their positions to stage  shows of seemingly massive public opoosition to Chávez: Venezuela opposition takes hope from Haiti developments San Francisco Chronicle 04/04/04.

[Anti-Chávez] Protesters [in recent days] carried banners reading "Bye-bye Aristide, Chavez you're next, " and calls grew for the army to overthrow Chavez. ...U.S. officials have supported the opposition's attempts to organize the referendum on Chavez's presidency. In 2004, at least $763,000 in U.S. foreign aid is being channeled to groups linked to the opposition -- an amount, however, markedly less than the $2.9 million budgeted this year for Haitian anti-Aristide "civil society" groups.

Politics is politics, as Joe Stalin once said, as he was preparing to sign a treaty with Hitler Germany and divide Poland. But the Bush Administration's policy in Venezuela is hard to ignore. It is backing an opposition that staged a military coup two years ago, and at least some of them (according to this report) are calling for another one. Against an elected President.

That article describes Venezuela as the "fourth-largest foreign supplier of petroleum" to the US. Greg Palast gives it a higher rank in the following comments, although I'm not sure that ranking in itself means much. If oil production goes down or up in a major producing country, it affects the total world oil market.

Venezuela, not Saudi Arabia, has long been the USA's largest supplier of foreign oil. By combining Venezuela's huge state-owned oil company with Ecuador's, Brazil's and Trinadad's (all nations now headed by elected leftists), Chavez could create a bargaining hammer for hemispheric trade talks which, up to now, have been mostly a one-way lecture from the USA.

"If Exxon and Mobil can combine, and Texaco and Phillips, why not PetroBrasil and PdVSA?" Chavez asks, referring to the Brazilian and Venezuelan government operators.