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Chavez Expansion Plans by John R. Thomson on National Review Online

Tiny El Salvador, the size of Massachusetts, has become a crucial factor in Hugo Chavez’s expansion plans — and in the push by drug lords to find ever-more-secure routes from Colombia and Ecuador to the lucrative U.S. market. Unnoticed by most, the country’s current electoral contests have become key battlegrounds in both these struggles.

It is difficult to exaggerate the failure of the Bush administration to pay heed to a host of threatening issues throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. From ignoring the slide of Mexico into drug-gang violence to failing to pass free-trade agreements with Colombia and Panama, the White House (with Congress’s help) has lost the respect of all segments of the region’s society. It has ceded country after country to Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian” socialist revolution.

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