After several failed efforts to unseat Venezuela's popular President Hugo Chavez, the fuel sector of corporate America is getting nervous. Venezuela is growing in prosperity, relying on its own mineral resources and technological patents to build new wealth. Chavez is exactly the kind of indigenous national leader whom American power can't tolerate. Arbenz, Mossadegh, Allende, and the other names on that too-familiar list were deposed for the crime of using their countries' own resources to enrich the general population. More recently, Aristide moved a few inches in that direction and found himself miles from home. Even as Venezuela consolidates its position on the global oil chessboard, American law-and-order rhetoric is less and less credible. The old script goes like this: U.S. corporations expropriate third world wealth; a democratic leader then nationalizes that wealth; the US then cries "property rights!" and invades said country in the name of international law. But Iraq is tearing that script to shreds at every point, and the Venezuela story is unfolding in what may prove to be a new narrative for the world --- or a particularly bitter replay of the old one.
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