A new spectre haunting America

After Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has emerged as the most prominent symbol of anti-imperialist resistance in Latin America. His immense popularity has kept in check U.S.- inspired counter-revolutions. And his Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, zealously backed by other left-of-centre governments that have sprung up in the continent after a series of silent electoral revolutions, is threatening to stop the free run of European and American imperialisms, which had ravaged the region for centuries since the time Columbus made a geographical miscalculation in his search for India and landed up on the American coast.