== New developments == 

 After Chavez was swore in his 3rd presidential term, Chavez's live televised address to the nation (and Latin America) contained verbal tirades about the new Mexican president Felipe Calderon who succeded Vicente Fox last month and other rightist leaders like Alan Garcia of Peru and Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, both have pro-American interests and allied with the moderate-right Bush administration to fight terrorist guerillas in these countries, but Chavez admired Mexican leftist presidential candidate Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador in his failed legal challenge to become president.  

 Chavez was friendly with the Contrista comeback political leader Daniel Ortega, president-elect of Nicaragua after 16 years of obscurity, as well his admiration of far-left leader Evo Morales of Bolivia and center-left leader Nestor Kirchner of Argentina. In his first 2 terms in office, Chavez  won friends and followers in every Latin American and Caribbean country, to include Haiti, Ecuador and Brazil each one in varied levels of economic development are under semi-left leaders in recent years.   

 But recently, Chavez's relationship with Michelle Bachelet of Chile is questionable... Bachelet turned out to gone bold in her socialist, but very moderate policies and her comfort with the U.S., unlike Chavez's strong anti-Americanism. But in May 2006, Chavez praised Bachelet for her political involvement as a former Marxist activist in the Allende era in the 1970's and she was tortured, forced to exile and returned under the Pinochet military regime, I thought Chavez will relate to her long political effort resumé. +