Chavez's spokesman in washington Dc supports Humala

Mark Weisbrot, who runs a“think tank” in the Washington D.C. is well known in Venezuelan political circles as a unabashed singer of praises for Hugo Chavez. Predictably he is coming out strongly in favor of Ollanta Humala in Peru. Humala is  a Chavez clone who led four unsuccessful coup d’etats in Peru and is now seeking to be elected president.

According to Weisbrot Humala should not be linked with Chavez. He does not seem to know that Chavez financed Humala's last campaign (and possibly this one as well) and his wife received $5000 a month from the Chavez’s regime, for a long time and for unspecified services. During Humala's last campaign Chavez’s acolyte Jorge Rodriguez, at the time president of the Venezuelan Electoral Council, traveled to Peru to serve as Humalas’s electoral adviser.

In an article on the Peruvian elections published in the site of the center for Economic and Policy research and in The Guardian, U.K. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/02/peru-venezuela, Weisbrot says: “Venezuela is also irrelevant to the Peruvian election because almost all governments in South America are "allies of Chávez". This is especially true of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay, for example, all of whom have very close and collaborative relations with Venezuela”.

Brazil? No way. Ask Dilma. Uruguay? No way. Ask Pepe. Argentina? Less so today than in the recent past.Ask Cristina. Weisbrot is far from being an objective reporter of Latin American politics. The allignment of Ecuador’s Correa and Bolivia’s Morales with Chavez is also somewhat weakening, as Chavez is running out of money with which to keep buying loyalties.

Make no mistake. Wesibrot is Chavez’s man in Washington, just as Humala is Chavez’s man in Lima. They have their reasons.