While watching democracy gain a foothold in the Middle East, we need also to be aware that Latin America is slipping backward into despotism at a rapid pace. Solzhenitsyn told us that freedom was a fragile flame, easily extinguished and leaving us again in the darkness. The flame isn't out yet, but in South America, the winds are strong and the signs are thereófirst, democracy is compromised and then cherished freedoms are taken away.
Never fully contained on his island 90 miles off of Florida, Fidel Castro's malign influence again has been felt throughout Latin America. Venezuela, a country fast falling into the abyss, is under the boot of Hugo Chavez and together they are intent on subverting the democracies of South America. Chavez squeezed into office in a fluky election and then survived, with the meek Jimmy Carter's certification of legality, a tainted recall vote. The African model for oppression, "one man, one vote, one time" now applies to Venezuela, too. Chavez's thugs enforce his rule in the streets and a controlling army provides him with the security to tighten his grip over his country while pressuring his neighbors. It's Venezuela's oil that allows Chavez and Castro to project their power throughout the region.
Venezuela and Mexico provide much of the U.S. energy needs. Without them, we'd be totally dependent on the Arab oil. Right now, Chavez is fully aligned with Castro, and they both are avowed foes of America. They've declared war on our interests in Latin America and in no small measure this is taking place because we are so focused elsewhere.
The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), sees further dangers in our Southern Hemisphere.
"Our current fixation with the exigencies of the Middle East has caused us to pay scant attention to two worrisome trends in our own backyard. Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah have been active in the tri-border region (where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay come together), Colombia and Panama n the nexus of drug money and Islamist ideology in an area where governments are often ineffectual. As the U.S. works to dry up Saudi and other sources of funding for terrorism, the vast sums pouring through the drug cartels is tempting. And the drug lords share the terrorists’ abhorrence of prosperous and stable societies. Furthermore, China has made political and economic forays into the region related in part to the cutoff of American military aid to countries that have not signed bilateral treaties with us regarding the new International Criminal Court (ICC). According to American military sources, Chinese officials made 20 visits to Latin American and Caribbean countries last year, and nine countries from the region sent high-level delegations to China."
Latin America is once again in the balance, and the anti-democratic forces lurking in each of its societies are subverting the hard-won freedoms her people gained during the last 30 years. Nascent democracies are always vulnerable to those who would destroy them.  Elections alone don't guarantee freedom, but the institutions that support freedom are critical to a democratic society, and they are under attack from a number of places. Absent democratic institutions and practices, Solzhenitsyn's darkness is more rather than less likely.
Preoccupied as we are in bringing democracy to the Middle East, we are losing our neighbors to the South.  The multiple pressures on this region to our south are recreating the instability and turmoil that was characteristic in this hemisphere in the 70's and 80's.
Traveling to Gaza every two weeks to oversee the birthing of a nascent terrorist state, is a strange priority for our Secretary of State in light of what is happening in our own hemisphere. In fact, succeeding administration's singular focus on the Middle East has allowed the cancer that Castro represents to mutate throughout the region, and we continually ignore what is happening in Latin America at our peril.
–nrg

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