The draft was the first time that the government publicly included in the Foreign Ministry’s budget these types of spending plans for programs to promote Chávez’s ideology abroad.


Chávez is ”making use of the enormous amount of money that comes from high oil prices to buy support from Latin American countries and promote anti-American initiatives,” said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank…

For Latin America, it includes plans to consolidate ALBA, Chávez’s response to the free-market treaties promoted by the United States, and a strategy to “neutralize the actions of the empire, [by] strengthening the solidarity and the public opening of organized social movements.”

In Central America and Mexico, the draft says the Venezuelan government expects to ‘’strengthen alternative movements” in “the search for an erosion from the imperial domination.”