A Would-Be Bolivar.(Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as successor to legendary political activist Simon Bolivar)

It was billed as the inaugural meeting of the Bolivarian Congress of Peoples, and the three-day jamboree in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas had a distinctly defiant flavor. The congress brought together many leading lights of the Latin American left--some of them dressed in red woolen ponchos and brown trilby hats--and they railed against neoliberal economic policies, the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) initiative and other bogeys that, in the words of a publicity handout, had been "cooked up in the laboratories of the great financial and power centers of the countries that dominate the world." With that kind of rhetoric on offer, last week's gathering could have been easily been mistaken for just another gringo-bashing gabfest. But the man who opened and closed the proceedings was Venezuela's mercurial President Hugo Chavez, and among those in attendance were representatives of so-called "insurrectionary" movements that have rattled governments throughout the region--including Bolivia's Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), which spearheaded the demonstrations that brought down President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in October, and the Piqueteros of Argentina, a grass-roots movement that helped oust Argentine President Fernando de la Rua in December 2001.

That's why Latin America's fledgling Bolivarian movement should be taken seriously. Chavez sees himself as the logical successor to Simon Bolivar--the 19th-century Venezuelan independence hero who tried to unite South America under a single government--and the launch of a movement bearing the Liberator's name dovetails with Chavez's ambition of becoming the 21st-century benefactor of the Latin left. The 49-year- old Chavez has plenty of cash with which to play that role: as president of Venezuela he controls the largest oil reserves this side of the Middle East. "Chavez is launching a mass-based struggle," says Alberto Garrido, author of several books about the Venezuelan leader. "The most radical movements, the street organizations, now belong to the Bolivarian movement." ...