Latin America's New Proxy War; Washington has gone all-out to stop ChAvez from winning [a Security Council seat]. He's been personally campaigning for months.(Hugo ChAvez)

Byline: Jorge G. Castaneda

The summit of nonaligned countries held last week in Havana was an occasion for all sorts of things: speculating on Fidel Castro's health, supporting all the "worthwhile" causes in the world--from Iran's nuclear program to Bolivia's stalled natural-gas nationalization--and predictably, bashing George W. Bush. This last contact sport is beginning to give traditional anti-Americanism

a bad name; it is vicious, uninterrupted and, unfortunately, not often easy to rebut. But the summit also provided a marvelous opportunity for one of the stars of the show--Venezuela's Hugo ChAvez--to lobby strong and hard for his cause of the day, getting his country elected as one of Latin America's two nonpermanent members of the United Nations Security Council for the 2007-08 term.

The Non-Aligned Movement has well over 100 members; all of them vote in the U.N. General Assembly, which, sometime next month, will elect Argentina's replacement as one of Latin America's two representatives on the Council. ChAvez wants the seat badly. Next year there is another dramatic battle shaping up: Turkey, Iceland and Austria will compete for two of the three European slots. But the main event this year is the contest between Venezuela and Guatemala for the Latin American post. This is, in fact, a proxy battle between Bush and ChAvez. Washington has gone all-out to stop ChAvez from winning; the Venezuelan has been personally campaigning for months all over the globe, doling out petrodollars, oil and gas projects, schools and hospitals as he jets from capital to capital in Africa, Asia and his home region.

A two-thirds majority is needed to win; that's 128 votes to triumph, or 64 votes to defeat one's rival. The voting goes on until a candidate reaches the magic number; there is an unwritten rule that after three rounds, previous commitments are withdrawn and everything goes. Actually, everything goes most of the time: promises are broken, votes are bought and sold and betrayal is ever-present. All of this occurs, of course, because the stakes are high, and higher in Latin America than at any time since 1979, when Fidel Castro attempted to win the regional seat, claiming that Cuba, being chairman then--as now--of the Non-Aligned Movement, was entitled to membership. The United States blocked Castro, using Colombia as a stalking horse, and Mexico was elected as a compromise candidate. This time, things might be more ...