At a signing ceremony for the oil deals in Jamaica on Tuesday, Chavez urged Caribbean governments to consider Cuba-style socialism as an alternative to capitalism.
"Fidel, I think you were always right: It's socialism or death," he said.
Yet Chavez can only go so far in eroding U.S. influence in the Caribbean, analysts say. The United States is the biggest trade partner of most Caribbean countries and their largest market for tourism.
The same day the Dominican Republic signed the Petrocaribe oil agreement with Venezuela, its legislature overwhelmingly approved a free trade agreement with the United States and five Central American countries.
"Only a crazy person would have turned down Chavez's deal with oil at $70 a barrel," said Miguel Ceara-Hatton, a U.N. economist in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. "This won't change relations with the United States."
Still, the Petrocaribe agreement left Caribbean countries indebted to Venezuela. Nine countries - Antigua, Belize, Grenada, Guyana, Dominica, Suriname, St. Kitts, St. Vincent and the Dominican Republic - signed deals under the initiative in Jamaica. Cuba and Jamaica had previously signed.
............."Chavez has been generous," said Larry Birns, an director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "And in certain respects, he'll expect dividends."***
''That's why we propose to this assembly that the United Nations leave this country, which is not respectful of the very resolutions of this assembly,'' he said.
He said Bush's economic policies that pushed free trade and market openness were ``an infinite tragedy.''
When a diplomat handed him a note telling him he had gone over the allotted time, Chávez tossed it away, saying that if Bush could speak for 20 minutes, he could too. He spoke for 22 minutes. ...***