SOUTH AMERICA:Despite regional support for Chávez, there are tensions among the leaders of South America's so-called "pink tide", writes Tom Henniganin São Paulo
After a rough few months, the news has taken a turn for the better for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez.
Recent elections in Nicaragua and Ecuador have seen allies become presidents and now he has won a new six-year term as Venezuela's leader - the post he has relentlessly used to try and rally Latin America to his "Bolivarian Revolution" - a brand of 21st century socialism named after South American independence hero Simón Bolívar.
Chavez used his victory speech to claim Sunday's landslide victory as "another defeat for the devil which wants to dominate the world" - a rebuke to the Bush administration which only last month claimed a string of setbacks signalled Chávez was "losing influence" in the region.
Nicholas Burns, currently the number two official in the US state department, made the claim following Venezuela's failure to win one of Latin America's seats on the UN Security Council, despite a high-profile diplomatic offensive generously funded by the country's oil wealth.
This setback followed defeats for populist candidates in presidential elections in Peru and Mexico after opponents used their links - real or otherwise - with Chávez as a stick with which to beat them and scare voters.
But now Chávez will attend this week's summit of the South American Community of Nations in Bolivia - the latest in the continent's interminable series of presidential get-togethers - with his standing as one of the region's leading players reinforced.
As if to emphasise his spreading influence, while in Bolivia he will jointly inaugurate a new gas processing plant with Evo Morales, his Bolivian counterpart and the first South American leader to sign up to Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution.
The Bolivians will run the plant with the help of Venezuela's state oil giant PDVSA, whose products, profits and expertise Chávez has relentlessly used to draw other countries into his camp.
But while there will be warm words from his peers in the Andean city of Cochabamba, behind the bonhomie there are tensions among the leaders of South America's so-called "pink tide". While Argentina's Nestor Kirchner was the first to call with his congratulations on Sunday night, Venezuela's electoral authorities accused Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of interfering in the campaign by openly backing Chávez during a speech in Venezuela last month.
When Venezuela helped Bolivia nationalise its gas industry the heaviest loser was Petrobras, Brazil's state energy firm and the biggest investor in Bolivia's economy. This provoked widespread anger in Brazil and accusations that far from being an ally, Chávez was meddling in Brazil's back yard.
Lula quietly accepted Bolivia's nationalisation and the need to pay higher prices for gas imports, but already there are fears in Brazil that the victory of the "Chavista"-friendly Rafael Correa in Ecuador could see the same scenario played out in the continent's second-biggest oil exporter, where Petrobras has major investments.
Another source of tension for Chávez's allies are the friends he keeps outside of the region. During his presidency Venezuela has become a close ally of Iran, an alignment that infuriates the US and makes several of his regional partners uneasy.
Argentina recently demanded that Caracas recall its ambassador in Buenos Aires after it accused him of stirring up pro-Iranian sentiment just as Argentina issued international arrest warrants for several current and former Iranian leaders. Argentina wants them charged in the suspected Iran-Hizbullah suicide bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people.
But with his new mandate, and with the price of Venezuelan crude up 600 per cent since he first came to power, Mr Chavez is unlikely to quit the stage any time soon. The region's presidents will be working hard to paper over any differences.