During a visit to Venezuela on Friday and Saturday, deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya met with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and spoke at the extraordinary congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Chavez and Zelaya met privately on Friday night and coming out of that meeting Foreign Affairs minister Nicolas Maduro told the press that they had decided that Zelaya would direct the political council of Petrocaribe, the Caribbean energy integration organization that Venezuela initiated in 2005.

Speaking at the PSUV congress, Zelaya said, “You have resisted everything, you have overcome an extremely conservative society, you have created a Latin American agenda, you have given freedom and struggle a place.”

“I’m inspired by you, ....by the Bolivarian revolution,” he said.

By Mark Weisbrot

Hillary Clinton’s Latin America tour is turning out to be about as successful as George W. Bush’s visit in 2005, when he ended up leaving Argentina a day ahead of schedule just to get the hell out of town. The main difference is that she is not being greeted with protests and riots. For that she can thank the positive media image that her boss, President Obama, has managed to maintain in the region, despite his continuation of his predecessor’s policies.

But she has been even more diplomatically clumsy that Bush, who at least recognized that there were serious problems and knew what not to say. "The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion," Clinton said in Buenos Aires, adding that “it was done without violence.”

This is rubbing salt into her hosts’ wounds, as they see the military overthrow of President Mel Zelaya last June, and the United States’ subsequent efforts to legitimize the dictatorship there, as not only a failure but a threat to democracy throughout the region.

It is also an outrageous thing to say, given the political killings, beatings, mass arrests and torture that the coup government used in order to maintain power and repress the pro-democracy movement. The worst part is that they are still committing these crimes.