Phil Gunson

What a week for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. After he dispatched troops on a secret raid to attack the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in Ecuador, the Andean region was plunged into crisis.

More drama ahead in Venezuela's long-running political soap opera: after nearly nine years in office, radical leftist President Hugo Chávez is facing his strongest opposition in years and possibly his first-ever electoral defeat.

Inside a dank warehouse in the working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca last week, young Argentines were standing cheek to cheek and swaying to the danceable rhythms of a live band.

Hugo Chavez was the featured speaker last week at a football stadium hosting an antiglobalization conference in Brazil. The Venezuelan president dressed for the occasion, wearing a red shirt featuring the familiar image of the iconic Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara.

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's controversial president, spent all of 2002 fending off attempts to oust him from power. Massive street protests, organized by political opponents, roiled Caracas.

A thunderstorm is brewing, and Antonio Arellano, clutching a scrap of paper bearing the number 41, is still far from the head of the line outside the government grocery store.

At first blush, it looked like a blast from Latin America's authoritarian past. Once again, graying generals and admirals were demanding the immediate resignation of a democratically elected president.

Until the last, Hugo Chavez and his closest supporters refused to acknowledge that anything might be amiss. Last Thursday afternoon, while more than 100,000 angry Venezuelans marched toward the presidential palace, Chavez's brother and land-reform chief, Adan Chavez, was calmly promising that Hugo's "revolutionary" vision would still be guiding the country for years to come. "So long as the people support the revolution, there's no need to worry," the smiling Adan declared.

After a three-week, 15-country tour, Hugo Chavez returned home last month to a rapturous reception from tens of thousands of cheering supporters. At least, that's how the Venezuelan president seems to have perceived what others saw as a collective yawn from his countrymen.

It looked like a low-budget remake of "Evita." The Latin American strongman, his blond wife at his side, addresses the enraptured masses from the balcony of a presidential palace.

Hugo Chavez is not the type to beg. In fact, since his landslide election in 1998, critics of the Venezuelan president have called him an autocrat. That made the nocturnal meeting in the gardens of the presidential residence this month even more bizarre.

A row among old friends has cast a dark cloud over the popular government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The trouble began last month, when Chavez accepted the resignation of his secret-police chief, retired Lt.