The cable drip keeps going on and now we are starting to see patterns emerge besides the obvious gossip content. El Pais from Spain, which is the "partner" specializing in cables related to Latin America, is starting to make interesting studies putting together several cables at once to let the big picture emerge. Today we have a fascinating narration about El Salvador, about how the FLMN tries to sabotage the current president Funes, how the secret service of Salvador basically works against its president and exposes the country to future problem by letting, for example, the Venezuelan foreign minister go through the country unnoticed to set the reentry of Zelaya in Honduras a year ago. You can read the five cables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that will let you know how even Funes is not feeling safe, and with good reasons.
What is shocking here is not what we read, we sort of suspected all of that stuff. The thing is that the US knew about all of this stuff during the Honduras crisis, how the risk for a domino effect on El Salvador could happen if Zelaya was back in office and yet we had to wait for the wikileaks to know about such an extensive knowledge.
In a way I can understand the secrecy: the US was not in any condition materially or morally to back up Funes publicly considering the past of El Salvador. However such knowledge should have made the US more critical of Zelaya brinkmanship pushed by Chavez and Lula. Eventually the US strategy did prevail in the end and I want to believe that it was due in part to the Salvador embassy cables.
Finally, since from Brazil to El Salvador it is common knowledge AND opinion that Chavez is a saboteur, destroying any international organization he can get away with (only MERCOSUR still is worth something in this hemisphere because Paraguay refuses to let Venezuela in), how come they are not trying harder to contain Chavez? Or a the Brazilian cables reveal, is it because the Brazilian are only too happy to let Chavez do the dirty job of Empire building in their favor?
Whatever it is, one thing is certain: Chaevz does not want anyone to look inside Venezuela but he is quiet the busy bee elsewhere. Is anyone, ANYONE, going to call him on that? And this also goes for the Venezuelan opposition who seems to be catatonic since September 26.