The struggle for the hearts, minds and high moral ground in Latin America between Barack Obama of the US and Hugo Chevez of Venezuela has reached an interesting new phase with news the damn yanquis are to set up a new military hub in Alvaro Uribe’s Colombia.

This news is sure to have bourgeoisie Bolsheviks around the world rubbing their beards in apoplexy and angst about rich US imperialists from the north grinding down the poor Latinos from the south to establish hegemony over the western hemisphere.

And 48 years ago they would have been right as John F Kennedy’s Cuban exiles stormed ashore at the Bay of Pigs in a vainglorious attempt to overthrow Cuba’s new socialist government led by Fidel Castro. It failed miserably.

But this time, the North American Yanquis say, the enemy is not the socialist governments led by Hugo Chevez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, but the narco-terrorist euphemistically known as FARC — more properly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

The deal, which is yet to be signed, gives Obama a maximum 1,400 troops (800 military, 600 civilian contractors) on the ground at three Colombian air force bases and two Colombian naval bases for 10 years.

The US was forced to look for a new centre for regional operations in its war on terror and its war on drugs after Ecuador refused to renew the lease on its military base of Manta. Ecuador’s left-wing president Rafael Correa, a political ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has said he would rather “cut off his arm” than allow the Americans to stay on at Manta.

Military transport planes based at Palanqvero in Colombia will be able to eavesdrop and “interdict” drug traffickers and terrorist operating in half of South America and all of Central America.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, an American ally who has been taking the war up to the FARC since 2002, says the deal is just an extension of the existing Plan Colombia which allows the US to keep 600 surveillance operatives in this cornerstone country of 47 million people: “Reaching agreements with countries like the United States so that …… they help us in this battle against terrorism, against drug trafficking, is most convenient for the country”.

Until 1993 when he was gunned down on his rooftop, Colombia was the home of the Pablo Escobar’s Medellin drug cartel that controlled the massive cocaine traffic to the US. Colombia still provides 90 per cent of the world’s high grade cocaine and is a great source of income to FARC and the other paramilitaries ELN and AUC.

Colombian authorities have seized no fewer than 11 narco-submarines so far this year but demand in the US always seems to be supplied.

Uribe said the move was not designed to threaten the neighbouring left-wing states of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia — but he would say that wouldn’t he? There is little doubt the “21st Century Socialism” applecart Comandante Chevez has been driving around Latin America for the last decade has come up against its biggest roadblock.

It is also certain to have major ramifications for Chevez’s plans to get Obama to reinstall his good friend Mel Zeyala to his former throne in Honduras where the US also has a military base.