>The government's desire to control the trade union movement has led to
>continuous intervention by the public authorities in the unions' internal
>affairs and generated disturbing social and political tensions within the
>country.
In your focus on this violation, you're completely overlooking the class dimension of what the unions are doing, which is siding with domestic employers and coup plotters while taking NED money. You have no problem with the USG going after thugs like Hoffa Sr - and how do you feel about trusteeship? - but the Chavez gov't is wrong to "interfere with the internal affairs" of unions that behave like that?
Another point - one reason Chavez' popularity has fallen is that the economy's in bad shape, which is predictably what happens when a radical government takes power. Bourgeois confidence is shattered and capital flees - which forces the goverment to do things liberals denounce as authoritarian. The alternative is tepid reform or worse. I think it was the CFR guy writing in the NYRB who said that Lula'd model may end up being Felipe Gonzalez in Spain, who used the socialist party as a vehicle of a neoliberal "modernization" that drew the praise of Milton Friedman in his quasi-endorsement of Bill Clinton in 1992.
Doug