The best part about CAFTA is upon us – Hugo Chavez has come out screaming on Venezuelan television about CAFTA’s passage. And why shouldn’t he scream about our CAFTA victory? A rich El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are the last things Chavez wants to see. It’s bad enough that these democracies are friendly with the U.S. – now they have free trade rights, too, and as nations they have embarked on a great regional mission to become as rich as America. Why shouldn’t they be? They’re our friends.

But for Chavez, it’s pain upon pain. Not only has Central America repudiated him utterly, in favor of the U.S.A., and set up a bulwark against tyranny on the Caribbean’s entire western flank. Chavez’s whole Masterplan For The Takeover Of The Americas has been destroyed. There will be no big prize of Mexico at the end of the communist rainbow for Chavez and Fidel Castro, the pass has just been blocked forever. And Danny Ortega is sunk, too.

Rejoice anew about the stunning victory that was CAFTA this week, a great collective effort by the peoples all over this country and Latin America to make prosperity, not state control, the answer to all that ails the hemisphere.

UPDATE: Here is the story in English. Savor.