It’s as if the mighty impact of CAFTA that we all worked so hard to achieve has really started to yield something.

Veneconomy, in a brilliant essay here, noted the signs of stinging defeat it rained on Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Suddenly all his oil billions are meaningless compared to the vast opportunity of the great Gringo market up north. What’s Chavez’s oil billions compared to the U.S.’s trillion-dollar buying market? Who wants charity when they can have something way bigger and own it free and clear, no strings attached, through honest two-way trade? National sovereignty? Get it, for real, with CAFTA.

Second, we see the miraculous strengthening of the near-prostrate Nicaraguan government – almost overnight. The Marxists there are on the defensive now. Daniel Ortega is being rolled up. It’s a thing of beauty.

And in this poignant essay, an anti-free trade Congressman says that only the horror of Hugo Chavez made him vote against all he believed by voting for CAFTA. Chavez, and only Chavez, changed his mind. “Because communism still isn’t dead down there” he says hauntingly.

The Congressman fearfully wondered if he did the right thing. In light of these dawn-breaking events in Latin America that have come with the passage of CAFTA, he need not worry. His instincts were completely right.

And Chavez is in the background, still screaming, because the tide of history has just turned on him. We all just did a number on him.

VIVA CAFTA!