Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has grand designs on the Caribbean. He considers it his swimming pool, and its tiny community of nations his pool-rafts; places where he can swirl his oily mixed drinks and get himself a back rub, made in the shade.

Well, the Caribbean states don’t care for this, and today they gave a collective thump to Chavez by seeking a free trade pact as a group with the United States. With a hat tip to Boz, The Miami Herald has the item here.

That’s got to be a blow for Chavez who has lavished millions of dollars of cheap oil on these countries and set up a deal with Fidel Castro in Havana for PetroCaribe in a bid to buy their political loyalty.

Some Caribbean states, like Barbados, and Trinidad, saw right through the scheme and refused to sign up. Their national integrity was far more important. Others went along, and, not seeing things Chavez’s way, decided they wouldn’t be bought off either.

There is more to the story, though. Why do these Caribbean states suddenly seek to distance themselves from big smiling Santa Chavez in his Hawaiian print trunks, clutching his Mai Tai and beating his steel oil drum?

Chavez apparently is also seeking drug routes, and the Caribbean is one pivotal transit point. He needs money, Castro needs money and Castro, with his brother Raul a longtime drug lord, knows all the drug routes to make it all happen. The massive drug haul in Mexico is just one indicator of the emergence of Hugo Chavez as the “untouchable” New Noriega of this hemisphere.

It’s more than that, though. Chavez is seeking to extend his military muscle through the region, as his recent threats to Curacao clearly show. It’s not just Curacao, though. There’s the Venezuelan militarization of the Aves Islands off the coast of Puerto Rico that have scared Caribbean states like Dominica and St. Lucia, which don’t want their pretty tourist paradise turned into a grim Soviet garrison.

Fausta has a fantastic roundup on all these developments, showing how they relate, in this brilliant post here.