US Vice President Joe Biden is going to Santiago, Chile for the inauguration of President Michelle Bachelet this week.  But before the festivities, he had some choice words for Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro about the weeks of unrest there.

Biden accused Maduro of trying to distract from tangible economic problems in the homes of millions of Venezuelans with “completely false and outrageous conspiracies about the USA".  Nicolas Maduro has insisted that the protests are directly influenced by the Untied States.

“Instead, he should listen to the Venezuelan people, and look at the example of those leaders who resisted oppression in the Americas, or risk repeating the injustices against which they fought so bravely,” Biden added.

However, Biden flatly rejected any US military intervention in the situation of Venezuela, as opposed to past decades when the White House openly or covertly support the action of fascist and right-wing military dictatorships in several Latin America.  Most of those countries now have democratically-elected leader from the very Left these dictatorships tried to destroy through violence and murder.  Michelle Bachelet was herself a political prisoner and exile from Chile’s US-backed Pinochet dictatorship.  On Tuesday, the US Vice President will smile and applaud while the Socialist doctor and single mother is sworn in for her second term as Chile’s President.

Biden plans to meet with the heads of the few remaining staunchly pro-US countries in Latin America: Peru's Ollanta Humala, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, and Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto.  The rest, like Bachelet, aren’t necessarily anti-US but are charting their own paths without Washington’s direction.