Negotiator or Agitator

Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, is in the news for acting supposedly for the Colombian gov't for the release of civilian hostages held by the FARC in their guerrillas war against the Columbian people.
Now, obviously the FARC are Communist guerrillas, but many people don't realize Chavez is by his own admission a Maoist. That's right, the world's 5th largest exporter of oil is run by a Communist. 13% of the crude oil the US receives comes from Venezuela.
His politics and shady history (the first time he tried to be president it was an attempted coup d'etat) make you wonder whether this isn't the fox guarding the hen house. For all we know the 100,000 AK-47s he ordered in 2005 might be in the hands of the FARC or maybe he just gave them his old stock of weapons once he got new AKs.
Colombian law enforcement have found FARC leaders sheltered in Venezuela before. Seems like they were being sheltered by a government trying to Communist to the rest of Latin America. The Soviet Union fell apart and the Berlin Wall fell, but stubborn idealogues seem determined to try and make it work despite its inherent self-destructive nature.