Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will seek to consolidate regional support for his anti-US politics as he hosts an energy summit of South American leaders today.
The meeting on the Caribbean tourist island of Margarita comes as rifts emerge across the continent over ethanol, with Brazil working with Washington to promote the fuel in an effort Mr Chavez says will increase world hunger.
Mr Chavez, who governs atop the hemisphere's largest oil reserves, wants the 12-nation conference to focus on regional integration as a counterweight to the United States.
"Gradually the US empire will end up a paper tiger and we the peoples of Latin America will become true tigers of steel," Mr Chavez said on the eve of the summit.
Security is tight for almost a dozen heads of state.
In the last few days, gray military vessels have churned through crystalline waters and helicopters have clattered above sunbathers on the resort island that is popular with Venezuelan vacationers for its white-sand beaches and VAT-free stores.
At the two-day summit, Mr Chavez will promote a much-heralded project to build a 8,000 kilometre natural gas pipeline linking the Opec nation's gas reserves to nations such as Brazil and Argentina.
While Mr Chavez will seek to show unity with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, taking him on a tour of a petrochemical plant today, the conference is unlikely to avoid the controversy of ethanol.
Aides to Mr Lula say it is his "obsession" despite being labelled "genocidal" by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Mr Chavez's political ally.
Venezuela, the fifth-largest exporter of oil to the United States, has urged Latin America to pass over ethanol and instead rely on its oil reserves and cooperate in developing ways to reduce energy consumption.