Managua, Nicaragua ? While the world was looking at Venezuela’s referendum, the Hugo Chavez-backed leaders of Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua were carrying out what many in their countries describe as constitutional coups.

Was it a coordinated effort? Is there something – other than Venezuela’s oil money – that is fueling these and other Latin American leaders’ totalitarian temptations? Or is it the collapse of the collective defense of democracy system that Latin American countries used to defend each other’s democratic institutions until a few years ago?

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa late last week had their constitutional assemblies pass measures that will lead to a steady accumulation of power, allow their indefinite re-election, and strip the opposition of much of their political space.

In Nicaragua, where I happened to be this weekend, President Daniel Ortega late Friday officially launched his Councils of Citizens’ Power, citizens’ committees that he described as new tools to create a “direct democracy.”

The CPCs will be led by his wife, increasingly powerful first lady Rosario Murillo, and will be run by the government, despite a congressional ruling that specifically banned Ortega from creating a government-backed parallel power structure that could overshadow democratically elected governments.

“There is a clear intent by Ortega to forcefully take control of democratic institutions and break the rule of law,” former 2006 presidential candidate and center-right congressman Eduardo Montealegre told me after Ortega’s announcement.

Edmundo Jarquin, a center-left former presidential candidate who also ran against Ortega in the 2006 elections, told me that Ortega is trying to stage a “de facto institutional coup.”

But most politicians across the political spectrum I talked to agreed that Ortega will have a harder time than Chavez, Morales or Correa to gain absolute power, no matter how hard he tries. Among the reasons:

First, unlike Chavez, the Nicaraguan president doesn’t have oil or any other source of massive government income. On the contrary, Nicaragua is one of Latin America’s poorest countries. Ortega has no money to bankroll a campaign to get support for a totalitarian project.

Second, unlike Chavez, Ortega runs a minority government, in which the opposition controls the National Assembly. Ortega won the presidency with barely 38 percent of the vote, largely thanks to a split among right-of-center parties, and a recent poll by M&R Consultores shows that only 22 percent of Managua residents have a positive opinion of him.

Third, Ortega’s growing delegation of powers to his wife is creating growing discontent within his own Sandinista forces.

Fourth, Ortega does not control the army or the police, and has little support from the media. In fact, he routinely complains that the media is run by the “oligarchy,” and that journalists are Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbel’s “children.”

I asked retired general Humberto Ortega, the president’s brother and the former chief of the armed forces during the 1979-90 Sandinista regime, whether the Nicaraguan president’s creation of the CPCs amounts to a move toward an elected dictatorship.

The former leftist revolutionary commander, who has moved to the center but remains close to his brother, said creation of the CPCs “may be an abuse of power, but they are not aimed at breaking the democratic institutions of this country.” He added, referring to his brother, “I have never detected that he wants to move in the direction of breaking the rule of law.”

Ortega may have pushed the envelope a bit too far trying to strengthen his own Sandinista base, or he may be trying to erode democratic institutions to become a president for life. For the time being, it looks like he’s tempted to do the latter, but that – barring a deeper commitment by Chavez to bankroll Nicaragua – he can’t.

Amid news of escalating tension in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, something Chavez’s former wife Maria Isabel Rodriguez said in an interview with Colombia’s Radio Caracol on Thursday occurs to me. Referring to Chavez’s continental “revolution,” she said, “What started as a battle against poverty has ended up in a battle against those who think differently.”

It says it all.