By Frank Jack Daniel

CARACAS, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Venezuelan helicopters chugged home empty from Colombia on Thursday after a failed mission to pick up hostages held by Marxist guerrillas, a new defeat for President Hugo Chavez who is still smarting from a tough year.

The four helicopters marked with Red Cross symbols flew back to Venezuela from the Colombian town of Villavicencio without the hostages they had left to collect from a jungle region.

After several diplomatic spats and a sobering defeat in a referendum on whether he be allowed to run for reelection indefinitely, the leftist Chavez nearly ended 2007 on a high note, drawing widespread praise for brokering the deal to free two women and a child from secret rebel camps.

But the plan collapsed on Monday, leaving Chavez exposed to criticism he had trusted the rebels too much.

"President Chavez is having a very difficult time," said Eduardo Gamarra, a Latin America expert at Florida International University. "He may have compromised his own credibility and the FARC may have taken him for a ride.

Chavez hoped the deal would burnish his credentials as a statesman after developing a reputation for frequent diplomatic squabbles and high-profile insults of world leaders.

A successful hostage handover would also have taken attention away from his defeat at home in the December referendum on sweeping political reforms, his first major poll defeat since he won power in a 1998 election.

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He sent helicopters and foreign envoys into Colombia with much fanfare last week to pick up Consuelo Gonzalez, Clara Rojas and her young son Emmanuel, who was born in captivity about four years ago, his father a guerrilla fighter.

The normally vocal Chavez has not spoken since the night the plan crumbled, when he met with relatives of the captives and angrily accused Colombia's conservative President Alvaro Uribe of "dynamiting" the deal.

A handover would have raised hopes other high-profile captives, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. contractors in Colombia's drugs war, could be freed in exchange for jailed guerrillas.

Colombia's conservative President Alvaro Uribe told Chavez to ditch negotiations with guerrilla leaders last year but he insisted and won the promised release from the rebels.

When the mission unraveled on New Year's Eve, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, complained of army operations in a large region designated by the rebels to free their captives.

Uribe, whose father was killed by the FARC in a botched kidnapping, said the rebels lied and no longer even hold the child hostage.

Chavez dreams of uniting South America through socialism and is a fierce critic of the United States. Last year, he battled with Uribe over the hostage talks and called home Venezuela's ambassador in Colombia.

The FARC, a four-decade old peasant army now funded by cocaine production, says it will still try and slip through army cordons to free the hostages. Chavez has vowed to plan a new, lower-profile release. (Editing by Kieran Murray)

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