Down South, Turning Left

So what’s up with Latin America?

In recent years, a host of left-wing governments have swept to power south of the border, and while Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is the most famous and most radical, also on the ‘watch list’ is Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, Luiz Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva of Brazil, and (most recently) Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador.

Who are these people, anyway?

They come from a fairly diverse set of backgrounds:

Chavez is a former colonel in the paratrooper division who led an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992, for which he spent two years in prison. As it became clear the coup wasn’t going to work he told his supporters to stand down and went on TV, declaring that their goals hadn’t been achieved, ‘for now’. Upon his release, he built up his political base and won the presidency in 1999.

da Silva is the former head of a major Brazilian steel worker’s union During his rise to political prominence, many supporters of the former military dictatorship (including the US government) dubbed him ‘the son of Moscow’, but da Silva has been careful to move both his language and his policies toward the center. His nickname, ‘Lula’ is short for ‘Luiz’. It’s also the Portuguese word for ‘squid’. Whether that has any significance is up for debate.

Nestor Kirchner is the kind of person neither left-wingers nor right-wingers can really get excited about. Argentina’s current crisis is tied to the massive unpaid loans from the IMF, and while Kirchner decries the international banking establishment in harshest terms while at home, he’s mild and amiable when dealing with the financiers themselves, and has so far enacted no serious reforms.

Palacio is a trained cardiologist who was elected vice president of Ecuador in 2002. He has no official political party, though many of his ministers are from the Izquierda Democratica (Democratic Left).

How did they come to power? And, for that matter, why?

Well, they were all democratically elected, so far as anyone can tell. Chavez has survived numerous well-funded recall attempts by landslide margins, despite the fact that his opposition is rich, well-organized, and controls the media. Palacio only came into office very recently following his predecessor Lucio ‘Sucio’ Gutierrez fleeing to Brazil to escape from an angry mob.

All the men mentioned above got their jobs for the same reason any elected official should get his job: the old way wasn’t working. After decades of promises by politicians to use their nation’s enormous natural resources to enrich their people, after loan after loan from the World Bank was wasted to no effect and South America still maintained incredibly high poverty rates; (up to 80%, in the case of Venezuela) the voters had had enough.

Now, what are they doing that bothers people so much?

Their policies and rhetoric tend to be against international banking organizations (IMF, World Bank, etc.) and their domestic policies center on social spending and reducing foreign control of their internal affairs. Seeing as the US is the main benefactor of such groups. This is coupled with America’s long history of overthrowing leftist democracies has made regional leaders somewhat jumpy.

Venezuela and Ecuador are especially high priorities because of their large stores of oil, and in these days of high fuel prices and Middle Eastern chaos, one can’t be too careful about where your oil is coming from.

I don’t think these developments are anything terribly surprising or anything an honest citizen needs to worry about. Thus far, there have been (despite a host of completely unproven allegations to the contrary) no death squads, mass jailings of political opponents, clampdowns on free speech, or suspension of democratic institutions – unlike what happened under numerous Latin American governments installed by the CIA. In fact, if US businesses were really smart, instead of incredibly idiotic and short-sighted, they’d support these left-wing movements in Latin America with all they had.

The reason is simple; they’re trying to turn Latin America into a collection of first-world countries. Should they succeed, that means a great deal more money and opportunity for everyone – including us.* If we work with them, they’ll work with us. That’s what the Bolivarian revolution is all about, so far as the US is concerned.

Palacio himself has said (In reference to the World Bank) "If we pay that amount of debt, we're dead. We have to survive. If we die, who is going to pay them?"


*Call that bourgeois justification if you want. I know who my audience is.