Leftist victories in Latin America reflect growing disenchantment
with neo-liberal economics
Kalinga SENEVIRATNE
NEO-LIBERALISM: While over 3000 American soldiers have died in
President George W Bush's war to "bring democracy" to Iraq since 2003, a
democratic revolution sweeping across Latin America during the same
period has elected leftwing leaders who have no faith in the United
States (US) prescribed neo-liberal "free market" economic model which
has been imposed on them by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank in the past 30 years.
MEETING: During her trip to Brazil in April 2005, United States
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with Brazilian President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who started the whole leftwing drift
in America's backyard more than seven years ago, said to red flag waving
supporters after being re-elected for a third time on a landslide in
December: "No one should fear socialism. Socialism is human. Socialism
is love. We need a new world".
And the latest left wing elect President Rafael Correa of Ecuador
said after being sworn in on January 14 that the "long neo-liberal night
is coming to an end" adding that the derelict "moulding clay" democracy
is over and "a sovereign, dignified, just and socialist Latin America is
beginning to rise".
Even President Ronald Reagan's nemesis Nicaragua's Sandanista leader
Daniel Ortago, who fought US-backed Contra terrorists as President in
the 1980s and was pushed out of power by a Washington backed opposition
in 1990, swept back to power through the ballot box on November 8 and
immediately spoke to President Chavez who has promised cheap oil and
other aid to lift Nicaraua's ailing economy after years of corruption
scandals and misrule by three US-backed governments.
Latin America's leftist parties, whom Washington ruthlessly
suppressed throughout the 1970s and 1980s with the help of military
dictators, are now making huge gains through the ballot box, which has
put Washington in a quandary.
The leftist drift in US's backyard started in 1999 with the election
of the charismatic former paratrooper Chavez as the president of
Venezuela. Seven years later it had become an avalanche with leftwing
leaders in office in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, Bolivia and
Chile.
While Peru's left wing candidate Ollanta Humala won the first round
of balloting for the presidency, he failed to win the presidency in the
run off last year in the midst of a lavish US-funded campaign by his
right wing opponent.
In July, Mexico's left wing candidate for the presidency Lopez
Obrador lost the election by a margin of less than one per cent to his
conservative opponent, and his supporters have so far refused to accept
the results claiming the count was rigged with the support of the US
administration.
Today's domination of the continent's political landscape by
left-wing presidents is a far cry from the 1980s when almost all the
countries were ruled by right wing (mainly military) dictators with
strong backing from the US government.
In addition to Chavez in Venezuela, Ortago in Nicaragua and Correa in
Ecuador, there is former union leader Lula da Silva in Brazil, outspoken
IMF-critic Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Tabare Vasquez in Uruguay, US
installed military dictator Augusto Pinochet's former prisoner Dr
Michelle Bachelet in Chile and staunchly anti-American indigenous leader
Evo Morales in Bolivia.
Lately, President Bush's neo-conservative supporters have become
alarmed by these democratic victories in their own backyard, because it
is throwing a serious challenge to neo-liberal economics promoted by
US-controlled agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank, as well as
"free trade" agreements which benefit rich business and exploits poor
labour.
Grassroots people in their millions right across Latin America are
saying that these free trade agreements and neo-liberal economics are
not working for them.
They see President Chavez's populist "Bolivarian Revolution" which
rejects corporate-led globalisation, and instead promotes grassroots
political participation and economic self-sufficiency, as the role model
for a global movement to alleviate poverty and injustice.
As if to push the point right up to its doorstep, President Chavez
has launched an aggressive campaign to export his "Pink Revolution" to
poverty-stricken communities in the US, offering free or discounted gas
to America's poorest citizens through CITGO, a subsidiary of Venezuela's
state oil company.
He has saved a popular street festival Fiesta Boricua, last year by a
US$100,000 donation from CITGO and has also offered to fly poor
Americans without health cover to Cuba for medical treatment.
Thus, he's winning followers especially among America's Hispanics, as
well as the impoverished Black communities.
Last year, the Miami Herald, reported that fifteen "Bolivarian
Circles" - the grassroots groups that form the basis of President
Chavez's social revolution in Venezuela - have sprung up in U.S. cities,
including New York, Los Angeles and Boston.
In February last year in congressional testimony, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said a "policy of inoculation" was necessary to
diplomatically contain Chavez's influence in the region.
"I don't think social processes are exportable if discontent doesn't
exist in the first place" Venezuelan born Professor Miguel Tinker Salas,
a historian at the Pomona College in California told America's AlterNet
news service recently, adding. "throughout the continent, there is a
great level of social discontent that's the product of 20 years of
(failed) neo-liberal policy."
But, American neo-conservatives are not impressed by that argument.
After Ecuador's President Correa announced in his first budget on
February 1 a reduction of US$ 1 billion in foreign debt repayments, and
channelled this money to double social benefits - such as education and
healthcare - to more than a million of the country's poorest, Stephen
Johnson a senior policy analyst for the neo-conservative American
think-tank The Heritage Foundation suggested that US should develop a
policy to "counter incoming armies of Cuban doctors and Venezuelan
security advisors".
He argues that the US should "augment support for civil society
groups while the opportunity exists and ramp up public diplomacy efforts
to strengthen local voices proposing independent solutions to Ecuador's
poverty and governance troubles".
But, its not only the Cubans and Venezuelans the Americans have to
worry about, in recent months, the Bush administration has been showing
increasing signs of getting rattled by China's penetration into its
backyard as well.
China has developed close economic relations with Latin America's
giant Brazil since President Lula da Silva came to power three years
ago.
So much so that Mandarin classes have become a growth industry in its
most populous city Sao Paulo. Chinese and Brazilians have been building
commuter jets together, exchanging military hardware and trading in a
variety of other goods.
In 2005, China and Venezuela signed 17 bilateral agreements, among
them deals for Chinese companies to explore for oil in Venezuela, which
President Chavez described as "bilateral strategic partnership of common
development".
Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil producer, and Chavez
claimed last year that they have the world's largest oil reserves.
Policy makers in Washington have finally woken up to the spectre of
encroaching China and leftist victories in the region.
Republican Congressman Dan Burton told the BBC late last year that
they are concerned about the leftist governments' dealings with China,
whom he described as a "potential enemy of the US becoming a dominant
force in this part of the world".
But, they are yet to admit that the root of the problem is the
failure of the US-imposed neo-economics model to uplift the economic
situation of the poor across the continent, and they are the one's who
have finally found a voice through the ballot box and are turning up in
droves at polling booths to drive away from power corrupt, rich and
failed conservative leaders.
The dilemma for the US establishment is that these people are
exercising the exact path the Americans have been preaching to the
people in developing countries on how to get rid of repressive rulers -
"put your faith in democracy and the ballot box". |