Critical Times

During the last couple years, while President Bush’s government has been consumed with the mess caused by his heavy-handed shoot’em up foreign policies, Latin America has gradually gone pink. No not gay, worse still socialist! And not because some khaki clad Left wing guerrillas overthrew the pro-American governments either, but completely democratically. Voters threw the well-heeled bums out. What a bitch!

Suddenly the US administration is faced with at least two Fidelistas (admirers of Cuba’s Castro) and three other leaders who wish to pursue some policies independent of the US that have more in common with the Sandinistas (a leftists party who once held government in the Central American country of Nicaragua) than the Chicago School of Business.

Here’s how the score board looks:

Bolivia
Election: 19 December 2005. Left-wing candidate Evo Morales, leader of MAS (Movement towards Socialism) won a historic 54% of the vote, making him the country’s first indigenous president. He has described the election as the beginning of a new era for Bolivia. An Aymara Indian and coca farmers’ leader, Morales is a close ideological ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Evo Morales is against US-backed coca eradication programs and seeks some form of national control over Bolivia’s huge gas reserves. Coca is the source of many traditional medicines and condiments. Morales was first elevated to political leadership through his advocacy for the coca growers (“cocaleros”). He insists that non-narcotic markets for coca exist in Europe and China and plans to remove all restrictions on cultivation. Like most Bolivians, he believes the US and other developed countries should do something significant about the demand for drugs rather than driving poor cocalero families into starvation. Morales has taken over from an interim government, sworn in after blockades and mass protests demanding the nationalization of the energy sector forced Carlos Mesa to resign.

Chile
Election: 15 January 2006. Center-left candidate Michelle Bachelet beat conservative businessman Sebastian Pinera to become Chile’s first woman president. A single parent, and avowed agnostic, Ms Bachelet was seen as a risky choice (Latinos are considered a very macho society) for the Chilean Socialist Party, nevertheless a choice that didn’t seem to worry the voters. During the US-backed Pinochet dictatorship Ms. Bachelet was imprisoned and tortured.

El Salvador
Election: 12 March 2006. Whilst National Assembly and municipal elections saw an increased participation rate of voters (52%), the elections were marred by bribery, intimidation and violence. The left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), were at the receiving end of varied attempts to sabotage their election campaign and victories. It appears the FMLN looks like holding 32 of the 84 seats in the national parliament. The remaining seats are likely to go to the right wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party with 34 and the centre parties scoring the rest of the 18 seats. The conservative Party of National Conciliation (PCN) is expected to continue to govern in coalition with ARENA. The reactionary and pro US Tony Saca, President of El Salvador, attempted to pull off a stunt by declaring the ARENA candidate Rodrigo Samayoa (a former death squads leader) had won the mayoralty of the capital, San Salvador. This flew in the face of the fact that the FMLN’s Violeta Menjivar had won the position of mayor, a key political position, by a slender margin of 59 votes. When news of Saca’s false declaration of ARENA’s “victory” in San Salvador was discovered, 25,000 protesters gathered in front of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s offices until Menjivar’s victory was confirmed. Considering the violent political conditions that the FMLN has to endure it has done well. The reason being it is the only party that attempts to represent the poor and workers, both inside and outside of parliament.

In early March the FMNL and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government announced a new joint venture to help reduce transport costs in FMLN-governed municipalities. Part of the alternative Latin American integration plan PetroCaribe, the deal will provide cheap oil to poor municipalities facing transport crises.

Peru
Next election: April 2006. Current President, Alejandro Toledo took office in 2001. Toledo’s approval rating has slumped amid street protests, his government’s struggle to create jobs and a string of scandals involving ministers, aides and family members. Among those vying to succeed him are former military rebel Ollanta Humala and polls suggest a dramatic rise in his popularity. He is a critic of neoliberalism (economic rationalism), is close to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, and wants to nationalise infrastructure and rewrite contracts with foreign investors. Washington is also alarmed at Humala’s support for growers of coca.

Nicaragua
Next election: November 2006. Current president US-backed Bolanos has been increasingly isolated since he led an anti-corruption drive against his predecessor and former ally, Arnoldo Aleman, who has since been convicted of fraud. Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega plans to run for president for the fourth time Observers say that the US is concerned about the possibility of Ortega returning to power. The Sandinistas lost office in the 1990 elections, following a 10-year civil war against the US-backed Contras. Of all the countries turning left, Nicaragua is the most ironic. For it was over this country that the former US President Ronald Reagan came close to impeachment for illegally aiding anti-Sandinista “Contra” forces with weapons financed from drug money (remember “Contra-Gate”)some twenty years ago.

Venezuela
Next election: Dec 2006. The current president, Hugo Chavez, has survived a coup, protests, strikes and a referendum on his rule – which he won. His aim is to create a “new form of socialism” and has pursued populist policies. Chavez has sought to widen Venezuela’s influence in Latin America to counter that of Washington. He has opposed the FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas) with his own ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) and promoted MERCOSUR (Market of the South) as a common and integrated market that mutually benefits Latin American member countries. High oil prices have strengthened Chavez’s position as they have helped Venezuela – the world’s fifth oil exporter – to grow robustly. He maintains close ties with Cuba and Iran, which attract US hostility. His party and allies swept the recent December, 2005 National Assembly elections that marked another significant step forward in Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution (Social Justice policies named in honour of Simon Bolivar, the nineteenth century liberator of South America from the Spanish colonial rulers). Chavez’s parliamentary opposition boycotted the elections, frighten they would be decimated in the polls. Consequently the Pro-Chavez candidates won all 167 seats, receiving nearly 90% of the vote. Chavez’s party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR), won 68% of the vote, taking more than two-thirds of the seats. It was the tenth straight electoral victory for Chavez since he was elected president in 1998.

The Venezuelan Government, through its own CITGO Petroleum Corporation, is currently supplying heating oil to disadvantaged communities at 40% discount in the US states of Massachusetts, Maine, and The Bronx borough of New York. Discussions for further expansion of the program are underway in several other states, including Delaware, Vermont, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the entity in charge of the city of Chicago’s public transportation, initially rejected an offer from CITGO to provide discounted diesel for its fleet of public buses. However, faced with a 17 million budget deficit, and under pressure from local community leaders, the CTA agreed to sit down with CITGO to find ways to accept the fuel. Washington is not impressed and a just little embarrassed!

Democracy Vs Economy

The past five years have seen uprisings overthrow governments in Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia. In Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador and Uruguay, governments have been elected on anti-neoliberal platforms in recent times. The Left is considered a serious challenger in the upcoming presidential elections in Mexico. Besides voting for center-left parties and candidates, Latin American societies are also beginning to demonstrate their rejection of the dominant economics in many other ways. In Uruguay, voters rejected any privatization of the water system, while efforts to hold referendums rejecting free trade agreements have gained momentum in Ecuador and Peru. Popular demonstrations against privatizations, free trade, and US military intervention, as well as local struggles for autonomy and resource control, are mounting. A number of factors have converged to push Latin America to the left. Foremost have been the past repressions of the US backed right wing military dictatorships and the failure of the neoliberal economic model which destroyed living standards. Signs that patience has run out have become common, from the street chants of angry Argentines that “They’ve all got to go!” to widening citizen movements against free trade. The economic crisis in Uruguay in 2002, precipitated by the financial free-fall in neighboring Argentina, played a big role in the election of center-left and left wing Governments.

Unbridled capitalism with its free trade, free market, free-that-never-seems-to-arrive, has failed the Latin Americans. Democratic elections alone turned out to be only a partial answer to the disastrous economic landslide experienced by the people’s of Latin America. Another part of the answer was to be found in these nations’ economic systems and making sure those they elect do not become captives of their nation’s economic elite, who are aligned with more a powerful US economic elite. For capitalists will always maximize profits when allowed to do so, regardless of how detrimental it is to their citizen’s livelihood. After all, that’s what they must do in order to fulfill their obligations to their bankers, investors and shareholders. Governments in Latin America have had to step in and moderate free enterprise behavior for the common good. At such moments difficult decisions had to be made by those elected to control the cost of essential products and services, like drugs and medical care. This has pushed to the forefront issues not usually confronted by governments let alone by the citizens of Latin America: How much profit is fair profit? What standards of social responsibility should apply to corporations that profit off the citizens of a democracy? Bush, Cheney and the Neo-cons decry the leftward democratic march down south. They howl like wolves and rant, “You are governing in an illiberal way!” when these new left/center governments constrain their corporations and question their exploitive policies. For them life’s turning into a real bitch!

Maybe the Latin American peoples can teach us something about the power of genuine democracy.

By Max Oz