Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa won overwhelming backing for his plans to rewrite the country's constitution and expand state control of the Andean nation's economy.
Correa, an economist with a U.S. doctoral degree who calls himself a ``friend'' of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has said ``the long night of neo-liberal policies is over,''
Currently in places like Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Nicaragua, about 300 million of the 365 million people in Latin America have adopted a leftist political direction after years of failed economic policies dictated by Washington.
Most corporate media outlets here in the U.S. have tried to demonize this hopeful political process in Latin America by targeting Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez while keeping amazingly silent on the vast changes taking place throughout Latin America. It just doesn’t play so well and brings up too many memories to attack Chile’s socialist president, Bachelet, who is also a female and a doctor.
While keeping these political tides disguised using anti-Chavez rants, our hapless administration seems to think that if only Chavez wasn’t there things would just go back to normal. So clumsily our government backed a failed coup against him in 2002 which only added to his immense popularity. In free elections Chavez garners about 65% of the vote.
Beyond failed coups, it is also a concern to many in the region that the US military has set up a base in Paraguay, close to the border with Bolivia. Some believe the troops are there to monitor the Morales administration, leftist groups in the region and to keep an eye on Bolivia's gas reserves (which are the second largest in Latin America) and the Guarani Aquifer which is one of the biggest water reserves in the hemisphere.
These left-over tactics from the past aside, it is interesting to watch as Latin America transforms itself after a decades-long nightmare brought on by military dictatorships too often funded by the US government. Some of the architects of the repression were trained by US teachers in such places as the School of the Americas in Georgia.
Besides implementing a reign of terror, these dictators worked with Washington and multinational corporations to introduce neo-liberal economic policies to the region which put public works in the hands of private corporations, rejected government intervention in the economy, worked to dissolve unions and involved impoverished nations borrowing millions through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The debts accrued by military dictators are crippling Latin American countries to this day.
A little over a decade ago, at the invitation of President Bill Clinton, Latin American leaders met in Miami for the Summit of the Americas to consolidate neo-liberalism. What a difference ten years can make.
As Steven Levitsky, associate professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University states, "The left is coming to power in Latin America because of democracy."
These new left-leaning political leaders have pledged to fight poverty and prioritize the needs of the people over the interests of Washington and international corporations. If only our government gave attention and support to this burgeoning movement, we could help bring prosperity and stability along with long-needed social justice to our neighbors. It is fitting that after exploiting this region for so long that we work to make up for past wrongs.