Apologies in advance for the extreme link-whoring. I've been fascinated by the political winds in Latin America for a long while now, and I
published a piece today about Peru's election, Hugo Chavez, and American interventionism.
http://www.reason.com/...
My take is, generally, that the US can never intervene in Latin America or threaten Latin American countries and hope that this wins over the hearts and minds of their people. The hook is the Peruvian elections, which have not turned out as expected and inspired some very different opinions on this site. The inspiration for my column was a conversation I had last week with a Peruvian woman in DC. She was around 25, just out of grad school. She had European and native heritage. And she was absolutely a liberal. But she was terrified of Ollanta Humala winning the election back home; terrified enough that she would stay in the US if it happened.
I think the general "US v. world" and "left-wing vs. Bush" way of looking at events in other countries, while easy, may be flawed as hell.