Latin America

 

Latin America

 There were some intriguing developments in Latin America towards the end of what has been a momentous year for the continent. Late last month, the US formally took cognizance of Hugo Chavez 's landslide re-election and its ambassador entered into a civilized dialogue with Venezuela's foreign minister. At roughly the same time, a ten-member US congressional team arrived in Havana for talks with senior Cuban officials, the largest such delegation since the 1959 revolution.

 They were evidently disappointed to discover that the Cuban government under Raul Castro has no immediate plans of deviating from the political and economic course set by his brother, Fidel, who handed over power in July before going in for surgery and is believed to be terminally ill.Contrary to what US sources have been suggesting, the elder Castro may not have cancer, but the octogenarian icon appears unlikely to recover from whatever ails him. He seems to have managed, however, to accomplish a smooth transition to a post-Fidel era. And when the time comes he will have fewer regrets about his departure than he would have some years ago, before Chavez burst on to the stage and picked up the torch.

 Although the latter's thumping majority in last month's presidential elections was a crucial marker in Latin America's journey towards a future in which its fortunes are no longer determined by the giant to the north, 2006 effectively began and ended in Santiago. In January, Michelle Bachelet became the first woman to be elected president of Chile. Apart from being a single monther in a country that is deemed particularly socially conservative, she was a victim of the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power on September 11, 1973. Her father, an air force general close to the elected government of Salvador Allende, was taken into custody and died in prison the following year. Bachelet and her mother were also briefly imprisoned and may have been subjected to torture. What's more, she came to power at the helm of the party that Allende once led.

 One can only wonder whether her success proved too much for the nonagenarian Pinochet, but he finally shuffled off the mortal coil some 11 months later, raising the prospect that his malign shadow would at long last be lifted from the land of Allende, Pablo Neruda and Victor Jara. But not immediately: even in going the harsh old tyrant left behind cause for strife. He was mourned by the minority of his compatriots who had found the Chicago-School monetarism imposed by his regime extremely profitable, and they were less than pleased when countless Chileans less enamoured of the dictator gathered on the streets to celebrate his long overdue exit amid the popping of champagne corks.

There were also those who felt cheated by Pinochet's death, given that, despite concerted efforts, he managed to evade justice for the blood on his hands as well as the corrupt practices whereby he was able to stash away millions of dollars in secret overseas accounts. A state funeral for such a vile specimen of humanity would have been a travesty: it is bad enough that his cremation was preceded by military honours. There is no grave, because his family feared desecration. And although a handful of far-Right legislators are agitating for monuments to honour their hero, their wish is unlikely to be fulfilled.

Although the ostensibly left-of-centre coalition Bachelet presides over is a far cry from Pinochet's junta and its popular support is based on a vaguely progressive agenda, it has no intention of being a conduit for the sort of radical change that could be expected to drastically reduce the disparities in wealth and economic power that are a legacy of free-market fundamentalism. Yet her government does not always feel obliged to kowtow to Washington, and the social welfare it espouses isn't strictly restricted to the theoretical realm. The Bachelet administration's inclinations may not have much in common with the redical priorities of the chavistas in Caracas, but it is unquestionably an improvement  conservative alternative.

 What's more, this makes Bachelet a part of the Latin American majority. Nestor Kirchner in neighbouring Argentina for instance, has played a significant role in mitigating the devastating consequences of IMF-imposed policies and has opposed the proposed Free .Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that many Latin Americans regard as a brazen attempt by the US to institutional its remains economic stranglehold over the region, but the nation remains wedded to the capitalist ethos. And in Brazil to the North, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a widely respected trade unionist, dispensed with the radical rhetoric of the campaign trail upon being 2002. He was comfortably re-elected s administration being rocked by scandals, and has promised that efforts to alleviate poverty in that vast country will be stepped up.

 An interesting phenomenon witnessed in Latin America this past year has been the resurrection of three prominent figures from the past, each of whom lost power in 1990: Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias in Costa Rica, Peru's Alan Garcia and,last but not least, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Ortega is the only one of them but who boasts radical credentials, but there is cause to suspect he is no longer the firebrand who led the Sandinistas to power in Managua in 1979, overthrowing the despicable 'Somoza dictatorship - an achievement that prompted a semi-covert counter-revolutionary drive by the US that consisted in large part of pure terrorism. Garcia's spectacularly unsuccessful first term is remembered, among other things, for inflation that reached a hardly believable 7,500 per cent, but he claims to be a reformed man. Unfortunately, Olanta Humala, the nationalist rival Garcia defeated, held out far greater promise of charting a progressive course for Peru. Arias, meanwhile, came perilously close to an upset loss after suggesting he would ratify the FTAA..

 Significantly, all three returnes are broadly identified with the center-left, which means that in South America proper, the only country that continues to openly support the discredited and balefu-1 Washington Consensus is Colombia under Bush ally Alvaro Uribe. On the other hand, Ecuadoreans took a possibly sharp turn to the left US-educated by overwhelmingly supporting Rafael Correa, a young, economist who is seen as a Chavez ally and whose campaign platform contained radical promises on the •economic and political fronts, but who is otherwise something of an unknown quantity.

 Ecuador should be in for interesting times if he follows the trail blazed by Evo Morales, who assumed power in Bolivia last January after a reasounding electoral win in December 2005, which made him the first purely indigenous person to be elected head of state in Latin America. Morales lost little time in establishing fraternal relations with Castro and Chavez, and set about reclaiming control of Bolivia's natural resources from foreign corporations. He has also set in motion tilt' process of framing a new constitution aimed, among other things, at restoring to indigenous Americans the rights they lost to the conquistadors 500 years ago.

 In terms of electoral drama, meanwhile, Mexico took the cake (or perhaps the tortilla): a contested result gave the conservative Felipe Calderon a 0.5 percent lead over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-wing mayor of Mexico, and the latter's demand for a full recount went unheeded amid evidence of discrepancies.

Calderon was sworn in last month, but Lopez Obrador remains defiant and there could be instability ahead — which may well defeat the purpose of any electoral manipulation. The US has been alarmed at the resurgence of a trend that it assumed had more or less perished when it declared victory in the Cold War. It has thus far avoided direct interference, except in Venezuela, where it has been complicit in attempts to topple Chavez. But it may well have decided to draw the line at Mexico: a radical regime there would have been to close for comfort.

Chavez meanwhile remains the standard-bearer of Latin America's march towards a brighter tomorrow. There are signs that he intends to be less ambiguous in his efforts to transom Venezuela's economic landscape, and success in this sphere could establish a tremendous example for the rest of the continent, not to mention the rest of the Third World. There are, of course, no grounds for complacency. Yet it was aptly symbolic that one of the first things Evo Morales did on moving into the presidential palace in La Paz was to put up a portrait of Che Guevara, the Argentinian revolutionary who died fighting on Bolivian soil in 1967. Forty years on, there are at least a few indications that, rather than a hopeless romantic, Che may simply have been ahead of his time.

Latin America