The
entire subcontinent, from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, is shifting
leftward driven by leaders like Chavez, Lula and Kirchner.
The leader of the Labour Party and experienced trade unionist
Ignacio Lula da Silva’s election as president of Brazil
with 61% of votes caused quite an international stir in October
2002. Lula, who had a wife of Italian origin and Marxist credentials,
became a hero and a model for the entire European left wing, which
made Brazil the target of pilgrimages to find out how he had succeeded
in defeating the oligarchy that had always dominated the richest
and most populated country in Latin America. The reaction of the
liberal, conservative and moderate parties, who predicted for
Brazil a socialist trend charged with nationalisation, inflation
and war against multinationals, was quite the opposite.
Three years later they all changed their opinion to a certain
degree: the left wing was disappointed by the president’s
poor reformist zeal and his betrayal of the environmental cause,
while on the other hand the right wing was pleased to note that
Lula had avoided subverting market economy, he had surrounded
himself with competent collaborators who were not too ideologised
and his foreign policy followed a moderate trend. In return Brazil’s
new twist has contributed to trigger a political process, which
may radically alter the face of Latin America: a “red wind”
has started blowing from Rio Negro to Tierra del Fuego, reminding
us of the times when Fidel Castro dreamed of converting the entire
continent to his political ideals.
None of the new leaders who rose to power or are about to do so
is formally identified with Communism, but the ideas are very
similar and the dispute with Washington is constantly growing.
From North to South, the scene is really disquieting. In Mexico,
which is a member country of the NAFTA and hence economically
integrated with the United States, the liberal democratic president
Vicente Fox is at the close of his mandate and on the basis of
the Constitution he cannot stand for re-election. The favourite
in line to succeed him is Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador,
the current mayor of Mexico City; a left wing populist, he promises
the moon to the numberless dispossessed people without explaining
where he will find the necessary resources. Daniel Ortega Saavedra’s
return to power through the polls is impending in Nicaragua; he
was the former leader of the Sandinists who, after seizing power
in 1979 backed by Cuba and the Soviet block, were fought by Reagan
and lastly defeated at the 1990 elections.
The main anti-American figure to the south of the Panama Canal
is the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who has by now taken
Fidel Castro’s place as the left wing’s standard-bearer
in Latin America: apostle of a “Bolivarian revolution”,
which, according to his plans, should pave the way for socialism’s
great return in the 21st century, the former leader of a coup
d’état has gradually taken over all the levers of
power and emptied democracy of all content. One of his latest
initiatives is the revival of the International Youth Festival,
which was created by Stalin in 1947 with an anti-Western purpose
and which seemed to have died with the fall of the Berlin wall.
Instead the 16th festival, which was held in Caracas in August,
with the slogan “Down with Imperialism and War”, witnessed
the participation of 15,000 students from 144 countries –
including Italy – who marched at the cry “Death to
Bush”. In his welcome speech Chavez, dressed in a flashing
red shirt, defined the United States “the most barbarous,
cruel and bloody Empire of all times”, but he also assured
that it would be annihilated if it ever dared to attack Venezuela.
Chavez does not stop at tirades in his anti-American campaign.
Backed by Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay he has just launched the
satellite television Telesur, which according to his plans should
play in South America the same role as Al Jazeera in the Arab
world. Strengthened by his growing oil revenues, which enable
him to generously distribute aid (he has even bought out 538 million
dollars worth of the famous Argentinean debt to back the Buenos
Aires government), he is trying to form an alliance between left
wing countries in the region; to judge by his words this should
help him “save a world threatened by the greed of Yankee
Imperialism”. Venezuela backs the guerrilla warfare based
on Marxist theories in countries, which he considers as allies
of Washington, especially in neighbouring Columbia and following
the same trend he has drawn close to Iran, North Korea and all
governments who are America’s enemies.
Chavez’s international activism has grown in recent times
at the same pace as the increase in the price of raw oil, which
has placed at his disposal considerable means on which he exercises
an almost personal control. The paradox is that a fair amount
of this money comes from the United States, which purchases about
one sixth of its requirements from Venezuela. Since it cannot
renounce this source in the current market conditions, Washington
tries to fight the dictator with other means: in 2003 it backed
an attempted coup d’état and in 2004 it backed the
parties, which promoted a referendum against the president, but
both attempts failed. Technically speaking, Chavez cannot be considered
a dictator, because he has been legally invested with authority
by the people, especially
thanks to the money he distributed before the elections. But he
is losing consensus after destroying the middle class and causing,
with his demagogic measures, a 20% drop in the per capita income
and we expect him to organise a sort of non-bloody coup d’état
to circumvent the verdict of the polls before the presidential
elections scheduled to take place in 2006. To date his main adversary
is Cardinal Rosario Castillo Lara, archbishop of Caracas, who
defined him “a paranoid dictator in need of an exorcism”
and compared Venezuela to Cuba.
Chavez retorted by calling the cardinal an “outlaw possessed
by the devil” and by accusing him of being “a cancer
for the country”. It remains to be seen whether the Church’s
influence, which is strong especially in those lower classes that
form the platform for Chavez’s power, can restrain him.
The doctrine of the “Bolivarian revolution” is spreading
from Venezuela to other countries in the Andean region. With the
exception of Columbia, whose president Alvaro Uribe remains the
United States’ most reliable ally in the continent, politicians
who emulate Chavez are all riding the crest of a wave. In Peru,
Ollanta Umala, a former soldier who was expelled from the army
due to his extremist ideas, is one of the favourites in line to
succeed president Toledo who, despite his left wing background,
has maintained the country in the channel of market economy.
After a series of coup d’état Ecuador has long been
the victim of populist frenzy. Bolivia’s rising star is
Evo Morales, a South American native belonging to the Aymara race;
he leads coke farmers and has conducted an election campaign centred
on war against American obtrusiveness, privatisation, free trade
and foreign capital, which has aroused the enthusiasm of tableland
populations and has conquered hundreds of thousands of new followers
to his party “Movement towards Socialism”. At the
December elections the left wing confirmed its over ten year hold
on power in Chile, despite having presented – an unusual
fact in these regions – a woman to succeed President Lagos.
In Uruguay the victory of Tabarè Vazquez’s Frente
Ampio has for the first time brought to the leadership of South
America’s former Switzerland an expressly left wing party,
which directly descends from the guerrillas who steeped the country
in blood in the ‘70s and’80s.
Argentina’s evolution under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner,
the man who disavowed the foreign debt developed at the time of
Menem by enforcing a transaction, which cost only Italian savers
the equivalent of a GDP point, is also very significant.
This former governor of a small depopulated Patagonian province,
who was elected at the time with just one fourth of the valid
votes, seemed destined to be a transitional figure with the sole
duty of assisting the country to return to normality after the
worst economic crisis of the post-war period. Instead, by offering
the country a mix of nationalism, populism and “anti-Imperialist”
demagogy, he succeeded in winning favour with the people, in restoring
the Peronist movement’s original ideals and in becoming
the general’s first genuine heir complete with a highly
ambitious wife who followed Evita’s model.
When Kirchner came to the Casa Rosada three years ago, Argentina
had fallen so low that its only option was to find its feet again,
also considering its remarkable natural resources. The new president
did his part by refusing to meet the demands of international
creditors and by manoeuvring to maintain service prices low at
the expense of foreign investors. The fact is that the good rating
of his agricultural products in international markets has enabled
the country to creep up again: the number of those who live under
the borderline of poverty has dropped and Kirchner appears in
a good position to obtain a second mandate.
Many observers are convinced that the improvement is only short-term
and that a country where foreigners are now afraid to invest and
the executive class makes its money ‘flee’ abroad
cannot have a great future. But for now the president’s
virulent anti-Americanism, his refusal to apply the recipes of
the International Monetary Fund and of the World Bank and his
increasingly close alliance with Chavez exalt the Peronist “descamisados”
and contribute to set the country adrift.
Now that the Cold War is over, Castro has reached the twilight
of his career and there is no danger whatsoever of the USSR settling
down in their “backyard”, the United States will not
react to this evolution of Latin America with the same determination
it adopted a quarter of a century ago, when it encouraged Pinochet’s
coup d’état against Allende in Chile, treated Brazil
and Argentina’s military dictatorships with some leniency
and invaded the island of Grenada to prevent it from becoming
a Soviet air base. The White House has so far limited itself (without
being over convinced about it) to attempts at feeding the internal
opposition against Chavez and to rather discrete economic pressure
on other countries, which were tempted to exaggerate. Despite
this, the “red wind” that is blowing through the continent
is giving rise to serious worries in Washington and it has already
had a highly negative consequence for Bush: it has shelved his
project for a free trade zone stretching from Alaska to Cape Horn
and designed to enable him to form a sort of rival show to the
European Union. Besides,
his visit to Buenos Aires to promote his project was a real personal
comedown with hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the
square to contest him. However real fears concern middle term
perspectives: is it likely that real socialism, which was crushed
with much effort in Europe, will undergo a revival in Latin America
where the presence of a virtually feudal establishment beside
the dispossessed masses, growing differences between rich and
poor and the lack of a skilled political class recall our situation
a century ago? Is it possible that after the 1990s' promising
turn towards liberal democracy the subcontinent will slip once
again towards a phase in which not military but working class
dictatorships prevail? How can the lesson of Cuba, which has been
reduced to poverty by Castro's regime, have served to no purpose
and how can Castro's actions still have so many imitators? To
judge by the turn of events, the danger doubtless exists and resorting
to antidotes is certainly more complicated than thirty years ago
when interventions could be justified by the need to contrast
the Soviet block's expansionism. It was relatively easy to isolate
Castro as long as he preached the word of Communism alone. But
the situation could become difficult if the subcontinent's leading
countries joined forces against the United States, despite the
obvious restraint due to their economic situation.
The
entire subcontinent, from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, is shifting
leftward driven by leaders like Chavez, Lula and Kirchner.
especially
thanks to the money he distributed before the elections. But he
is losing consensus after destroying the middle class and causing,
with his demagogic measures, a 20% drop in the per capita income
and we expect him to organise a sort of non-bloody coup d’état
to circumvent the verdict of the polls before the presidential
elections scheduled to take place in 2006. To date his main adversary
is Cardinal Rosario Castillo Lara, archbishop of Caracas, who
defined him “a paranoid dictator in need of an exorcism”
and compared Venezuela to Cuba.
Besides,
his visit to Buenos Aires to promote his project was a real personal
comedown with hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the
square to contest him. However real fears concern middle term
perspectives: is it likely that real socialism, which was crushed
with much effort in Europe, will undergo a revival in Latin America
where the presence of a virtually feudal establishment beside
the dispossessed masses, growing differences between rich and
poor and the lack of a skilled political class recall our situation
a century ago? Is it possible that after the 1990s' promising
turn towards liberal democracy the subcontinent will slip once
again towards a phase in which not military but working class
dictatorships prevail? How can the lesson of Cuba, which has been
reduced to poverty by Castro's regime, have served to no purpose
and how can Castro's actions still have so many imitators? To
judge by the turn of events, the danger doubtless exists and resorting
to antidotes is certainly more complicated than thirty years ago
when interventions could be justified by the need to contrast
the Soviet block's expansionism. It was relatively easy to isolate
Castro as long as he preached the word of Communism alone. But
the situation could become difficult if the subcontinent's leading
countries joined forces against the United States, despite the
obvious restraint due to their economic situation.