The Reddening South

Since I published "The New Latin Socialism" last Febuary, Peru, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and Costa Rica have all seen elections that have put leftist leaders in power. As I stated in the article, not all of these leaders are Hugo Chavez (who also easily won re-election) Boliviarianists, but several of them are, and the trend is certainly significant in terms of rejecting neo-liberal economics and returning to greater state control.

The only good news for those of us who believe that freedom and prosperity are a result of free and open economic systems is the success of the business-friendly candidate Felipe Calderon in Mexico. The bad news is that the election was likely stolen by Mexico's famously corrupt political machine.

The only remaining center-right government and strong US ally left in South America is Columbia where George Bush poster boy Alvaro Uribe recently forced through a constitutional change to allow him to run again for re-election. His regime has been marred by corruption, state-sanctioned violence, human rights abuses and ties to right-wing death squads that are reminiscent of Stroessner in Paraguay and Pinochet in Chile.

Clearly, it is time for the US government to quit screwing up the Middle East and get back to the full time job of screwing up Latin America before we have a new type of Soviet Union to contend with on our back porch.