[Mb-civic] Che Rides Again (On a Mountain Bike)

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

   http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=71996
Che Rides Again (On a Mountain Bike)
    By Nick Miroff

    Has Latin America ever had such a unifying figure?

    At political rallies, his visage is held aloft as a beacon to regional 
independence and self-determination. He's helped forge new trade 
partnerships to spur economic growth and alleviate poverty. And his 
leadership has fanned a gale-force electoral trend that's sweeping the 
hemisphere to topple one pro-Washington government after the next.

    Who is this grand inductor of Latin American leftism? Venezuelan 
fireball Hugo Chavez? Blue-collar Brazilian Lula Ignacio da Silva? 
Bolivia's coca-farmer-cum-president, Evo Morales?

    ¡Epa! It's George W. Bush, the accidental revolutionary.

    In the past five years, the swaggering Texan has inspired a leftward 
surge that is uniting Latin America and threatening to knock Che 
Guevara right off all those natty t-shirts.

    When Che's ill-fated insurgency ended in the jungles of Bolivia with 
his death in 1967, his vision of a single, unified, socialist continent 
remained utterly unfulfilled. U.S.-backed right-wing military dictators 
would rule much of Latin America over the ensuing two decades, and 
many of Che's followers would be tortured and killed in efforts to 
overthrow them.

    As democracy returned to the region at the end of the Cold War, 
most Latin American governments rushed to embrace the 
"Washington consensus" -- market-oriented liberalization policies that 
cut social spending and privatized national industries in order to pay 
down national debts. But the formula, pushed on the region by 
successive American presidents, largely failed to deliver the goods and 
left entire governments bankrupt and beholden to foreign lenders. For 
Latin America's angry, marginalized, impoverished masses, already-
threadbare social safety nets only unraveled further.

    "The macroeconomic proposals of the Washington consensus have 
not been working," says Guillermo Delgado, professor of Latin 
American Studies at UC Santa Cruz. "That model was supposed to 
create prosperity and, after so many years, such prosperity has not 
been seen and class polarization has grown deeper."

    Sensing an opportunity, new social and political movements in the 
region began marshalling their forces. Then George W. Bush came 
along, combining Yankee hubris with a Che-worthy radicalizing touch.

    Bush has since presided over one of the most significant political re-
alignments in the history of the Western Hemisphere. By this summer, 
every major Latin American nation but Colombia is likely to be run by 
elected leaders with stronger backgrounds in Marx than free markets. 
If Cold War-era "domino theory" has been a bust in the Middle East, 
it's working with textbook precision in Latin America.

    Late last year, voters overwhelmingly elected former coca-grower 
Evo Morales, the founder of Bolivia's "Movement Toward Socialism" 
party, who fancies himself a "nightmare" for the Bush administration. 
Then, in January, Chilean voters chose socialist candidate Michele 
Bachelet, a torture victim of the Pinochet regime, as the nation's first 
woman president. Leftists now rule as well in Venezuela, Uruguay, 
Brazil, and Argentina, and are leading in upcoming elections in both 
Peru and Mexico, the region's electoral grand prize. Even recycled 
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega -- "a hoodlum," according to Roger 
Noriega, formerly the U.S.'s top Latin America official -- appears 
poised for a comeback when Nicaraguan voters go to the polls in 
November.

    Though Latin America's national borders won't melt away anytime 
soon, Che's vision of pan-Latin cooperation has already begun to 
materialize. Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina recently announced a 
$20 billion plan to build a trans-national gas pipeline through the 
Amazon. Chile has opened dialogue with landlocked Bolivia, easing a 
long-simmering feud over seaport access that stretches back more 
than a century. Cuba, that tropical bête noire of the White House, still 
uses doctor diplomacy and sends physicians all over the region -- only 
now, it receives billions of dollars worth of Venezuelan oil in return. And 
Mercosur, a South American common market dominated by Brazil, has 
emerged as a rival to the faltering U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of 
the Americas (FTAA).

    Mercosur member states blocked ratification of the FTAA at the 
2005 Summit of the Americas in Argentina. When Bush arrived to 
deliver a speech at the conference, he was greeted by mobs of angry 
street protestors who burned American flags, a Burger King, and 
unflattering effigies in his likeness.

    "Fascist Bush!" they chanted, "you are the terrorist!"

    Fencing Off the "Backyard"?

    Bush's overwhelming unpopularity in Latin America is especially 
disappointing given that he put Latin American relations at the top of 
his foreign-policy agenda after taking office. No other U.S. president 
had gone to Latin America for his first visit abroad, and even after 9/11, 
Bush maintained that the United States "has no more important 
relationship in the world than the one we have with Mexico." At every 
turn, he'd trot out his twangy Spanish in order to burnish his Latin cred.

    Since then, Latin America has only drifted further south. Support for 
the U.S. war in Iraq is notably abysmal. Only a handful of countries in 
the region backed the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein and all were 
minor players with the exception of Colombia, the fifth-largest recipient 
of U.S. foreign aid. That Washington is willing to spend lavishly on 
drug eradication in the Andean region but little on development or 
public health has not been lost on the new ascendant left, either.

    In a recent Zogby poll, fewer than 20% of Latin American elites 
(typically the most politically conservative voters in the region) gave 
Bush a favorable approval rating. Only 6% said Bush's policies were 
better than those of his predecessors.

    Some analysts have attributed Latin America's political shift to U.S. 
foreign policy negligence, arguing that, because the Bush 
administration is so consumed with Iraq, American officials are now 
incapable of wielding effective diplomatic influence in the region.

    "After 9/11, Washington effectively lost interest in Latin America," 
writes Peter Hakim, President of Inter-American Dialogue, in the 
January/February issue of Foreign Affairs. "Since then, the attention 
the United States has paid to the region has been sporadic and 
narrowly targeted at particularly troubling or urgent situations."

    This interpretation suggests Bush has been a kind of inattentive 
steward, too busy riding that mountain bike to notice the mutiny going 
on beneath his nose. Worse yet, Hakim believes the United States has 
neither the resources nor the will to alter the course.

    But Latin America's leftward shift stems from more than White 
House distraction. It's not that the United States is acting aloof with its 
neighbors; rather, we're the worst-behaved homeowner on the block. 
We fly the biggest flag, make the loudest demands, and on top of it all, 
we don't even like having guests over. Sure, the United States has 
treated Latin America as its "backyard" for two hundred years -- but 
now, Bush's own party wants to fence it off.

    House Republicans recently approved a plan to erect a 2,000-mile, 
Israeli-style barrier that would wall off Mexico and the rest of Latin 
America. The plan isn't expected to survive a Senate vote, but it sums 
up the current state of north-south relations quite well. And it's been a 
godsend for the presidential campaign of left-wing Mexico City Mayor 
Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leading candidate in the July 2nd elections 
and a frequent Bush critic.

    For Lopez Obrador, the border fence proposal is proof that NAFTA 
is faltering and that outgoing President Vicente Fox was on the wrong 
end of the rope in his faux-ranchero friendship with Bush. Fox had 
staked his presidential reputation on securing an immigration accord 
with the Bush administration, and his failure has made excellent fodder 
for Lopez Obrador's campaign. His election victory in July would leave 
the last domino leaning right on Washington's doorstep.

    Helping Hugo

    The Bush administration has been most frazzled by the growing 
regional influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whom 
Donald Rumsfeld recently likened to Hitler. Chavez has his own 
nickname for Bush -- "Mr. Danger" -- and he's effectively shaped the 
American president into his political foil.

    As Bush pushes the region away, Chavez pulls. The Venezuelan 
leader has fashioned himself into a kind of Latin American Robin 
Hood, raking in tanker-loads of petrodollars in order to bankroll 
massive social programs and regional integration schemes. He's 
provided oil at subsidized rates to poor countries throughout the 
Caribbean, even sending discounted winter heating oil to low-income 
residents in Boston and the Bronx -- an act of mockery as much as 
aid. The Bush administration's tacit endorsement of a 2002 coup that 
briefly ousted Chavez has left the U.S.'s rhetoric about respect for 
democracy ringing hypocritical.

    At the World Social Forum in Caracas in January, Chavez t-shirts 
were reportedly de rigueur, along with all the other standard-fare 
knickknacks of rebellion: Castro-hats, Zapatista stickers, and anything 
red with Che on it. By comparison, Bush apparel was in short supply.

    Granted, he did show up on a few banners and posters that weren't 
slated for immolation, like one that read "Chavez yes, Bush no!" But 
twenty years from now, who knows? Latin America may be much 
better off then. And perhaps he'll finally get the "Gracias Bush" he 
deserves -- with his own face on a silkscreen.

    Nick Miroff is a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of 
Journalism. He has reported from Latin America for National Public 
Radio, Mother Jones, and the Oakland Tribune.

Copyright 2006 Nick Miroff 

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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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