1-31-07, 9:54 p.m.

“In Latin America the collapse of the IMF-led creditors' cartel is by itself probably the most important change in the international financial system since the end of the Bretton Woods system.” – Marc Weisbrot

“Latin America is in the vanguard of the construction, of the debate, and the organization of post-neoliberal societies.” – Alvaro Garcia Linera


Political leaders from the left side of the political spectrum have charge now in many Latin American countries. To what extent do their policies and priorities portend sustainable, far-reaching changes? Contrasts between the present crop of new leaders and regimes from the recent past do suggest that at least superficially something new is afoot. A characterization of the new arrivals may be helpful.

Hugo Chávez was re-elected to a third presidential term in Venezuela on December 3, 2006 with a 61 percent approval rating. Leading in the struggle for Latin American unity, he serves as a lightning rod for US abuse.

Rafael Correa won Ecuador’s presidential election on November 26, 2006. Campaigning, the former economics minister called for Latin American integration, denounced US trade agreements, and opposed US military bases.

Daniel Ortega won in Nicaragua on November 5, 2006. The Sandinista leader symbolizes revolutionary leadership and resistance to US power.

Lula da Silva won re-election in Brazil on October 29, 2006. President since January 1, 2003, Lula, union leader, social democrat, and a founder of the Workers Party, gained 60 percent of the vote.

Michele Bachelet, elected as Chile’s president on March 11, 2006, is a physician, former defense and health minister, victim of exile and torture, and moderate socialist.

Evo Morales leads Bolivia’s Movement toward Socialism party and is his nation’s first indigenous president. Elected by a 54 percent majority on December 18, 2005, he has nationalized hydrocarbons and initiated land reforms.

In Uruguay, Tabaré Vásquez, elected on November 1, 2004, is a moderate and social democrat. He led the 'broad-front' coalition that ended two-party conservative rule.

Martín Torrijos won Panama’s presidency on May 2, 2004. Son of an authoritarian earlier ruler, Torrijos has patched up relations with Cuba and pushed for fiscal and social security reforms.

Néstor Kirchner, Argentina’s president since 2003, is a left-wing Peronist who supports regional alliances, opposes US-backed trade agreements, and promotes economic independence.

Fidel and Raul Castro, never winners of direct elections, epitomize resistance to empire and in the case of Fidel, humanitarian outreach and international solidarity.

This roster of presidents differs from the 1990’s generation of Latin American leaders, most of whom were intent upon minding the status quo. They generally served – and there are some holdovers – as low-profile money managers focused on debt obligations and business demands.

The new leaders are light years removed from the dictators and military strong men who ruled during the 1970's and 1980's. With US government backing, they tortured, killed, 'disappeared,' massacred, and filled the jails.

That list includes: Videla and Galtieri (Argentina), Pinochet (Chile), Bordaberry and Alvarez (Uruguay), Stroessner (Paraguay), Branco, Da Costa e Silva, and Garrastazu (Brazil), Barrientos, Banzer, García Meza (Bolivia), and Velasco (Perú). Their Central American counterparts are: Somoza (Nicaragua), D'Aubuison and Christianai (El Salvador), Cerezo and Rios Montt (Guatemala), and Córdova (Honduras).

What about the staying power and depth of changes projected by this new generation of leaders? The suggestion here is that actions and policies they have taken against U. S. hegemony may serve us as prognostic signs of real change.

Historically, the struggle for independence from US bullying was closely connected to calls for Latin American unity. And it involved military and economic independence. An identification of actions taken by the new presidents to promote unity and economic and military independence may be useful.

Simón Bolivar, the 'Liberator' famously characterized the United States as 'destined by Providence to plague America with miseries in the name of liberty.' The Cuban independence hero José Martí articulated the theme of unity in the service of independence. Writing and speaking of 'Our America,' Marti evoked the notion of unified peoples living between the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande, in the US) and the Straits of Magellan. Marti was also acutely aware that economic dependency and political subjugation are related.

In 1890 Martí, Uruguayan consul in the United States, attended a meeting in Washington of the 'International Monetary Commission,' contrived by the State Department. The US object was to create a hemisphere-wide single currency. Martí pointed out that 'The one who says 'economic union' is saying 'political union.'' Part of the test put to the new leaders will be their fidelity to some of these earlier insights and ideals.

Economist Mark Weisbrot casts the IMF and the World Bank, controlled by the US Treasury Department, as enforcers of a status quo designated as neoliberalism. That system, he suggests, may be in jeopardy. Mercosur, the South American trade alliance involving Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela, and Uruguay, operates as an alternative to US free-trade initiatives. Continent-wide opposition to the US Free Trade of the Americas scheme greeted the Bush team at the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Argentina.

As presidential candidate in Ecuador, Rafael Correa called for rejection of free-trade agreements with the United States. The governments of Cuba and Venezuela have established the 'Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas' (ALBA) as a framework for financial, trade, scientific, and energy ties among Latin American nations. Bolivia and Nicaragua have recently joined ALBA.

ALBA has stimulated a massive outpouring of solidarity projects involving health care and education. Some 400,000 Latin Americans have received free eye surgery provided in Cuba and Venezuela. Tens of thousands of Latin American students are studying medicine, teaching, and more in the two countries. Thousands of Cuban doctors are working in Latin American countries. ALBA leaders believe that solidarity and humanitarian outreach promote unity. The Venezuelan government has opened a pediatric heart hospital in Caracas available to sick children in other countries. Reading experts are taking the acclaimed Cuban literacy program, 'Si se puede' throughout the region.

In Venezuela and Bolivia essential projects serving human needs are now being funded through nationalization of hydrocarbons and minerals. Bolivia's natural gas nationalization put Brazil to the test, inasmuch as the giant state-owned corporation Petrobas extracts and markets 45 percent of Bolivia's gas. Rather than defy the Morales government, as predicted by US observers, the Brazilian company signed agreements with Bolivia.

Oil and gas pipelines plus highways will be connecting distant and heretofore inaccessible areas in South America, the longest being the 5,000 mile pipe connecting Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. Even the right-wing Uribe government of Colombia and the Venezuelan government have joined in building gas and oil pipelines crossing the two countries.

PetroCaribe, formed under Venezuelan auspices, is a prototype regional network for oil and natural gas distribution. Telesur now provides a multinational television news alternative to the corporate media. Aregional bank of the South, fostered by Venezuela, will be offering loans free from constraints imposed by international lenders. Venezuela loaned $2.5 billion to Argentina, enabling that country to pay off its $9.8 billion IMF debt in December 2005. When Bolivia withdrew from the Andean Group of Nations in reaction to Colombia's signing trade agreements with Washington, Colombia reneged on $170 million worth of soybean purchases from Bolivia. Venezuela agreed to buy Bolivia's soybeans. That government has loaned Bolivia $100 million to support agrarian reform.

Argentina has pioneered the struggle for economic independence. Its economy collapsed in December 2001, the government defaulting on $100 billion worth of international debt. Since then Argentina has achieved Latin America's highest economic growth rate at 9 percent annually for three years. Rising income levels have lifted 18 percent of the population out of poverty.

To 'clear away debts,' the Kirchner government entered into 'hard bargaining with international lenders.' To block inflation, it has maintained stable exchange rates, low interest and utility rates, and price controls. For President Kirchner, the IMF has 'acted towards our country as a promoter and a vehicle of policies that caused poverty and pain among the Argentine people.'

Even Bolivia, South America's poorest nation, let its last IMF agreements lapse on March 31, 2006. Over one-third of that nation's debt was written off last year through the World Bank's 'Heavily Indebted Poor Country' initiative. Natural gas sales plus Venezuelan assistance have contributed to Bolivia gaining a measure of financial independence.

Last May, as Ecuador was preparing to seize an Occidental Company oil field – and being threatened by Washington - President Chávez came to the rescue with a proposal for joint oil operations. In 2005, Chávez offered to buy Ecuador's bonds worth $300 million.

Solidarity and timely cooperation have allowed new leaders to defy international and US rules governing the market based international economy. Customary economic screws are no longer working for Washington, according to Marc Weisbrot. The IMF in Latin America is 'a shadow of its former self,' he asserts; 'the collapse of the IMF-led creditors' cartel is by itself probably the most important change in the international financial system since the end of the Bretton Woods system.' He adds, 'Changes that have taken place in Latin America in recent years are part of an epoch-making transformation.' (International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 36, No. 4).

Recent presidential candidates campaigned specifically against US-backed neoliberalism, and now in power, they are delivering. That speaks well for the staying power of change. In fact, according to Weisbrot, the influence of the United States in a region that was until very recently its 'backyard' has plummeted so rapidly, drastically, and probably irreversibly, that the current situation is truly unprecedented in the modern history of the hemisphere.

Military intrusion in Latin American affairs historically has served as enforcer of last resort for US hegemony. Soon Washington may no longer be able to wield that tool with impunity. Resistance to US military influence in the region is growing..

During his campaign, Rafael Correa promised to remove the US military base located at the Manta airport in Ecuador. The School of the Americas Watch organization has elicited commitments from Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina no longer to send military personnel to the school that since 1946 has trained 65,000 Latin American soldiers.

There is hope that Bolivia and Ecuador may soon follow suit. Popular protests have mounted against US bases in Cuba, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Honduras, Aruba, Curação, Colombia, Ecuador and Perú, against 17 radar stations, and against military exercises carried out in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

The Bush administration has renewed training programs for Latin American military personnel – to 'blunt a leftward trend,' according to USA Today. They had been shelved to persuade client states to grant US soldiers immunity from International Criminal Court jurisdiction. Funding for military training within Latin America rose last year to $13.6 million. Overall military aid, not including weapons sales worth billions, amounts to $122 million, a 34-fold increase since 2000.

A burgeoning movement for economic and military independence suggests that indeed the recent election victories are harbingers of real and lasting transformation. Central to these developments is dialogue relating to so-called 'Socialism of the 21st Century.' A brand of socialism that fits with contemporary Latin American realities may be in the works. Connecting political action to theoretical underpinnings may be crucial to the sustainability of change.

Venezuelan President Chavez's notion of socialism has to do with, for example, the development of cooperatives and education about 'cooperativism.' His version of socialism includes the idea of 'endogenous development' as a means for reduced dependency on foreign imports. “Participatory democracy,” which signifies full citizen involvement in local governance, has big place in contemporary Venezuelan dialogue. Chávez often cites the early Christians as exemplars of socialism.

In a remarkable speech presented October 29 at a gathering of representatives of social movements and state officials from throughout Latin America, Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera presented ideas on the new socialism. They depart, for example, from European socialist traditions. The social movements, those organizations representing indigenous people, women, labor unions, coca farmers, and peasants, function in parallel fashion outside the official government. Paradoxically, however, he also has them as part of the government. And there's more to a people's government than satisfaction exclusively of working class interests. Considerations of the use and protection of land, water, forests, and natural resources are important now for Latin American socialists.

The Vice President declared that 'The old workers' movement of unions based in big factories is gone,' but 'the working class has not disappeared.' He cites women and young people confined to tiny, dispersed workshops, or not working. Labor unions for them are a distant dream. To articulate 'a new workers' movement with a new discourse is the duty of revolutionaries.' He would align 'the virtual indigenous campesino movement' with organized workers. Garcia Linera states that 'socialism is part and parcel of the struggle against neoliberalism.' He declares that 'Latin America is in the vanguard of the construction, of the debate, and the organization of post-neoliberal societies.'

That’s why hopes for revived popular struggle and for politics that serve people’s needs are focused these days on Latin America. Indications that new governments are standing up to the U.S. empire and fighting for economic and military independence suggest that seeds of change may have taken root and are starting to grow. That new leaders have assigned socialism, evolving and adapting, a major role in the evolving struggle is cause for great optimism. Synergistic struggle on the part of popular forces within the “belly of the beast,” i.e. here at home, and without, especially in Latin America, is a logical and necessary part of the process.