Posted on 04/11/2006 4:35:33 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The sneeringly anti-American Venezuelan president, who is squeezing the opposition and the news media at home, is also relentlessly extending his reach in countries of the northern Andes. And the United States, despite its concern about him, is helping.
In Peru, Chavez backed presidential candidate Ollanta Humala (like himself a leader of a failed military coup and a strident populist). Humala leads the returns from Sunday's election and will be the front-runner in a runoff.
In Bolivia, Chavez's tool is President Evo Morales. Like Humala, Morales gained his political edge by appealing to the pride and resentment of the indigenous people, descendents of the Incas, who for so long have been treated not much more generously by the leaders of the country than their ancestors were by the Spanish conquistadors.
A movement of indigenous people in Ecuador has been disrupting transportation by blocking roads (a technique used by Morales in the run-up to his election) in an effort to keep the country's lame-duck president from signing a free-trade agreement with the U.S. It will be a miracle if someone like Morales and Humala, backed by Chavez, does not come to the fore in the next Ecuadorian election. ...
I have often heard it said by serious observers of the situation that the appeal to indigenous groups by people like Morales and Humala amounts to virulent racism and threatens the kind of violent conflict found in the Balkans and the Middle East.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
You know what country is partially surrounded by Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador???
I fear for my country... it is more essential than ever to support President Uribe. We scored one with the election of a majority-Uribista Congress. But the challenge is May 28, presidential election day.
Ping list!!!
Then, in a no-brained attempt to hold on to power, those leftist governments will clamp down on civil liberties (like they always do) and those leaders will either find themselves on the wrong side of a coup d'etat or on an airplane to what ever nation (likely Cuba) will give them a home.
In the mean time, standards of living in those nations will collapse, and in all likelihood tens of thousands will have died. So goes the shining path of Marxist Communism.
Actually, this has already happened. Chavez's minions overthrew President Mahuad, and then one of the officers involved subsequently ran for president and was elected. After a couple of years in office, he was overthrown himself by huge demonstrations (what goes around comes around, or something like that) and went into exile for a while. He is back in the country trying to sue his way back into the presidency.
Populism is the default political philosophy of Latin America, in any case, and right now the flavor of the month is "Chavez". Everyone knows he is a dictator, but the thing about populism is that there is no philosophical barrier to dictatorship, in fact populism cries out for a strongman to take control and fix things.
Populism guarantees that you will get a strongman, in fact populism hates weak government, and for a populist, limited government is weak government. Chavez' trick is to use populism to get himself in the door, and then to use pure repression and control of the popular media to keep himself there. As long as he keeps making the bold, dramatic gestures, the populist hearts will beat as one, and he can hang on til the cows come home.
No senor, esta es El Communismo, no es El Populismo.
Populismo is easy in Latin America. All you have to do is go to their weddings, baptisms and funerals, and throw candy and cigarettes off the back of a flatbed truck. Sounds a little like the mafia. That's because it is.
The real conflict in most of these countries. Democracy and freedom and multiculturalism are all but incompatible.
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