Regards, Ivan
Posted on 02/27/2005 3:34:07 PM PST by MadIvan
URUGUAY, once South America’s most prosperous country, plays host to an unlikely gathering of left-wing leaders tomorrow as it prepares to break with 170 years of history and swear in its first socialist President.
Tabaré Vázquez, a 65-year-old professor of medicine who was elected last October with 50 per cent of the vote, will be inaugurated as head of the Broad Front coalition, whose biggest component is a party founded by the former Marxist Tupamaro guerrilla movement.
The new head of the country’s Senate is José Mújica, a former Tupamaro leader who was held in a deep well for seven years by his military captors who said he would be executed if the guerrillas killed any more military officers.
With Uruguay joining most of its neighbours in voting the Left into power, Washington loses one of its few remaining close allies in the region. The most visible sign of this change will be the attendance at the handover of Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader and the US’s arch-enemy in the region.
Uruguay broke off relations with Cuba in 2002 after Señor Castro dismissed the outgoing President, Jorge Batlle, as a bootlicker for his support of US attempts to condemn Cuba’s human rights record at the UN. Now the new President says that he will restore relations with Cuba.
This marks another defeat for President Bush’s regional policy of trying to isolate Cuba, President Castro having seen a similar improvement in relations with Argentina and Brazil after changes of power there. “The aim of the Bush Administration in the region was to isolate Cuba. Instead it has ended up isolating itself,” says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington think-tank that focuses on US-Latin American relations.
Also expecting a warm welcome in Montevideo is Venezuela’s populist President Hugo Chávez, described by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, as a destabilising influence in the region.
Señor Chávez hopes to quickly conclude a beef-for-oil swap with Uruguay’s new Government, similar to one he recently signed with Argentina.
The Venezuelan leader is an open advocate of deepening ties among South American countries to counteract Washington’s influence in the region.
Señor Chávez recently stated his aim of reducing Venezuelan oil exports to the US, currently its main market, and wants to shift them to Asia. He also has ambitions to create a South American oil giant, to be called Petrosur, which would be an alliance of the state oil companies of Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina.
The recent rise of the Left in South America has been fuelled by deep discontent at free market reforms sponsored by the US during the 1990s which are widely blamed in the region for financial crises, a widening gap between rich and poor and a growth in poverty.
The new Government in Montevideo has promised to move rapidly to tackle the country’s social crisis. Despite the economy expanding by more than 12 per cent last year, a four-year recession that ended in 2002 has left an estimated one in three people in poverty. Señor Vázquez’s first act as President will be to set up a $100 million social emergency plan.
Another priority will be to tackle the legacy of the country’s dirty war between the former military government and leftist opponents. Señor Vázquez has ruled out reopening legal proceedings against former and serving officers.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Latin America seems to be turning entirely socialist.
Let 'em go, let them sink into the sanitary ditch of socialism, and fortify our borders.
A perfect targer for the CIA.
Sometimes Democracy is not all it is cracked up to be.
Now doubt about it, South America is heading down the Marxist-Leninist road. Where is Jimmy Carter? He's never met a communist despot he didn't like.
Thanks for taking the time to post. Interesting.
Latin America always was a cesspool of collectivism, fostered mainly by the extreme forms of self-sacrifice and "meeker-than-thou" attitudes extolled by the old versions of the Catholic Church. They have NEVER prized anything close to a "right to the pursuit of happiness," or any other individual rights as a matter of principle.
At the risk of inflating his ego......Jim Quinn was one of the first, if not the first, prominent talker to begin discussing the dangers of the Chavez and Castro relationship.
Bush is losing the America's on his watch. Read Novak.
The West is going Socialist-from Canada to South America. Not good.
Somebody in Washington better wake up soon.
What do you think of post #9?
not entirely... although Chile will increasingly be targeted by the left since it is a glaring example of how to do things right.
the faint glimmer of good news is that, for example, lula is starting to wear out his popularity with some of the electorate as the typical brazilian corruption sets in. argentina is actually doing fairly well right now economically, except their bills are starting to come due and one has to expect them to repudiate their outstanding international loans (again)... i think they will start having trouble getting new ones, and chavez doesn't have enough oil money to subsidize the entire swath of socialist countries -- pouring money into a leftist political campaign is one thing, but proping up the usual corrupt leftist bureaucracies can get you broke in a hurry!
Why are wars against leftist killers always called "dirty wars"? They sound like good ideas to me. Time to bring back good old Gunboat Diplomacy to our southern neighbors, I see. In a more civilized time, we would have sent a small contingent of Marines into Caracas about four years ago, taken out this punk Chavez, and recognized some US-trained engineer or banker with vague family ties to Venezuela as the legitimate government. They're not going to like us whether we intervene or not, so we might as well do what works best for us. Man, foreign policy was fun about 100 years ago. Ivan, if your guys will take back the Middle East and Africa, we'll do the job in South and Central America and re-institute the Open Door Policy in China. And we've got your back with the Germans and French.
I entirely agree - international institutions appear to have only one purpose: prevention of doing the right, most effective thing. Chavez is of a kind, like Saddam, who ought to end up in a bodybag for what he's done to his own people. But the UN and all these mamby pamby international organisations refuse to be straightforward and just make the bad man dead and have him serve a useful purpose, namely as fertiliser.
Regards, Ivan
Rule Brittania. Ready to go in when you are, my friend.
I want to know when Uruguay was "once South America's most prosperous country! Was it 1914? May be 1920? The last time I was there it was a miserable mierdahole where the politicians were as corrupt as the population was lazy. Anything bad that happens to Uruguay is deserved.
I think in the mid-60s Uruguay held that title briefly. Admittedly the competition was not very steep. I agree, even going from Argentina to Uruguay you can see the decline in lifestyle (although the coast around Punta del Este is very wealthy.)
Bush missed a big opportunity when he failed to jump in and help the folks who deposed Chavez a few years ago. Ever since the failure of that coup things have been going downhill in South America.
It's true that Latin America has gone through endless cycles of socialism and tyranny over the course of the past two centuries. But things were improving since the fall of the Sandinistas. Now everything is moving down the tubes again, and this kind of thing is catching. The people living in South America will suffer most, but it's not good for us, either.
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