Posted on 05/22/2006 6:27:49 PM PDT by wjersey
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is the new rock star of world politics. His impassioned rants against globalization, with animated poses to match, make front-page headlines almost daily. The commentariatparticularly in Europeseems to buy Chávez's line that Latin Americans are so disenchanted by their short tryst with liberalism that they now prefer a strongman to spread the benefits of a commodity boom. The recent moves by a Chávez soulmate, Evo Morales, to renationalize the energy resources of Bolivia reinforce a growing perception that Latin America is lurching to the radical left.
But it's not. While Chávez does seem to rekindle a certain romantic Western nostalgia for Latin American guerrilla movements, the underlying trends point in the opposite direction. Voters in Latin America, far from crying out for a radically new economic model inspired by Caracas, are in fact rallying powerfully behind leaders and parties who promote more-orthodox economic policies. As candidates espousing Chávez-style populism have plummeted in the polls in Mexico and Peru, their camps have tried to distance themselves from the Venezuelan leader. Elsewhere, incumbent presidents like Alvaro Uribe in Colombia and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil have won plaudits as economic managers, and look likely to be reelected.
This is good news for Latin America. It shows that political societies have evolved to the point where most people realize that, in a globalized world, they have to stick to a reformist path.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
How many more threads are we going to have on this moron?
Ignore the loser!
Well and good. But the problem is actually getting rid of him. The thing about South American strong-men was that they knew how to hang onto power, and Chavez is putting his own Cuban-style policing structure in place to preserve his. Castro has ruined Cuba and still has his. We're not at the beginning of the end, to cite Churchill, but perhaps we are at the end of the beginning.
What may do him in is his insistance on sending out cheap oil to the world's 'poor' while his own people remain poor and his infrastructure deteriorates.
Hugo is at it again! ping.
History teaches that it's unwise to ignore deluded, megalomaniac dictators.
Good article. The MSM would have us believe that Communism was on the march in South America.
And even if it's over, it's hard to get excited about it because it just seems that the world can never quite give up on marxism. Always gotta give it just one more chance.
That Chávez Thing Is Over
Not if Jimmy Carter has any say in it.
I will believe the little dictator is over when he (and his cronies) are ousted. Else while it will be a puppet dictatorship with the same philosophies.
I have got to wonder if the people down there care any more or if they're eyes are open.
Let's take his money away and see what big macho man he is then.
That will happen when his people put those AK-47's(he just bought from the russians) to good use.. And they WILL..
I sure hope this disturbing lefty trend down there is petering out. Let's hope for some sanity in Peru and Mexico!

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