Hugh O’Shaughnessy says the new generation of leaders is a disparate one, but more unites them than divides them
ANOTHER week, another election victory for the left in Latin America. The tide of change and reform in a region which a few decades ago seemed to be in danger of being swamped by domestic terrorists trained and financed by foreign governments now looks deliciously unstoppable. Mauricio Funes, candidate of the FMLN – the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front – has been elected President of El Salvador.
So it is fitting that victory over terrorism on a broad front in Latin America should be celebrated at the Regent Street campus of the University of Westminster in London next Saturday (April 4) at a conference centred on Venezuela and its powerful but much blackguarded leader, Hugo Chávez.
El Salvador, once notorious for wholesale slaughter and individual assassination – 600 people were massacred in 1980 on the Río Sumpul; 600 more were slaughtered a year later at Mozote; Archbishop Romero of San Salvador was murdered with one skilfully-placed bullet; six Jesuits were two shot to death at their university during the carnival of blood orchestrated from Washington by the unlamented Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter – now has a chance of recovery.
Funes, a presenter with CNN and heir to the victims of decades of atrocities by the Salvadorean military, has already been to see President Lula in Brazil and will take his place alongside Chávez with Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Tabaré Vázquez of Uruguay, Michele Bachelet of Chile, Cristina Kirchner of Argentina and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua as a member of a new generation.
This new generation is an undoubted reality. At the same time, it would be wrong to see these new leaders as all members of a tightly-knit phalanx marching concertedly towards one common goal. Certainly, they are all keen to put an end to the pretensions to hegemony that successive leaders of the United States have aspired to for nearly two centuries. But their domestic circumstances vary greatly. Brazil is on the way to becoming a world power. It has hopes of a permanent seat on a reformed United Nations Security Council and of co-ordinating the policies of countries with similar aspirations, such as India and South Africa.
Funes’ El Salvador, a small country on the Pacific coast of Central America, has little but poverty in common with Lugo’s Paraguay, thousands of miles away and landlocked in the heart of South America. Each has a population of less than 10 million; neither can ever hope to entertain the same aspirations as 200 million Brazilians. Kirchner’s Argentina and its immediate neighbour, Vázquez’ Uruguay, are currently at daggers drawn over a large paper mill which the Uruguayans have sited on their common border.
Venezuela has used the wealth generated by one of the world’s largest deposits of oil wisely. To hoots of derision from the guardians of Western financial orthodoxy, it has started spending to improve the conditions of millions of the poorest Venezuelans and guarantee the tiny and poor countries of the Caribbean against bankruptcy from high oil prices.
It is also working with the Cubans in a continent-wide health campaign, Operación Milagro – “Operation Miracle”. This has brought sight back to the eyes of hundreds of thousands who could never otherwise have afforded treatment which is as beneficent to Latin Americans as it is ignored by the Western media.
The Venezuelan government was able to defend itself against George Bush’s fumbled attempt to overthrow Chávez by armed force in 2002 – a charade which was hailed at the time by one of Tony Blair’s particularly incompetent junior ministers. Now Chávez is having to cut Venezuala’s spending a little as the world oil price falls.
Even if the circumstances of the countries of the left in Latin America had not been as disparate as they clearly are, wide differences would exist in the their leaders’ political outlooks and strategies. For Lugo, Morales and Correa, there is no higher priority than correcting five centuries of pitiless oppression of the indigenous majorities by local whites and people of mixed race.
On the other hand, in Argentina, relatively few indigenes remain. Their forebears were comprehensively massacred in military campaigns in the 19th century of the sort which cleared the Red Indians from the great plains of the US. For her part, President Bachelet, who was orphaned when her father died after torture in prison under Augusto Pinochet, could never be characterised as one of Latin America’s radicals, sitting as she does on a vast hoard of wealth from Chile’s massive sales of copper and not distributing much of it to anyone.
In international affairs, the prospects for the new generation of leaders are brightening considerably. The Chinese have sent a stream of their top brass over to Latin America and received Latin American leaders with equal enthusiasm as a sign that they are keen to maintain a flow of raw materials which China’s massive economy needs.
Trade is momentarily checked as a result of the financial “axis of evil” compromising the former occupant of the White House, the man responsible for Abu Ghraib whom Chávez calls “Dr Danger”, and the gnomes of Wall Street who brought on the present global banking crisis. But it will recover before long. The Chinese want Venezuelan and Ecuadorean oil; all sorts of Asians want access to Latin American food, while companies throughout the world are gagging for the lithium which is vital for new scientific uses. Bolivia is the world’s principal source. US companies seeking it are realising that while Washington keeps up its hostility to the Bolivian government, US business is unlikely to get many opportunities in Bolivia.
Meanwhile, Chávez – who has just had Russian bombers and warships in his country – is buying a new fleet of Russian helicopters and has offered Moscow bases for the new generation of armed forces that Russia is forming. As it faces defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington is still trying to manipulate Middle Eastern governments. But it knows it hasn’t to the clout to do anything similar in modern Latin America.
One last question. As Binyam Mohamed, the Ethiopian seized and illegally held without charge for years by the US, attests that Britain is fighting shoulder to shoulder with its US allies in some of the world’s worst torture chambers, it is clear that the Labour Government has been a full partner in Washington’s dirty wars in the Middle East and Latin America. How did the Labour Party and two successive Labour leaders get so comprehensively defiled?
Hugh O’Shaughnessy is the author of The Priest from Paraguay: The Story of Fernando Lugo, to be published by Zed Books in August
