After years marked by brutal totalitarianism, economic chaos and the undermining of democratic processes by American imperialism, Latin America is moving forward. The region, at varying paces, is settling in to quieter routines of stable democracy and economic expansion. It is no exaggeration to say that, as the rest of the world attempts to cope with the ravages of capitalism’s greedy Achilles’ heel, all eyes are on Latin America watching history being fashioned.
Unless the world crashes into a double-dip recession, the region will see growth of between 4-5 per cent over the coming year. Economic growth and stable politics are symbiotic. As our writers detail in this week’s special report (pages 13-19), new leaders are coming through on a wave of mass movements which is driving back the US-inspired neo-liberalism that has been the bane of Latin America and its peoples for decades. The backlash against the election of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in 1998 failed, creating a catalyst instead for a rallying and then a steadying of progressive forces across the region. The election in Brazil of Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party in the second round of the presidential elections was rightly welcomed by the left throughout the world. In Argentina, where elections are due in October, there is growing support for a coalition that charts a progressive path. In Bolivia, the governing Movement Towards Socialism led by Evo Morales consolidated its position with victory in regional elections earlier this year. Once, not so long ago, an economic laughing stock, Bolivia today boasts the fastest-growing economy in the whole of Latin America.
In Cuba, Raul Castro has taken a steady hand to the tricky transformation of parts of the state to a mixed economy (although the first visible sign of that will be the abolition of around 500,000 state jobs), while a long-delayed congress of the Communist Party is expected next year to unveil a new, younger leadership. A painfully slow relaxation of Washington’s grip on Cuba’s economic throat and the freedom of its people to travel to the US is a step in the right direction. But elsewhere, President Barack Obama, who promised a “new start” to relations between the United States and Latin America when elected has delivered precious little sign of any break with the stance of successive predecessors in the White House, which singles out Mr Chávez and his regime for particular hostility. It is easy for critics to wring their hands over some of the actions of Mr Chávez from distances which do not allow a full analysis of what is happening on the ground. It is equally easy to worry, and to seek answers, about restrictions press on freedoms.
Mexico and Colombia, in different ways but with the common denominator of the corrupting factor of organised drug industries, leave their bloody, brutal blot and, as Kate Holman reports from Brussels on page 10, the European Union should be using its economic leverage to champion democracy and human rights. The tectonic shift, however, is toward progress in the struggles of the peoples of Latin America for self-determination and social justice. Adelante!
