Article: Latin America Today

With the recent crisis at the Organization of American States when several attempts to elect a new Secretary General failed to do so Latin America made new headlines.

The region continues to be affected by deep financial crisis, ecological decimation and political turmoil. The present situation in Bolivia where the president has had to resign twice is a good example of the above. The wealth gap between the rich elite and the great majority of the population expands day-by-day. The foreign corporations exploiting the natural gas probably the wealthiest resource of the poor isolated Bolivia are under serious peril to continue their operations. The impact that this massive exploitation has had in the south of the country has yet to be evaluated but seems important.

But the changes in the region are of far more important value. The recent elections in the South America largest countries: Argentina, Chile and Venezuela are good examples of the changing of the times. It seems a new democratic order is under construction. In spite of all these changes the relationship with the US, unipolar world power who has a direct sometimes decisive input in the region seems to be restructuring as well.

Central America free of the so-called Cuban influence of the 70s and 80s is taking its own evolving route to capitalist, neo-liberal democracies. The Sandinistas are out of power and in some ways discredited by the way in which the managed their revolution. The Salvadorean revolution that practically destructed the infrastructure of that country and killed almost 100,000 civilians is over; the FMLN has an important share of the cake but continues to fail to win, in electoral contests, what they obtained by violent means. The giant of Mexico, played for several decades an important force of equilibrium in the sub-region of the Spanish Caribbean, the backyard of the EEUU. The land of Zapata is in the hands of a conservative government and after the near collapse of their economy continues to export massive amounts of immigrants to El Norte. It doesn’t seem that the Free Trade Agreement in the Northern Hemisphere has produced the expected results. The Caribbean sub-region in its own facing new economic changes flirts with a similar situation with the stalked in Congress USDRCAFTA; the Eastern Caribbean and Non-Spanish Caribbean unless it is for a socialist revolution or another blood coup in Haiti continues to be forgotten by the press.

To finalize this general overview we should note that the chess game being played by the regional powers has been successful: The latest match in the recent meeting of the OAS the proposal submitted by the US to “monitor” democracy in the region was left out of the final declaration. The words of the Brazilian representative are a jewel when referring to Condie Rice he admonished: “Democracy cannot be imposed it is the result of dialogue”.
Published in www.DominicanToday.com