The only on way to end leftism in south america, is having a liberal, and economical successful president that efficiently combates corruption (making a flag of it).

Unfortunately, recently examples, like Menem on Argentina, had being supported by USA, and had being extremely corrupt, populist, and inefficient, leading the country to a monumental disaster.

The example of Pinochet does not help at all. It was a genocide US backed, and promoted.

The friends that USA chooses on Latin America, are ever corrupt, nasties, inepts, and enemies of honest , independent, and efficient justice (justice as state power).
That feed the miths about an imperialistic and corrupt USA with bad intentions about Latin America.

Of course, that grows suspicions about USA; mistrust and fear leads to search of the opposite: the left, known and valued more for his protection against USA, than for any intrinsic value.
As soon as an Latin governement feels under USA menace, it turns against United States, in the form of joining his enemies.
That caused Fidel Castro, Chavez, and all the left, nationalist postures on Latin politicians.

Of course the electoral defeat of chavez is a main reason to believe that it would follow the path of Menem (also a intended constitutional reformer to keep himself in power forever).
But hinking that that is the end of "left" on Latin America is inocently childish.

There is no a real left on Latin America, only a lack of trust on right intentions.

I am especially interested in hemispheric or even global political trends in elections. The referendum on the new proposed Bolivian constitution - which contains a Chavezesque clause permitting perpetual reelection for the president - goes to referendum in a few months. If Morales were to lose and have to step down, it would be interesting if a Lula-style center-left leader filled his place.

Here in Alaska we have a female Republican governor named Sarah Palin. Sarah is extremely popular and has an approval rating of over 85%. She's a populist leader, and her ties to the Republican party are microscopic. She looks after the state while doing business with big oil. So far she is kicking butt. Her popularity is largely a result of her skills listening to the people of Alaska. This comes from growing up in a small community and having parents who are involved in their children's lives. Sarah's a person of the people, and this is where she derives her strengths and benefits the state most. In Latin America, the people are voting for leaders that are listening and looking out for the peoples interest. Multinational oil companies do a ton of business in Alaska, and oil is always in the local news. It runs the state. Latin America has a lot of oil. Done right, and with the peoples will, trade and business can prosper in Latin America, just like it has here in Alaska.

Actually, it seems the Venezuelan people still want Chavez as President...just not President for Life. Is there really any more to this news? The only other significance to this, I'm afraid to say, is that Venezuelan elections and vote processing seems to be more reliable and trusted than U.S. elections. We need to work on that. Reluctant compliments to Chavez for accepting the outcome and trusting the will of the Venezuelan voters.

Now can we leave them alone and concentrate on fixing our own problems? Were sinking fast in the global food chain and for America to fall any further is NOT an option.

Gents, Ladies...Chavez overreached. He knows this now. Yes, Fidel's hand is all over these 69 proposed reforms but this idea that Venezuelans and Cubans will allow themselves to be "united" in the future is science fiction. Raúl would not allow such "heresy." Chavez will try again to pass some of these reforms albeit in "digestable parts." He has until 2013 to figure out a way...plenty of time under a new White House trying to find "its way." If we think he is done with this last referendum...think again. The only reason he defused the situation so fast is when he realized he was hours away from catastrophic street violence of which only he would be to blame. His military likes him, but they will not go out in the street and start shooting unarmed Venezuelans, not in this day and age. They probably reminded him of this late Sunday night. His rhetoric is his only tool besides his oil. His rhetoric will be his demise as he continues to antagonize his neighbors. Yes, Chile, Brazil and Argentina may be the next generation of democracy in LATAM as long as they continue to deliver sustained growth, but Chile is showing strain. They are also the best hope of containing Chavez in the future thus we need to help them succeed economically. (Even OPEC told him to "shut up" in more polite way than the king did). But when we continue to play politics with the regions FTA's, all we do is make places like Peru, Colombia and Panama more prone to "Chavismo" and the "Bolivarian Circles" full of Petro-Bolivares. "Soft Power" is the way to go for us...Chavez will do the rest. Remember, if Alan Garcia fails to deliver (again), we may have to get use to another Chavez-like figure in power in the region...leaving Colombia's Uribe as the last "thorn on his side"...literally. If we antagonize the Colombians some more, we will help open the door just that much more for Chavez in the region. Simón Bolivar created the Gran Colombia (Venezuela, Colombia (with Panama), Ecuador, Bolivia and Perú). Chavez will love to see it again under his leadership. I guess the question is: Can we live with this scenario, which is full of anti-US sentiment, relentless cocaine laden shipments of which we will have less access to stop...Oh, and Iranians flying in and out with weekly convenient non-stop flights to Teheran? If yes, then let us pack our bags and come home.

Chile and Uruguay are better examples of an enlightened, moderate Latin left. The macroeconomic and social successes of Chile are well known. The leftist government of Uruguay is doing equally well, with strong growth, major reduction of the fraction of the population in poverty, and actual reduction of the inequalities in wealth.
Although there are problems in both countries, their democracies are strong.
Most of their successful reform policies would be considered extreme here, as would the strict separation of Church and State that prevails in both countries. No presidential candidate would be caught invoking God in a speech; Mitt Romney's speech, would be disqualifying in Chile, Uruguay or Argentina.
And by the way, both Uruguay and Chile were graded better than the US by Transparency Internationalin regard to the prevalence of corruption.

It seems to me that the extremes of both the left and the right are losing in many places around the world. That may be a naive notion but one can hope.

A guy that can't fit in in a meeting of Latino heads of state and needs to be told to shut up by the king of Spain starts to look like a clown that missed the place where he was supposed to act. After that I have trouble considering him a political leader of any kind. Did Fidel ever made a fool of himself? (I'm too young to know).

For the last 30 years we have had a left goevernment in power in the state of West Bengal in India.

It functioned the same way all pure Leftists did---------shooing off capital while trying to build a solid support base in the villages. A section of the rural population benefitted but the agenda had reached a saturation point much earlier. Instead of the state's industrial recovery and development,the party in power became an invincible force, thanks to an opposition which could never get its act together.

It was only in the last 5 years when a new state chief minister decided to go on an overdrive-------a sort of penance for the futile ideological block which set the clock several decades back and much behind front-runner states elsewhere in India. In a bid to vigorously get investors back into the state he sidled off to be like the center-Left-----not only was he market friendly, but blatantly bent over and backwards to woo amd court capital. Desperate to get land for the investors, he sent the wrong signals to semi-literate farming communities who for 3 decades had been doled out and sometimes force fed idelogies which considered capital, big money and foreign investment calamitous. Lack of exposure to proper education and a clever policy to do away with the teaching of the English language till the mid-school level kept them in darkness about the shortcomings of ideologies set in stone. They were gobbling up state logic quick smart till the all-knowing state decided to change coat. When angry villagers drove off Left supporters, allegations of police firing and months later, unable to re-enter their villages, armed Left party cadres stormed and ramsacked their way in with the police remaining silent all through. And the mayhem was justified by the chief minister with an inexplicable argument---sacreligious in a parliamentary democracy----'they have been paid back in their own coin.'

This explains a dangerous trend where pure Leftists, unable to sustain their ideological potency when failing to put them into practice, fall back on Stalin-istic methods. Armed Party power takes over in connivance with the law-keepers to maintain the stranglehold. And protesting civil society gets debunked and classified as enemies.

The methods of reprisal, show of power and reacting to dissent appear no better than what totalitarian regimes did in the past.

The politics of empire building as practiced by China and Russia, will have unforeseen political and social consequences for the Caribbean and Latin America in the future. If is difficult now; for first world democracies to imagine, how the power of the state can, and has been applied to economically destroy ideologically dissenting citizens. Major crime is not simply a phenomenon of economics and erosion of law and order; but a measured political weapon to achieve ideological objectives. Our common colonialism experience should have informed us better. Our region faces the reality of reinventing the wheel of social justice, yet again.

I think David Ignatious is wrong. Chavez still poses great dangers for the world, not because of his closeness to Ahmadinejad (who happens to have more credibility worldwide than Bush), but because of his ties to Cuba.

The failed constitutional reforms were inspired by Castro's regime: supreme leader ruling for life, single party, no opposition, no checks and balances, local officials appointed by the supreme leader instead of elected by local people, no private property, no independent media.

Chavez has turned Venezuela's society into a KGB-style dictatorship, with everyone spying into everyone else, to the extent that government has comprehensive databases of chavistas and non-chavistas, the later being systematically suppresed from election lists. A country with empty markets, where food distribution is controlled by chavistas, so that people are forced to become chavistas if they want to bring food to the table.

Those ideas are not even considered in Ahmadinejad's Iran.

There is no American left.

The American left is the sin that dare not speak its name.

Because don't kid yourself, neither Hillary or Obama would even qualify for the rightwing of the British Labor Party. On the continent they might just make it as Christian Democrats, but just barely... Anything like a sober, Swedish Social Democrat would be treated like Hugo Chávez on LSD by the US media.

It looks like the USA is heading into a nasty recession that is going to cause great pain to the "little guy": where even the middle class is going to discover that they have been shafted and there is no political organization prepared to pick up that ball and run with it. We can see that by the way a congress voted in to end the Iraq war just lies there.

But what a cast of characters the Republicans have! From libertarian eccentrics like Ron Paul right through to neofascist Rudy Giuliani, stirred in with folksy, guitar strumming, creationist, Mike Huckabee who sounds like the one-eyed Mullah Omar if he were reworked by Walt Disney.

In short they have a genuine culture. From center-right to far out, wacky right... no holds barred, in your face, what you see is what you get, pure reactionaries... A real spectrum, in fact a veritable monkey's ass of a party.

Somebody (nobody but the American people) has to put together a grass roots movement to change all of this because, the two party system is never going to deliver anything but more right wing (choose noun), because that is where the juice and the sincerity and the culture are.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

I think Lula is something of a special case. The level and extent of political corruption in Brazil is more dominent than any ideology.

The better examples would be Bachelet in Chile and, to a lessor extent, Kurchner in Argentina. Kurchner gets credit for thoroughly discrediting the IMF and US style fiscal prescriptions. It is not just our intelligence agencies who have lost all credibility in this world.

The jury remains out on Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Ecuador is a total basket case, just now seriously contemplating a whole new constitution. That is not so predictable a process as Mr. Chavez would attest.

Spain, Chile, Ecuador, Boliva, Austraila, and I'm sure I'm missing a few. The Bush presidency has pushed nations and societies in that direction. The end of globalization, de-regulation and privatization may end up being Bush's legacy of irony as we see the world trend towards regionalization, re-regulation and nationalization.

I don't think it's the center-left that's winning out necessarily. We see center-right reformist governments in Canada and France. I think the issue is creating a new social contract for the age of globalization. That means accepting fiercely competitive markets and free trade but also addressing the insecurity that they cause. For example, healthcare that's not tied to your job, which you can lose at any time, or pensions that are protected from companies that need to restructure or go bankrupt. In the U.S., either party could become a permanent majority by striking the right balance. However, I don't see either party reaching out for the brass ring. Republicans refuse to use government to provide more security for people, and Democrats are hostile to free trade, despite the enormous benefits we have already gained.