That era included one elected leftist regime (Chile’s Salvador Allende) which ended tragically; three left-leaning military dictatorships (Peru’s Velasco Alvarado, Panama’s Omar Torrijos and Bolivia’s very brief Juan José Torres), and just one successful guerrilla insurgency (Nicaragua’s Sandinistas) out of many from Mexico to Argentina that tried and failed. None of these regimes lasted and some are regarded today as case studies of bloated, incompetent bureaucracies that stifled growth and spawned corruption in the name of social justice.

Today, many more regimes in Latin America regard themselves as leftist, and although in some cases their commitment to democracy is doubtful, they all came to power through the ballot box. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Uruguay’s Tabaré Vásquez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet -- all would check the leftist box regarding their political views.

But are they? In today’s world, “Left” (as well as “Right”) is at best a very elastic concept that often provides very strange bedfellows. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, the former guerrilla commander, joined forces with the former supporters of dictator Anastasio Somoza. Sworn enemies but with shared allegations of corruption, they collaborated to gain power, left and right reduced to meaninglessness.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, the richest and most colorful of the lot, has developed a warm transcontinental relationship with such rulers as Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko and, most notably, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The reasons behind Chávez’s affectionate familiarity with the latter do not stem from the pleasure of always handy Bush-bashing, but from the price of oil. Both Chávez and Ahmadinejad are essentially petrocrats, that is, reloaded plutocrats whose strength and hold on power depend heavily on keeping the price of oil high. Last year, Venezuelan oil exports amounted to nearly $58 billion -- 20% more than the previous year -- while Iran sold oil totaling $44.6 billion. At up to $70 a barrel, not even drugs bring the same profit.

When Mr. Chávez took power in 1999, the price of oil hovered around $10 a barrel. He has been smart enough to understand that an unstable world keeps oil profits soaring. His leftist-sounding rhetoric only serves to hide cold capitalistic calculation.

What about the others? The Latin American leaders most closely associated with Chávez -- Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Bolivia’s Evo Morales -- have one thing in common with their mentor: they seek to bring radical constitutional reforms that would strengthen the executive branch of government and guarantee reelection. Democracy is anything but a priority for them.

With respect to Brazil’s Lula, Uruguay’s Tabaré Vásquez and Chile’s Michele Bachelet, one might say that they are pragmatists with a socialist past. But of the glorious social-democratic ideals that in the relatively recent past achieved feats of nation-building, civic society growth, more equitable income distribution, political freedom and increased quality of life from Israel to Scandinavia, nothing is to be found in Latin America today and, sadly, very little in the rest of the world.