[Mb-civic] Buying Support in Latin America - Jackson Diehl - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Buying Support in Latin America

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, September 26, 2005; Page A23

Thanks to the United Nations General Assembly, the presidents of three 
big South American countries visited the United States simultaneously 
this month. Two are close U.S. allies who, through the diligent pursuit 
of free-market policies, have overseen impressive economic growth and a 
reduction of poverty in their nations. The other is a self-declared 
enemy of Washington who, despite enjoying an extraordinary bonanza of 
oil revenue, has managed to increase the poor population in his country 
by a quarter.

Chances are you heard about only one of these guys. Hugo Chavez, the 
"revolutionary" president of Venezuela, cut a flamboyant swath through 
New York, touring Harlem and the Bronx, chatting with Ted Koppel, 
basking in the applause of the General Assembly for his hyperbolic 
denunciations of American "imperialism" and capitalism.

By contrast, Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and Alejandro Toledo of Peru 
passed through New York and Washington with barely a ripple. Not only 
that, they didn't really want to be noticed. True, both agreed to meet 
with editors and reporters of The Post. But neither one was willing to 
speak publicly about the biggest development in Latin America in years. 
That is, of course, the increasingly conspicuous emergence of Chavez as 
the political and ideological successor to Fidel Castro, and his 
aggressive attempt to succeed where Castro failed in constructing an 
anti-American alliance.

It's not that Uribe and Toledo, like the left-wing leaders of Brazil and 
Argentina, secretly sympathize with Chavez: They don't. Toledo, once a 
victim of Alberto Fujimori's Peruvian 
dictatorship-in-the-shape-of-democracy, can hardly admire Chavez's 
similar destruction of Venezuela's political freedom. Uribe fights a 
leftist guerrilla movement created with Castro's help decades ago and 
now backed by Chavez, who granted asylum and even citizenship to one of 
its top leaders.

Still, Uribe refused to say anything for publication about Chavez. 
Toledo doggedly limited himself to the new formula of the Organization 
of American States: "It's not enough to be elected democratically; it's 
also indispensable to govern democratically." He also let slip: "If I 
had as much money from oil as President Chavez, the story would be 
different."

What's striking about all this is not Chavez's New York antics -- which 
were copied almost exactly from U.N. appearances by Castro -- but the 
silence and seeming demoralization of those Latin leaders who have stuck 
with the "Washington consensus" of free markets and democratic politics. 
By any reasonable measure, both Uribe and Toledo have succeeded: Their 
economies are growing rapidly, exports and foreign investment are way 
up, and extreme poverty is down.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501268.html
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