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"leftist hordes," ascendant in Boliva and possibly to the banks of the Rio Grande.
Revolutions waged with ballots
Tim Harper
Jan. 28, 2006. 01:00 AM
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
The Toronto Star
TIWANAKU, Bolivia—As he stood among the admiring hordes at this shrine to pre-Incan civilization, his hat tugged down to his eyes, the old man appeared to have been drawn to this Andean summit for his last gasps on this Earth.
But one topic animated his hooded eyes, despite the 3,840-metre altitude and suddenly punishing sun.
"They have taken our resources and given them away to the evil rats," he said. "They have stolen our riches and given them to the United States.
"These riches are here for us. We need them in Bolivia for the poor."
Luis Atarapi Aiphana has lived through Bolivia's military coups, corruption, the "Black February" of 2003 when 34 died in street confrontations, the ever-changing governments. And now he has made the long trek to Tiwanaku to witness a rare spectacle — a ceremony in which incoming Bolivian President Evo Morales is stressing hope, respect and, most of all, change.
Such rituals of transition are happening across South America.
The new arrivals in the neighbourhood are rankling a Bush administration which acts as if the boys and girls down the street moved in under cover of darkness.
But the leftward lurch in Latin America represents both the neglect of the region by Washington and an opportunity for a real Canadian foreign policy in an area where Ottawa has rarely forged independence.
As North America has focused on wars and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the unfolding drama in the Middle East, a revolution has occurred under its nose.
This Latin American revolution has been waged with ballots, not blood, but that does not lessen the sting of its repudiation of made-in-Washington policies, including the so-called "neo-liberal" agenda of free trade and fiscal policy in the region, and the unilateralism of the Bush administration.
The most recent incarnation of this revolution is a small man with a penchant for striped pullovers and fiery rhetoric, who often appears incredulous at the political summit he's ascended.
The Evo Morales tale is compelling, a story of an Aymara Indian born into poverty who became the first indigenous president in Bolivian history.
He is a man who sold homemade sweets on the streets to help support his family, herded llamas, and rose to represent the nation's coca farmers. Then he turned his incendiary, street-level politics into the leadership of this impoverished, landlocked country of fewer than 9 million.
As he gave thanks to the Andean gods on this day at Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca, Morales — barefoot, in traditional costume and carrying a staff of gold and silver — was marking a revolution among indigenous people on his continent.
But his election, which added another country to the left-leaning ledger, has reverberations well beyond a nation often ignored by the rest of the world.
The leftist movement in Latin America stills pays homage to its patriarch, the fading and increasingly feeble Fidel Castro of Cuba, a man who had warm praise for Morales in Havana; a man the Bolivian leader has defended as a "great democrat."
But its real leader today is the bombastic and outrageous Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
He has become a regional power, awash in oil and anti-Washington rhetoric, a leader who sees Morales as a protégé.
The left's ranks have swelled, and threaten to increase in 2006.
Morales joins Argentina's Nelson Kirchner, Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Uruguay's Tabare Vazquez.
In Chile, Michelle Bachelet is a less-doctrinaire socialist but she, too, represents change. Earlier this month, she became the first woman in South America elected president (without having inherited power from a husband). She is also the first to lead her country after having survived the torture of the Pinochet regime, and being forced into European exile.
Next month, Ollanta Humala, another Chavez acolyte, could win power in Peru's elections. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega is threatening a comeback.
The campaign scrutinized most intensely in Washington is the presidential race now underway in Mexico, where Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — who was threatened with imprisonment last year by outgoing President Vicente Fox, sparking huge street demonstrations — is a strong contender.
His victory would bring the leftist hordes to the banks of the Rio Grande.
Right now, however, all the scrutiny is on Morales, the onetime cocalero who's called himself U.S. President George W. Bush's "nightmare," the champion of coca farmers who wants to nationalize the country's natural gas reserves.
So far, he appears to be under the sway of Chavez, whom he presented this week with a portrait, made of coca leaves, of South America's independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Morales took office with a 74 per cent approval rating, according to the La Paz newspaper La Razon, placing perhaps impossible hopes on the shoulders of a man with no formal political experience.
He has played both sides of the debate over Washington's influence in the region, taunting Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during his campaign, then appearing conciliatory after meeting Thomas Shannon, undersecretary of state for the region.
He has played strongly to his Indian roots.
"It seems as though some journalists in Europe and Asia want to see me in feathers and half-naked," Morales told reporters during a pre-inauguration visit to Argentina. "It's not that way. We are human beings. We are happy that we are finally being recognized. Thanks to the vote of the people, they will know what Bolivia is."
One Washington-based diplomat called this year the "perfect storm" in Latin America, with no fewer than 10 presidential elections scheduled.
"This next year will shape the region as a whole over the next six years," the diplomat said.
Not everyone is convinced Morales can govern from the left. "Evo had to build a party over a period of years and move to the centre in order to get elected," said Carl Cira, director of the Summit of the Americans at Florida International University. "Nevertheless he is a genuine Bolivian phenomenon."
Leftists sometimes change quickly when they are shown the economic books, Cira said. "When they sit down in the chair and someone shows them the numbers, they have to figure out how they get right with God and the International Monetary Fund," he said.
One diplomat predicted Morales will be "a disaster, but a necessary disaster," because the indigenous majority in the country needed to be empowered.
Peter Hakim, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said the world is not sure what to expect from Morales.
"He has taken advantage of the degree of frustration, anger, failure of successive governments in Bolivia and has made himself president," he said.
His core is more radical than he is and that core will be demanding, he added.
But the depth of anti-American sentiment in the region is no secret.
"The war in Iraq and the rejection of the international community, the aggressive unilateralism of the U.S., has more to do with this than the actual policies in the region," Hakim said.
The Abu Ghraib scandal and allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay further deepened Latin animosity toward Washington. Latin Americans "have suffered a great deal at the hand of the unilateralism of the United States," Hakim said. "When they watch what is happening in the Middle East, they are insulted by that."
Birns agreed, saying the United States burned alliances by its arm-twisting in the region leading up to the Iraq war.
U.S. ambassadors also threatened to cut off aid if the wrong candidates won elections in their home countries, viewed as blatant hypocrisy while the U.S. was purporting to "spread democracy" in the Middle East, [Larry] Birns [director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs] said.
"The history of relations with the U.S. has been very, very harsh and predates this administration," said another diplomat in the region. "Yanqui Go Home has been spray-painted on buildings in Latin America for 200 years.
"You see those 20-year-olds running around denouncing the Americans and you realize that it is passed on down from generation to generation."
And anti-American rhetoric plays so well in 2006 because of the spate of elections against a backdrop of Republican neglect of the region.
For the first time, Washington could not install its choice as head of the Organization of American States — then failed in its bid to promote its second choice. But there were signs of waning influence in 2003, at the OAS general assembly in Chile, when for the first time the U.S. was not elected to the body's human rights commission.
Its OAS failures show Washington neglect, some say. Others point to the failures as a sign of arrogance.
But on this day, as Morales stands on the hill overlooking the ruins, thousands chant "Evo, Evo, Evo."
"We have been oppressed by the system for 500 years," says Angelica Tapia Rodriquez as blue socialist flags fly in her midst. "This is the beginning of the end of those who have profited from our resources. Those who have filled their pockets at our expense will no longer be welcome.
"Evo will change that."
"leftist hordes," ascendant in Boliva and possibly to the banks of the Rio Grande.
Revolutions waged with ballots
Tim Harper
Jan. 28, 2006. 01:00 AM
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
The Toronto Star
TIWANAKU, Bolivia—As he stood among the admiring hordes at this shrine to pre-Incan civilization, his hat tugged down to his eyes, the old man appeared to have been drawn to this Andean summit for his last gasps on this Earth.
But one topic animated his hooded eyes, despite the 3,840-metre altitude and suddenly punishing sun.
"They have taken our resources and given them away to the evil rats," he said. "They have stolen our riches and given them to the United States.
"These riches are here for us. We need them in Bolivia for the poor."
Luis Atarapi Aiphana has lived through Bolivia's military coups, corruption, the "Black February" of 2003 when 34 died in street confrontations, the ever-changing governments. And now he has made the long trek to Tiwanaku to witness a rare spectacle — a ceremony in which incoming Bolivian President Evo Morales is stressing hope, respect and, most of all, change.
Such rituals of transition are happening across South America.
The new arrivals in the neighbourhood are rankling a Bush administration which acts as if the boys and girls down the street moved in under cover of darkness.
But the leftward lurch in Latin America represents both the neglect of the region by Washington and an opportunity for a real Canadian foreign policy in an area where Ottawa has rarely forged independence.
As North America has focused on wars and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the unfolding drama in the Middle East, a revolution has occurred under its nose.
This Latin American revolution has been waged with ballots, not blood, but that does not lessen the sting of its repudiation of made-in-Washington policies, including the so-called "neo-liberal" agenda of free trade and fiscal policy in the region, and the unilateralism of the Bush administration.
The most recent incarnation of this revolution is a small man with a penchant for striped pullovers and fiery rhetoric, who often appears incredulous at the political summit he's ascended.
The Evo Morales tale is compelling, a story of an Aymara Indian born into poverty who became the first indigenous president in Bolivian history.
He is a man who sold homemade sweets on the streets to help support his family, herded llamas, and rose to represent the nation's coca farmers. Then he turned his incendiary, street-level politics into the leadership of this impoverished, landlocked country of fewer than 9 million.
As he gave thanks to the Andean gods on this day at Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca, Morales — barefoot, in traditional costume and carrying a staff of gold and silver — was marking a revolution among indigenous people on his continent.
But his election, which added another country to the left-leaning ledger, has reverberations well beyond a nation often ignored by the rest of the world.
The leftist movement in Latin America stills pays homage to its patriarch, the fading and increasingly feeble Fidel Castro of Cuba, a man who had warm praise for Morales in Havana; a man the Bolivian leader has defended as a "great democrat."
But its real leader today is the bombastic and outrageous Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
He has become a regional power, awash in oil and anti-Washington rhetoric, a leader who sees Morales as a protégé.
The left's ranks have swelled, and threaten to increase in 2006.
Morales joins Argentina's Nelson Kirchner, Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Uruguay's Tabare Vazquez.
In Chile, Michelle Bachelet is a less-doctrinaire socialist but she, too, represents change. Earlier this month, she became the first woman in South America elected president (without having inherited power from a husband). She is also the first to lead her country after having survived the torture of the Pinochet regime, and being forced into European exile.
Next month, Ollanta Humala, another Chavez acolyte, could win power in Peru's elections. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega is threatening a comeback.
The campaign scrutinized most intensely in Washington is the presidential race now underway in Mexico, where Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — who was threatened with imprisonment last year by outgoing President Vicente Fox, sparking huge street demonstrations — is a strong contender.
His victory would bring the leftist hordes to the banks of the Rio Grande.
Right now, however, all the scrutiny is on Morales, the onetime cocalero who's called himself U.S. President George W. Bush's "nightmare," the champion of coca farmers who wants to nationalize the country's natural gas reserves.
So far, he appears to be under the sway of Chavez, whom he presented this week with a portrait, made of coca leaves, of South America's independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Morales took office with a 74 per cent approval rating, according to the La Paz newspaper La Razon, placing perhaps impossible hopes on the shoulders of a man with no formal political experience.
He has played both sides of the debate over Washington's influence in the region, taunting Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during his campaign, then appearing conciliatory after meeting Thomas Shannon, undersecretary of state for the region.
He has played strongly to his Indian roots.
"It seems as though some journalists in Europe and Asia want to see me in feathers and half-naked," Morales told reporters during a pre-inauguration visit to Argentina. "It's not that way. We are human beings. We are happy that we are finally being recognized. Thanks to the vote of the people, they will know what Bolivia is."
One Washington-based diplomat called this year the "perfect storm" in Latin America, with no fewer than 10 presidential elections scheduled.
"This next year will shape the region as a whole over the next six years," the diplomat said.
Not everyone is convinced Morales can govern from the left. "Evo had to build a party over a period of years and move to the centre in order to get elected," said Carl Cira, director of the Summit of the Americans at Florida International University. "Nevertheless he is a genuine Bolivian phenomenon."
Leftists sometimes change quickly when they are shown the economic books, Cira said. "When they sit down in the chair and someone shows them the numbers, they have to figure out how they get right with God and the International Monetary Fund," he said.
One diplomat predicted Morales will be "a disaster, but a necessary disaster," because the indigenous majority in the country needed to be empowered.
Peter Hakim, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said the world is not sure what to expect from Morales.
"He has taken advantage of the degree of frustration, anger, failure of successive governments in Bolivia and has made himself president," he said.
His core is more radical than he is and that core will be demanding, he added.
But the depth of anti-American sentiment in the region is no secret.
"The war in Iraq and the rejection of the international community, the aggressive unilateralism of the U.S., has more to do with this than the actual policies in the region," Hakim said.
The Abu Ghraib scandal and allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay further deepened Latin animosity toward Washington. Latin Americans "have suffered a great deal at the hand of the unilateralism of the United States," Hakim said. "When they watch what is happening in the Middle East, they are insulted by that."
Birns agreed, saying the United States burned alliances by its arm-twisting in the region leading up to the Iraq war.
U.S. ambassadors also threatened to cut off aid if the wrong candidates won elections in their home countries, viewed as blatant hypocrisy while the U.S. was purporting to "spread democracy" in the Middle East, [Larry] Birns [director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs] said.
"The history of relations with the U.S. has been very, very harsh and predates this administration," said another diplomat in the region. "Yanqui Go Home has been spray-painted on buildings in Latin America for 200 years.
"You see those 20-year-olds running around denouncing the Americans and you realize that it is passed on down from generation to generation."
And anti-American rhetoric plays so well in 2006 because of the spate of elections against a backdrop of Republican neglect of the region.
For the first time, Washington could not install its choice as head of the Organization of American States — then failed in its bid to promote its second choice. But there were signs of waning influence in 2003, at the OAS general assembly in Chile, when for the first time the U.S. was not elected to the body's human rights commission.
Its OAS failures show Washington neglect, some say. Others point to the failures as a sign of arrogance.
But on this day, as Morales stands on the hill overlooking the ruins, thousands chant "Evo, Evo, Evo."
"We have been oppressed by the system for 500 years," says Angelica Tapia Rodriquez as blue socialist flags fly in her midst. "This is the beginning of the end of those who have profited from our resources. Those who have filled their pockets at our expense will no longer be welcome.
"Evo will change that."
