Will Morales Sell Out (Like Lula)?

Foremost on many people’s minds is Lula of Brazil, who held so much promise in so many people’s eyes and has not delivered by most accounts. To many leftists, it seemed like Lula betrayed them. So all eyes are on Morales.

South America’s leftward tilt has gained momentum with the likely victory of Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales, the coca-farming Indian who calls himself “Washington’s nightmare.”

Morales, whose election is all but assured given his unexpectedly wide margin in Sunday’s voting, takes guidance from anti-US populist President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and considers Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara his hero.

Morales and Chavez, along with more moderate leftist presidents in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, have risen to power in part by appealing to their citizens’ profound frustration with US political, military and economic influence in their countries — rhetoric that suggests how much goodwill the US has lost in the region in recent years.

“Clearly in Latin America, things are not happening the way the United States would like to see them happen,” said Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. “And the question is: Will the US try to be more engaged and be supportive of the people who believe in the same thing as it does, or will it react to these trends as threats to the US, which could turn them into a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

Despite their strident anti-US rhetoric, these leaders seem intensely focused on…

Posted by ShadowUnit
*Algeria* http://membres.lycos.fr/pstdz/ *Argentina* www.pts.org.ar/ www.mas.org.ar/ *Australia* http://www.sep.org.au/ www.greenleft.org.au/ *Belgium* www.sap-pos.org/ *Brazil* www.psol.org.br/ www.democraciasocialista.org.br/ds/ ...

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