John Rapley
WHEN IT elected the indigenous activist and anti-globalisation icon Evo Morales as its president, Bolivia became the latest Latin American country to turn left.
In the 1990s, conventional wisdom held that democratisation in Latin America would turn the region against neoliberalism. Instead, right-wing politicians emerged triumphant. Electors throughout the continent judged that policies which limited state powers offered the best means of preventing the return of dictators and military juntas.
However, by the late 1990s, optimism had given way to disenchantment. The burst of economic growth of the early decade was sharply reversed by the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.
MANAGING THE CRISIS
Arguably, the setback might have proved temporary but for the way the U.S. administration stepped in to manage the crisis. Flush with money from the stock-market boom of the 1990s, the U.S. Treasury Department spearheaded an IMF bailout programme which enabled it to micromanage Third World economies. In return for financial assistance, recipient governments had to implement reform packages which more often than not suited U.S. interests.
The resultant fiscal austerity fell heavily on the continent's poor. The rich, meanwhile, fled for the exits, parking their money in U.S. accounts. The U.S. economy grew like never before. The region, meanwhile, grew poorer. And when growth later returned, it would prove anaemic and unevenly distributed.
It is, thus, probably not accidental that this is when the Latin American left, which many had written off as dead, resurfaced. Its first major victories came in Brazil, where first Congress and then the presidency went into leftist hands; and Venezuela, which fell under the spell of the populist Hugo Chavez.
Since then, the march has continued. Uruguay and Ecuador opted for leftist governments. Earlier this year, Chile elected a socialist president for the first time in a generation. In Argentina, President Nestor Kirchner recently paid off the country's debt to the IMF and ended negotiations with the institution; he then filled his cabinet with left-wing populists.
SYMPATHETIC CANDIDATE
Nor has the leftist tide crested. In Mexico, where the Zapatista rebels are conducting a nationwide caravan to unite the left, a sympathetic candidate is leading in the campaign for the presidential election due in a few months. Equally, Peru may see the return of a populist politician in its own presidential election.
If the seeds of this leftward tilt were sown during the Clinton years, the policies of the Bush administration have only intensified the trend. In the early months of the Bush presidency, there had been some optimism among Latin American governments that Bush's close embrace of Hispanic groups would redound to their advantage. That quickly evaporated after 9/11. America's security obsession then led it to take a hard line against immigrants. It didn't help matters that the policy team Bush put in place for Latin America also represented some of the most retrograde tendencies in U.S. foreign policy.
INTERTWINED INTERESTS
Still, U.S. and Latin American interests have become so intertwined that the various sides will have to work out their differences. Hugo Chavez may like the idea of a Latin American bloc free of U.S. influence, and the Brazilians may have little interest in trade with the U.S. But elsewhere, for instance, remittances from the U.S. have come to play an essential and growing role in several economies.
What does seem possible is that the challenges to the neoliberal model of globalisation will necessitate gradual, but deep changes in the policies of Western governments, the U.S. included. A turn away from globalisation will do more harm than good for all involved. But the burden of preventing that eventuality will probably fall more heavily on rich countries than poor ones, which are crying enough.
John Rapley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Mona.
