Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Rising Tide

One item of note from last week: Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa's decisive victory in a national referendum calling for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country's constitution. Ecuador is far from the most influential country in South America. But the vote's outcome solidifies a trend that represents quite a historical revision: Fifteen years after being effectively eliminated through political and military repression, the Latin American left has returned to power through the ballot box.

I'm not a big fan of Chavez, who trail-blazed this tactic of writing the legislative branch out of the political equation, and I'm suspicious of populist demagoguery of any political stripe. So I don't dismiss out of hand the idea that the centralizing of power in the hands of strong executives, whether left or right, threatens democratic principles.

On the other hand, having lived shortly in Ecuador in 1996, and having travelled widely in the country, I think it's safe to say that when the elected government serves largely to legitimize a thuggish mafia of vested interests, all of whom subcontract the country's wealth out to the highest bidder, you'll end up with the kind of popular frustration that leads to either armed insurrection or cults of personality. We've seen the outcome of the former. The outcome of the latter remains to be seen.

Correa is not in the same virulently anti-American mold as Chavez. Which means that if we adopt a supportive stance that addresses the broad discontent that led to his rise, we might be able to channel this wave into a win-win outcome. If not, it's a natural leap from demonizing the "powers that be" to demonizing the "power that made them."

Posted by Judah in:  Las Americas   

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