South America Turns Left

Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales, with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

“Praising Fidel Castro as a model, Bolivia’s president-elect arrived Monday in Venezuela for a meeting with leftist leader Hugo Chavez, who said the nationalization of Bolivia’s oil and natural gas was high on the agenda. Evo Morales arrived in Caracas aboard a Cuban jet and said he and Chavez were uniting in a ‘fight against neoliberalism and imperialism.’”

After Castro, Chavez is the second foreign leader to meet the newly elected (bio) Morales, a sign of a growing relationship between the three leftist leaders that has concerned Washington. The three men call themselves the “Axis of Good.” “We are going to change Bolivia; we are going to change Latin America,” Morales said Tuesday.

TheStateOf….South America. Actually, one could throw Lula of Brazil into this category, but to a lesser extent. The primary issue in Bolivia right now is coca. Morales intends to renegotiate Bolivian-American agreements on the growth of the plant, which is used to make cocaine in the United States, but is used for medicine and hunger-supression in Bolivia. I don’t like that one, as crack cocaine has destroyed thousands of black American families. Morales is a socialist, and ran in 2002, losing narrowly but surprising the nation’s American-supported elite, as well as American officials. Back then, U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha lamented, sadly, that Morales had “awakened the conscience of the people.” Is socialism the answer for South America? (My theory is that socialism is more viable in agrarian, export-oriented countries.)