Between Solitude and El Dorado

These days, it would be amusing to challenge an avid international news reader to find unequivocal agreement in sundry news sources like CNN, BBC News, and The Economist. Yet, they all agree on something: the coming months will be decisive for the future of Latin America. Drawing on the colonial heritage of the Iberian Empire, this region boasts a historical dependence on Baron de Montesquieu’s concept of executive power. And the 18 countries electing presidents this year seem to be leaning further toward what the French author would call, la gauche —the left.

Some weeks ago, a self-proclaimed “democratic revolution” brought Evo Morales to the Bolivian presidency. A long-time defender of cocaleros (coca growers) and an avid street protester, Morales finally achieved a popular majority leading MAS (Movement to Socialism), an acronym that also means “more” in Spanish. More is precisely what Bolivia needs, following dubious privatization contracts by previous neo-liberal administrations, rampant poverty, and the perennial White House-baked recipe of the “war on drugs.” Yet, a simple fact about Morales seems to be a flawless symbol of the ironic and illusory realities of this continent: he is the first Inca descendant to lead the republic in over 150 years, in a country where indigenous natives account for 80 percent of the population.

When it comes to the war on drugs, Morales is just a realist: he defends the right of Bolivians to make a decent living, something already quite hard in the so-called “developing” latitudes. Poor peasants with few acres of land grow coca because of basic Smithian economics: the market equilibrium price is far higher than other crops like coffee or soy. Washington’s “Apocalypse Now”-like burning of fields might work in areas with violent seditious guerrillas like Colombia’s FARC, but in Bolivia, aerial spraying destroys peoples’ opportunities to feed their families. Burning crops in distant Inca lands only prevents politicians from facing the real problem of demand, whether it is in Amsterdam’s dark alleys or Los Angeles’ celebrity pubs.

Although this position on drugs might taint him as an “incurable radical,” the truth is that Morales’ boat is testing two very different waters. He visited China with Hugo Chavez’s private plane, but he sensibly cancelled the visit to Iran and met with the American ambassador in La Paz; he talks of controlling the Santa Cruz “oligarchs” that reign over Bolivia’s wealth, but also about respecting international laws when renewing contracts with foreign investors in La Paz’s gaseous gold: natural gas.

These dissimilar waters represent a dichotomy within the Latin American gauche. On the one hand, there is that represented by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Since his 2002 election, Lula has worked with the markets, introducing reforms to increase income equality. Although corruption scandals have become a Katrina for his political capital, and might even sink his reelection campaign, his whale-sized Brazil sails toward a richer more equal future.

The same type of drive can be seen in countries like Uruguay and Chile. In the former, President Tabaré Vázquez epitomizes a left respectful of institutions and eager to develop with help from foreign markets. In the historically socially conservative latter, Michelle Bachelet, a socialist single-mother was elected President a month ago. Since 1990, the socialist Concentración coalition has been in power, working hard to come to terms with the political crimes and economic inequalities of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

However, Morales’ plane for the threecontinent tour was not courtesy of Lula or Bachelet, but thanks to Pat Robertson’s best friend: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. He leads the other Latin American gauche, and, far too often, the only one visible from the United States to Europe. His oil has bought him warplanes from Spain, guns from Russia, unsustainable welfare to calm poor masses at home, and, not surprisingly, the “unconditional support” of countries in the region. After 9/11, the Bush administration chose to take its ships and interests to other waters, and Latin America was left adrift. This was exemplified by Argentina’s 2001 crash, when democracy survived but the economic progress of a whole decade was razed along the governing administration.

In this context, Chávez has willingly become the Emir of the region, buying off Ecuadorian assets, Argentine debt, and Cuban doctors. In fact, his “brothers” in the region often adopt his dubious means, and not only in the rhetoric uttered by Morales. Argentine President Néstor Kichner has greatly benefited from a purposefully weak peso, high commodity prices, and huge export dividends resulting from “redistributing” taxes. However, although the federal state grows richer, that money is used to buy off regional caudillos and the poorer classes continue to see their real income liquated. Just like in Venezuela, a rich federal state is renting support, and drowning the press with official propaganda.

When receiving his well-deserved Nobel Prize, Colombian auteur Gabriel García Márquez described the ironies and solitudes of the land where unbelievably, “El Dorado” used to appear in maps until just over a century ago. The surreal waters of Latin America reveal two very different paths forward and today’s horizon acquires the sadly familiar shape of uncertainty. One of those paths tries to materialize El Dorado, in the form of fossil fuels rather than gold and further vanquishing democratic institutions. The other is a harder path to follow, considering that shortsighted foreign powers often advance their immediate economic interests and create larger problems than the ones they attempt to solve. After all, the dark shadows of Pinochet and Noriega are still lively memories. Nevertheless, this gauche aims at trade, infrastructure and fair growth.

Despite our best efforts, illusions invariably end. And if leaders like Morales choose the wrong waters for their already beaten barges, they will only condemn their constituencies to poverty and instability when commodity prices fall or fossil fuels run out. The end to García Márquez’s “hundred years of solitude” for this region might lie in la gauche, but only in a lawful, democratic and realist one.

Pierpaolo Barbieri ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Thayer Hall.