November 30, 2006
Axis of Hope
Venezuela and the Bolivarian Dream
By TARIQ ALI
In the Muslim world religious groups that are militarily effective,
but politically limited dominate resistance to the American Empire.
Asia is infatuated with capital. Europe lies buried deep in
neo-liberal torpor, and the Left and social movements in the EU
(Italy is the most recent example) are in an advanced state of
decomposition. But in South America an axis of hope has emerged that
challenges imperial domination on every level. Democracy,
hollowed-out and offering no alternatives in the North, is being
used to revive hope in the South.
The likely re-election of Hugo Chavez this weekend in Venezuela
will mark a new stage in the process. His opponent, Manuel Rosales,
described in the Financial Times (November 30) as a "centre-left"
candidate was heavily implicated in the defeated coup attempt to
topple Chavez in 2004. Rosales claims that "I will not sit on
anyone's lap" but it is hardly a secret that he is firmly attached
to the White House.
The wave of revolts and social movements spreading unevenly across
the South American continent today are the inevitable result of the
Washington Consensus, the economic enslavement of the world. Latin
America was the first laboratory for the Hayekian experiments that
finally produced the Consensus. The Chicago boys led by the late
Milton Friedman, who pioneered neo-liberal economics, used Chile
after the Pinochet coup of 1973 as a laboratory. It was a good
situation for them. The Chilean working class and its two principal
parties had been crushed, their leading cadres killed or
"disappeared". Six years later, the Sandinista revolution in
Nicaragua was crushed by a US-backed Contra counter-revolution.
Earlier this month, the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega won the
Presidency in his country. Blessed by the church, flanked by a
former Contra as his vice-president and still loathed by the US
ambassador, Ortega may be a sickly shadow of his former self, but
his victory undoubtedly reflects the desire of Nicaraguans for
change. Will Managua follow the radically redistributive policies of
anti-imperialist Caracas or confine itself to rhetoric and remain a
client of the International Monetary Fund?
There was even better recent news from Quito. The substantial
electoral triumph of Rafael Correa, a dynamic, young, US-educated
economist and former finance minister, who pledged in his election
campaign to reverse
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