Bolivar’s Ghost

In El Alto the people readied themselves for an uprising should their best chance at self-determination in 500 years somehow be taken away from them. The battle lines are drawn, and, if Morales succeeds, some are predicting civil war, others a US invasion. In the meantime, Evo Morales seeks safe haven in El Alto. But there too, the demands for change are increasing daily.

Across Latin America, there is growing solidarity about saying no to the ftaa, but precious little agreement about what other economic model to support. The region’s economies are based overwhelmingly on exporting raw goods. Some hope resides in regional trade. Mercosur agreements now affect 220 million consumers and represent more than a trillion dollars a year in gdp. But a history of collapsing economies has left Latin American countries wary of each other, prone to protectionist reactions at the slightest hint of an economic downturn, and vulnerable to the demands of the United States.

It is for this reason that South America’s left-wing leaders are looking overseas for new markets and new forms of leverage. Enter China, with its voracious appetite for raw materials and oil, for the very products so desired in the North. Latin American exports to China grew to $22 billion (US) in 2004 from $3 billion in 1999, a staggering increase that has made China the largest single market for South American goods — and economists in Washington increasingly nervous.

But while China is buying, its investment potential in Latin America lags far behind that of other economic powerhouses. Moreover, since China’s primary interest lies in importing raw materials, there is little hope that it will help Latin American economies diversify in meaningful ways. In fact, some countries in the region — notably Mexico — see China as a threat to their own diversification efforts. Raw goods shipped from Latin America to China, argues Mexico’s Vicente Fox, are fuelling a powerful and cost-effective Asian manufacturing sector that will blunt the edge of economic development at home, and it is for this reason that Latin America is better served within an ftaa, i.e., by a patron closer to home, that it knows.

So, despite an undeniable rise in popular political expression across the region, nothing in Latin America is certain. “What’s happening,” argues Larry Birns, director of the Washington- based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “is that the poor — which was an inert political factor, an inert sociological factor — has become a hotbed of rising expectations. What you’re seeing in Latin America is a kind of new political law emerging from the street — if you defraud us on running on a campaign agenda, if you use your platform to simply get into office and then dismiss it, then the people have a right to recall the election by hitting the streets.” For now, the populist wave has cast its lot with the democratic left. But populist movements have a long history of flying any number of flags of political convenience, from doctrinaire Marxism to military dictatorships. Such movements also show a persistent and problematic willingness to blindly deliver their collective power into the waiting hands of a caudillo, the archetypal and charismatic strongman, the father figure who is not always benevolent.

In Macondo, the residents fought valiantly against the hundred years of solitude that threatened to engulf their town. They experienced blissful moments, moments of magic and miracle, but all was ultimately lost. Today, in Caracas and Montevideo, in Buenos Aires and Brasília, the people are demanding a different ending to their own story.