Ortega, Chavez and "polarisation" in Latin America

international | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Saturday June 03, 2006 00:14 by DF - ISN

Yet again, the mainstream media gives a distorting image of Latin America's shift to the Left. But looking closely at the distortions shows what the real agenda is.

The recent shift to the Left in Latin American politics is starting to attract the attention of the western media. An article published today in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” website by the paper’s deputy editor Simon Tisdall (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,178857....html) gives a flavour of some of the distortions on which a lot of this commentary has been based. It’s all the more revealing, as the Guardian has a liberal reputation – much cruder articles in overtly right-wing papers like the Times could be cited.

Tisdall takes the upcoming elections in Nicaragua as his starting point. The Sandinista leader and former president Daniel Ortega is tipped to win. Tisdall sketches in the historical background, but leaves some rather important facts out of his analysis: “The US government conspired with so-called Contra rebels to overthrow him [in the 1980s]. He was eventually voted out of office in 1990, beaten by a US-backed candidate.”

In the interests of historical accuracy, Tisdall should have put things rather differently. A fair summary would have read as follows: “Washington established a terrorist gang known as the Contras that killed thousands of civilians, and devastated the Nicaraguan economy through war and economic sanctions. Ortega was voted out of office in 1990 after George Bush I warned voters that the Contra terrorist campaign would continue until the Sandinistas were ejected from power.”

Leaving such details out of the story is not a careless omission – it’s a gross distortion of the truth. Imagine an article about Czechoslovakia in the 1960s that informed us: “Alexander Dubcek and his allies in the Czech Communist Party were removed from power in 1968 after their opponents in the CP won a power struggle, with backing from the Soviet government.” Anyone who wrote an article like that, leaving out the small matter of the brutal Soviet invasion that brought Gustav Husak’s puppet regime to power, would rightly be derided as an apologist for Soviet aggression.

But the US government is to be judged by different standards: drawing attention to its crimes is not “moderate”, so the atrocities of the Reagan administration vanish down the memory hole. This is all the more cowardly, seeing as the current US government includes many of the individuals who helped organise Contra butchery two decades ago.

Tisdall goes on to inform us that the Sandinistas “have a problem they cannot control. It is called Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president and self-styled socialist revolutionary who seems hell-bent on recreating cold war-era confrontation with Washington.” Nowhere in the article is it suggested that Washington itself might be looking for a confrontation with Chavez and his ally Evo Morales. The fact that the Bush administration gave the go-ahead for the coup against Chavez in 2002, and immediately recognised the usurper regime of Pedro Carmona, is apparently not relevant to the discussion.

Chavez has angered the usual suspects yet again by expressing the hope that Daniel Ortega will win the elections. This is an outrageous interference in the affairs of another country, we are led to believe. Tisdall does not see fit to mention another example of interference: the communiqué issued by Washington before the last Nicaraguan elections warning the Nicaraguan people that Ortega’s re-election would be frowned upon.

It’s hardly unusual for politicians to express hopes that an election in another country will bring a government sympathetic to their way of thinking to power. Tony Blair, for example, threw his weight behind Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar a few years ago, while Aznar’s successor Zapatero made no secret of his admiration for John Kerry.

Such expressions of opinion are only sinister if backed up by the threat of coercion – military and economic. It can hardly be said that Venezuela is renowned for the use of such coercive methods in the region – unlike the United States.

But we are informed that the intervention by Chavez “brought protests from rivals and Nicaragua's government. So, too, did his offer of cheap fuel for Sandinista voters.” Tisdall does acknowledge that Chavez may not be the only one throwing his oar into the elections: “Indulging in a little interference of its own, the US is warning Nicaraguans a Sandinista victory could cost the country dear in aid and trade.” But we have to wait for the last paragraph for this nugget, and apparently there were no “protests” from any quarter at this blatant threat.

The relentless focus on Chavez should not distract us from the real issue. When pundits talk about “the Chavez effect”, the Venezuelan leader merely symbolises the threat of popular radicalism throughout Latin America. The backlash against neoliberalism has seen the reactionary right driven from power all over the continent. Its last real hold-out is Colombia, where state terror prevents the social movements from organizing a real challenge to the status quo.

The best hope for those who want to contain this backlash and prevent it from challenging the social structures of Latin America is now the “reasonable” left. Tisdall quotes approvingly the remarks of Chilean president Michelle Bachelet: "The worst thing that could happen is to allow a polarisation."

Centre-left rulers like Bachelet and Lula of Brazil recognise that developing a serious alternative to neoliberalism will involve confrontation – with their own business classes, with the World Bank and the IMF, and ultimately with Washington. Unwilling to follow this path, they have capitulated to the neoliberal agenda, disappointing the hopes of their supporters.

The fact that Venezuela (and now perhaps Bolivia) shows the possibility of a different way forward is a major threat to the project of containment. Bachelet’s suggestion that Chavez and Morales are responsible for “polarisation” is dishonest. Neoliberalism has already created social polarisation: the gap between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, has widened dramatically over the last twenty years. Political polarisation may be regrettable, but without confronting the defenders of the established order, there will be no progress for the poor majority in Latin America.