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that is sweeping Latin America? Neighboring Bolivia just elected its first indigenous Indian as president, Evo Morales, who said of Humala's campaign, "The time of the people have come." Humala is also indigenous. All three leaders of this subregion--Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Morales (Bolivia) and Humala--seek to correct centuries of oppression of the vast poor, mostly brown population by peaceful, democratic means. (Chavez is part indigenous, part black and part Spanish). They are socialists of the kind that the U.S. smashed and destroyed with assassinations, death squads and all sorts of dreadful activities in previous decades. Peaceful, business-friendly socialists. In Chile, they just elected their first woman president, socialist Michele Batchelet, who was tortured by the US-backed dictator Pinochet and lost her family to that junta. Pinochet came to power after the CIA colluded in the assassination of socialist Salvador Allende, president of Chile, in the 1970s, and inflicted years of brutal rule. Batchelet is now president of the country--an incredible triumph over US policy in South America. There are also successful leftist governments in Argentina and Brazil. Brazil is led by a former steelworker, Lula da Silva, and joined with other third world countries in a revolt against neo-liberal "free piracy" at the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun several years ago. Argentina's president, Nestor Kirchner, has vowed to free Argentina from IMF/World Bank debt, and has been successful at it, with significant help from Chavez in Venezuela. Uruguay also has elected a leftist government. Argentina and Uruguay just withdrew all participation in the US/CIA "School of the Americas" (aka, "School of the Assassins"), where fascist military personnel from Latin America have been trained to torture and murder leftists. This Argentina/Uruguay action was a major slap in the face of the US and the Bushites.
That's most of the continent.
And this huge, peaceful, democratic leftist revolution--which is based in part on extraordinary work by local activists, the OAS, EU election groups and the Carter Center, on TRANSPARENT elections--is moving north. The leftist mayor of Mexico City will likely be elected president of Mexico this year. He's ahead in the polls. (Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador--aka "Amlo".)
The Latin Americans are in revolt, big time, against US domination, and against their own US-supported rich elites. It is a deeply rooted and unstoppable revolution.
Two of the key elements of this revolution are peacefulness and democracy--the empowerment of the majority through peaceful, legal means. Some of these leaders have been sorely tempted to take violent action to correct the wrongs that have been done to South America's vast poor population. Chavez spent a couple of years in prison, when he was in the military, after he had joined in an attempted military coup against a fascist Venezuelan government. His popularity grew while he was in prison, and, when he came out, he went a completely different route, and ran for office, and has won office by big popular majorities. Ollanta Humala is also military (or former military), and seems to have undergone a similar transformation, away from the cycle of violence bred by US interference and brutal fascist oppression, and toward peaceful empowerment of the majority, self-determination and regional alliances.
This is a profound change in Latin American politics. It is WHY these new governments and new leaders are succeeding. They have engaged the vast majority of South America's people in peaceful change, or rather, the vast majority of South America's people, who WANT peaceful change, have found and empowered the leaders they need to achieve it. Our war profiteering corporate news monopolies tend to focus on "personalities"--like Hugo Chavez--and of course miss what's REALLY happening, an up-from-the-bottom peaceful, democratic revolution, based on real elections. (They wouldn't recognize a real election if they saw one.)
Bolivia's Evo Morales campaigned with a wreath of coca leaves around his neck, and opposes the murderous US "war on drugs." Coca leaves are a sacred plant in the Andes (nothing to do with the way it's viewed here or with the criminal cartels who peddle it here as cocaine, unhindered by--and, indeed, fueled by--the hypocritical US prison-industrial complex). Chewing the leaf is essential to survival in the freezing, high altitude, low oxygen reaches of the Andes. Morales' parents were mountainous coca leaf growers. When he was elected--with the biggest majority ever in Bolivia's multi-candidate elections--ten thousand Andes Indians came down out of the mountains to invest him in a special religious ceremony, prior to his official inauguration. Morales was also involved in the Bechtel campaign. Bechtel had privatized the water in one Bolivian city and then jacked up the prices to the poor--even trying to charge poor peasants for collecting rainwater! The Bolivians rose up and threw Bechtel out of their country, and elected Morales.
The reason I mention this, in connection with Ollanta Humala (in neighboring Peru), is that there is undoubtedly a huge support base for Humala in the Andes mountains who ARE NOT BEING POLLED. They don't live in cities. They don't have phones. They don't get polled. And, even if they do, they likely don't say who they are really voting for. That's my suspicion--that the Andean Indians and poor peasants all over the country will emerge on election day and give Humala a majority vote, and no runoff will be needed.
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"The time of the people has come." --Evo Morales
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