I heard it yesterday on BBC radio and it brought a smile to my face, for sure. I didn't know (and it didn't seem to be generally known) that it was an exploratory operation. The early reports seemed to say that she did in fact have cancer and then that it hadn't spread (thus, the operation to remove what I and, I think, much of the world, thought was a cancerous tumor before the cancer spread).
I am so happy to hear otherwise and that she is out of danger. It was spooky, indeed, to hear that yet another LatAm leftist leader had been diagnosed with cancer (Chavez, Lula da Silva, his successor Dilma Rousseff and Fernando Lugo). (Rousseff, Chavez and Lugo seem to be in remission, but Lula is undergoing chemotherapy as we speak.)
Cristina Fernandez and her late husband, Nestor Kirchner, were the most important early leaders, along with Chavez, in the leftist democracy revolution that swept South America. Their alliance--Venezuela and Argentina--established the main policies of this movement: its anti-Wall Street stance (opposition to U.S. "free trade for the rich" domination), its stress on south-south cooperation for mutual prosperity and defense and its commitment to social justice. Their alliance pre-dates the Venezuela-Brazil alliance, at which point the movement really took off. But if Kirchner and Fernandez hadn't had the vision to ally with Chavez early on, one wonders what would have happened. They not only turned Argentina's World Bank/IMF-ravaged economy around, while Chavez was doing something similar in Venezuela (turning around Venezuela's Exxon Mobil-ravaged economy), they understood that LatAm governments MUST back each other up and resist U.S. "divide and conquer" interference. This is Latin America's future. This will make it THEIR century--if they carry it through, which they seem to be doing. They MUST pull together.
Cristina Fernandez is not just one of the greatest female leaders that Latin America has ever seen, she is one of its greatest leaders, period. She has shown that leftist policies work, that they restore prosperity for all. She has established this in her own right and has earned her own big support among Argentinians. One of the things that "Wall Street"'s propaganda press tries to do is to say that, "yeah, well, people may be working, and eating, and have roofs over their heads, and are educating themselves and their children NOW, but just you wait until we've made that economy 'scream'...(as Henry Kissinger said about Chile)...heh-heh-heh!" Was Nestor Kirchner's early success--or Chavez's blistering economy in Venezuela, 2003-2008--just "flash"--just the government throwing money around (Chavez/oil money) or defying World Bank/IMF "austerity" dictates (Kirchner/Argentine debt)?
The answer is a resounding "No!" It hasn't been just "flash." The increasing prosperity of leftist policies is now ESTABLISHED throughout the region and Fernandez is a critically important figure in that huge accomplishment.
It is quite interesting what happened to Michele Batchelet in Chile--one of Fernandez's rivals for greatest female leader in LatAm. Though Batchelet left office with an astonishing 80% personal approval rating, a rightwing billionaire, Auguste Pinera (who now has a 25% approval rating), beat her chosen successor, and the general analysis of that situation is that Batchelet's socialist party had made too many compromises with the rightwing and lost some of its core support (the workers and the poor) to indifference. Batchelet wasn't leftist enough! Though she strongly supported LatAm sovereignty and independence (and was a key player in the defeat of a U.S.-instigated coup in Bolivia)--she herself having lost her father to torture by a U.S.-supported regime--she didn't seem to get the point of it all--that political strength in a democracy must come from the "bottom" (the poor majority) and that government's job is to spread the wealth. Corporate, moneyed and fascist forces prevailed in Chile, despite Batchelet's personal success, and the socialist party thus lost control of the government.
Fernandez hasn't made that mistake. She is a strong and principled leftist and is determined to bring peace, prosperity, cooperation and independence to Latin America and she understands that the BASIS of those goals MUST BE spreading the wealth--i.e., strongly resisting the Rich, Big Business and Transglobal Corporations in their greedy grab for ALL the profits.
It remains to be seen how Dilma Rousseff (Lula's successor in Brazil) will compare to Fernandez on these criteria, and perhaps comparisons are "odious." No one will ever eclipse Fernandez as the joint pioneer, with her husband, in transforming Latin America. Also, Batchelet's role was so important regionally that I don't mean to understate it. She was key to repelling U.S. interference in South America. And perhaps I should just say, "Wow! What a marvel it is that all these female leaders have emerged!" In any case, I have special admiration for Fernandez and am very glad that she has weathered this health crisis and is well. The fight for LatAm independence and social justice is not over and I'm sure that she is not into resting on her laurels. There is much work yet to be done--and, furthermore, the U.S. government is not likely to relent in its campaign to turn back this Leftist tide, by whatever means necessary.
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