Think There's No Alternative? Latin America Has A Few

[Judi Lynn]

Think There's No Alternative? Latin America Has A Few

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By Seumas Milne
Source: The Guardian
Sunday, February 24, 2013

Ever since the crash of 2008 exposed the rotten core of a failed economic model, we've been told there are no viable alternatives. As Europe sinks deeper into austerity, governing parties of whatever stripe are routinely rejected by disillusioned voters – only to be replaced by others delivering more welfare cuts, privatisation and inequality.

So what should we make of a part of the world where governments have resolutely turned their back on that model, slashed poverty and inequality, taken back industries and resources from corporate control, massively expanded public services and democratic participation – and keep getting re-elected in fiercely contested elections?

That is what has been happening in Latin America for a decade. The latest political leader to underline the trend is the radical economist Rafael Correa, re-elected as president of Ecuador at the weekend with an increased 57% share of the vote, while Correa's party won an outright majority in parliament.

But Ecuador is now part of a well-established pattern. Last October the much reviled but hugely popular Hugo Chávez, who returned home on Monday after two months of cancer treatment in Cuba, was re-elected president of Venezuela with 55% of the vote after 14 years in power in a ballot far more fraud-proof than those in Britain or the US. That followed the re-election of Bolivia's Evo Morales, Latin America's first indigenous president, in 2009; the election of Lula's nominated successor Dilma Rousseff in Brazil in 2010; and of Cristina Fernandez in Argentina in 2011.

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/think-theres-no-alternative-latin-america-has-a-few-by-seumas-milne

[Peace Patriot]

1. Duplicate post by Polly7 (and some comments by me) at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11089295#post2

It is so-o-o-o-o telling, as to just how propagandized our people are, that what are actually MODERATE models of social justice and economic reform and success--especially Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia--are portrayed as "dictatorial," and are reviled at every turn, whereas the real dictators of this world--the transglobal monsters we call corporations--not only get a pass, in the controlled corporate press, but are treated as ikons of freedom, for godssakes.

Well, friends, freedom is not having your job outsourced to China. Freedom is not being slave labor (or cannon fodder). Freedom is decent wages and benefits. Freedom is a PUBLIC school system. Freedom is a PUBLIC postal service. Freedom is PUBLIC parks, libraries, hospitals, health care. Freedom is non-toll roads paid for by everybody. Freedom is not having your small business and your community destroyed by monstrous transglobal corporations. Freedom is REGULATION of those monsters. Freedom is everybody paying their fair share. Freedom is food on the table and clean water and clean air. Freedom is the beauty, complexity and sustaining life of Planet Earth.

Exxon Mobil and Chevron and Bechtel and Dyncorp and Chiquita and Drummond Coal and WalMart and Monsanto are NOT about freedom. "Wall Street" is NOT about freedom. They are about LOOTING--piracy, thuggery and grand theft. They want the freedom to rob, sicken and even kill you. They are monarchical (top down) entities, run "of, by and for" the very rich and they positively HATE democracy, and when real democracy is achieved somewhere, they do their best to slander and destroy it.

They control all of our PUBLIC TV/radio airwaves and monopolize print media as well. They have managed to get themselves regarded as "the mainstream press" when they are anything but "mainstream."

This is why many north Americans--those who are supine before transglobal news corporations--think that Venezuela is a "dictatorship." It is not. It is very provably not. It is in fact a better democracy than our own--by orders of magnitude. Same for other slandered leftist democracies such as Ecuador. We have been quite deliberately and maliciously misinformed. WE are the people who have been subjected to dictatorship--and it's called Corporate Rule. They even control our vote counting (75% controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--using machines run on 'TRADE SECRET' code with non-existent or very inadequate audits).

Venezuela, according to Jimmy Carter in a recent statement, has "the best election system in the world." Think about THAT!

[truebluegreen]

2. +100 nt

[Judi Lynn]

3. Yes, indeed. n/t