by Rodrigo Franco Seoane on Monday, 06 June 2011 at 17:21
Mario Vargas Llosa In his farewell speech in 2010, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias summed up the current situation in Latin America, "...the reality is that our región has advanced little in the last decades. In certain areas, it has marched resolutely backwards. Many wish to board a rusted wagon to the past, to the ideological trenches that divided the world during the cold war. Latin America runs the risk of adding to its astonishing collection of lost generations. It runs the risk of wasting, yet again, its opportunity upon the earth."
After two decades of steady growth, in which different political parties maintained the policies that made the country the fastest growing in Latin America, Peru may have proved Arias's assertion correct. Over the last decade the Peruvian economy has doubled by growing 7% per year, reduced poverty from 50% to 30% since 2006, and brought unemployment to 8.9% - an amazing accomplishment in Latin America. Peru's current debt is a scant 15% of GDP, while the government retains $45 billion in foreign currency reserves.
Despite these numbers, the Peruvians elected a former coup-plotting Colonel whose plan of government calls for nationalizations, constitutional change and even a renegotiation of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Peruvians today showed once again why Latin America has remained stuck for two centuries in its "eternal return"- perpetually doomed to relive its troubled adolescence.
On the same day that voters in Portugal threw out the spendthrift socialist party and gave the center-right Social Democrats a resounding mandate, Peruvians elected the far-left Ollanta Humala by a decisive margin over the center-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25 year jail sentence for corruption during his 1990 -2000 government.
Humala had previously lost the presidential race in 2006 to Alan Garcia, a former socialist president who made a Nixonian comeback after leaving the country in a shambles in his previous 1985-1990 term. But Garcia made Chavez the focal point of the 2006 election, successfully tying him to candidate Humala.
But Ollanta skillfully distanced himself from the socialist Venezuelan firebrand (many say on the advice of Chavez himself) and donned the suit-and-tie manner of Lula da Silva of Brazil. Though his original governing platform was very similar to those used by Chavez and his allies, Humala ended up with four different governing platforms, and ended his campaign promising to respect Peruvian democracy, and not to follow the path of Chavez.
However, the Chavez project is long-term, unlike the frivolity and vainglory that enervates the short-sighted right wing parties and candidates in Latin America. Since Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa lost the presidency to Alberto Fujimori in 1990, his resentment of the Fujimori family has been renowned.
In this important election, both Mario Vargas Llosa and his son Alvaro not only embraced the left-wing candidacy of Humala, but gave him a full-throated endorsement, with Alvaro even appearing onstage raising clenched hands at the candidate's final rally. While many of those who profess to be on the political right were critical, a good number of them often parroted Vargas Llosa's mantra that the election was between "terminal cancer and AIDS."
The early indications of whether Chavez will have skillfully and stealthily added another country to his orbit will be whether Humala calls for a "constituent assembly," the first step to changing the constitution. Though he vowed during his campaign to respect Peru's institutions and democracy, reports out of Arequipa, Peru tonight have Humala supporters calling those in opposition to their candidate "traitors to the country" and asking for a new constitution - the verbatim rhetoric that birthed the constitution that gave Chavez the legal patina to cement himself in power and to turn Venezuela into an autocracy.
There has been a torrent of evidence, perhaps uncovered too late in the campaign, showing a large amount of Venezuelan oil money flowing in to Peru to fund Humala's political party, Gana Peru. Both Ollanta Humala and his brother Antauro have made attempts in the past to take over the country by means of a coup. But with the reigns of the State now in his hands, President Humala will face far less resistance to Andes. expanding Chavez's program of 21st Century Socialism even further across the area.
After two decades of steady growth, in which different political parties maintained the policies that made the country the fastest growing in Latin America, Peru may have proved Arias's assertion correct. Over the last decade the Peruvian economy has doubled by growing 7% per year, reduced poverty from 50% to 30% since 2006, and brought unemployment to 8.9% - an amazing accomplishment in Latin America. Peru's current debt is a scant 15% of GDP, while the government retains $45 billion in foreign currency reserves.
Despite these numbers, the Peruvians elected a former coup-plotting Colonel whose plan of government calls for nationalizations, constitutional change and even a renegotiation of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Peruvians today showed once again why Latin America has remained stuck for two centuries in its "eternal return"- perpetually doomed to relive its troubled adolescence.
On the same day that voters in Portugal threw out the spendthrift socialist party and gave the center-right Social Democrats a resounding mandate, Peruvians elected the far-left Ollanta Humala by a decisive margin over the center-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25 year jail sentence for corruption during his 1990 -2000 government.
Humala had previously lost the presidential race in 2006 to Alan Garcia, a former socialist president who made a Nixonian comeback after leaving the country in a shambles in his previous 1985-1990 term. But Garcia made Chavez the focal point of the 2006 election, successfully tying him to candidate Humala.
But Ollanta skillfully distanced himself from the socialist Venezuelan firebrand (many say on the advice of Chavez himself) and donned the suit-and-tie manner of Lula da Silva of Brazil. Though his original governing platform was very similar to those used by Chavez and his allies, Humala ended up with four different governing platforms, and ended his campaign promising to respect Peruvian democracy, and not to follow the path of Chavez.
However, the Chavez project is long-term, unlike the frivolity and vainglory that enervates the short-sighted right wing parties and candidates in Latin America. Since Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa lost the presidency to Alberto Fujimori in 1990, his resentment of the Fujimori family has been renowned.
In this important election, both Mario Vargas Llosa and his son Alvaro not only embraced the left-wing candidacy of Humala, but gave him a full-throated endorsement, with Alvaro even appearing onstage raising clenched hands at the candidate's final rally. While many of those who profess to be on the political right were critical, a good number of them often parroted Vargas Llosa's mantra that the election was between "terminal cancer and AIDS."
The early indications of whether Chavez will have skillfully and stealthily added another country to his orbit will be whether Humala calls for a "constituent assembly," the first step to changing the constitution. Though he vowed during his campaign to respect Peru's institutions and democracy, reports out of Arequipa, Peru tonight have Humala supporters calling those in opposition to their candidate "traitors to the country" and asking for a new constitution - the verbatim rhetoric that birthed the constitution that gave Chavez the legal patina to cement himself in power and to turn Venezuela into an autocracy.
There has been a torrent of evidence, perhaps uncovered too late in the campaign, showing a large amount of Venezuelan oil money flowing in to Peru to fund Humala's political party, Gana Peru. Both Ollanta Humala and his brother Antauro have made attempts in the past to take over the country by means of a coup. But with the reigns of the State now in his hands, President Humala will face far less resistance to Andes. expanding Chavez's program of 21st Century Socialism even further across the area.
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