Entries for November 22, 2006

There's a great article by John Lyons on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, headlined "Populism Loses Appeal for Voters In Latin America." At this time last year, with elections looming in Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Ecuador, many analysts were predicting victories for candidates of the left, and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez was salivating at the prospect of gaining numerous anti-American allies in the region. But the only Chávez-backed candidates to win were Evo Morales in backward Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and the latter claimed to be much more moderate than in his Sandinista days. Alan García and Felipe Calderón won in Peru and Mexico after running ads tying their opponents to Chávez. Lula da Silva, re-elected in Brazil, and Michele Bachelet, elected in Chile, are both center-leftists whose policies are not significantly out of line with the "Washington consensus" favoring free markets and free trade. I've written on this subject before.