México está en la antesala de su tercera revolución

Why do commentators insist on not stirring the pot? This was an excellent piece but it doesn't help social movements to cite Chile and Brazil as examples of real progressive change. Lula in Brazil has left the country in the hands of the rich, Bachelet in Chile has done such a poor, timid job that now the right-wing is returning to power. Venezuela and Bolivia on the other hand, have been showing real results, but of course, we don't want to sound too controversial now do we?

Alci - This is the English language online newspaper that has most defended and reported the Bolivarian processes of Venezuela and Bolivia. If that is what you call "controversial" we're up to our necks in it, and have been for ten years. We told the world about Evo Morales (also a professor of our School of Authentic Journalism) before it knew of him. And we blew the whistle on the 2002 coup in Venezuela like no other media.

So what phantom are you arguing with? Commenters who don't (yet) have any comments? In the context of Mexican reality, Brazil (or even Chile) style governments would be a big advance forward from the rampant hyper-capitalist authoritarian narco-state that Mexico has today.

And as for Brazil, much if not most of the Brazilian left, conscious of the limits of the Lula administration, supports it electorally year in, year out. That is particularly true of the labor movement.

Alas but this is the problem, and it is not in the South, but in the global North where activists seem to think that 5,000 years of dominator culture can be reversed in a single decade. If an administration doesn't succeed in changing human evolution and DNA itself, it has somehow "left the country in the hands of the rich." (Truth is, despite all their good efforts, most wealth also remains in the hands of the rich in Venezuela and Bolivia, something you seem to wish to overlook.)

What the global north's activists fail to appreciate is that small steps forward, in the global south, mean things like Lula's "zero hunger" project essentially working in less than a decade; in other words, what look like baby steps (or setbacks) to you, look like dinner and breakfast to millions that previously had none.

And it is also interesting to note that both Venezuela and Bolivia very carefully cultivate their relations with Brazil so as not to be antagonistic, and seek strategic alliance with it regularly on many, many matters. People living these realities simply see it much much differently than college educated leftish activists from the global north.

Dear Al,

I realize NarcoNews itself has reported on Venezuela and Bolivia extensively, without a doubt. I was commenting on this specific author of the piece on Mexico. If NarcoNews didn't fully cover Latin America, I wouldn't be reading it on a daily basis. And I agree that Lula is still backed by the labor movement (there isn't exactly a stronger alternative in the country), and I prefer him there ten times to some right-wing regime. I am just annoyed at some leftists always using Brazil as the alternative to Venezuela so as to not sound so threatening. El Salvador's Mauricio Funes came to power also assuring everyone that Lula was his preferred model, and now the population grows increasingly more disappointed with the results.

Hi Everyone

Of course, another major problem for those Latin American governments wishing to reconstruct their economies and societies along progressive lines is the problem of El Norte.

This monster of the North (and its economic elite and the elite's junior partners in the political realm) have historically clamped down on progressive political/social movements and progressive presidents.

In fact, I know of no Latin American progressive political agenda nor political/social movement that the US has supported in the last hundred or so years.

In fact, let us ask ourselves some hypothetical questions.

What if El Norte didn't exist.  Furthermore, what if no other political and national entity replaced it?

How long do you think the oligarchies in Latin America would last?

Do you think that Latin America, on the whole, would be more equitable, more just and more developed?

The US economic elite constructed the reward/punishment system under which Latin America's oligarchies operate.  What if that reward/punishment system evaporated?  What if there was no military training, backup, or aid from El Norte to support these oligarchs?

Would they have to make greater concessions to their impoverished masses?   Would they cease to exist?

Last, are there international powers busily attempting to take the place of El Norte?  Which nations are these newly arrived hegemons?  What their agenda be?