A growing fight for power on Latin American left

BOGOTÁ -- Today's presidential election in Peru is the latest chapter in the showdown between two strains of professed leftist politicians who are reshaping the political map of Latin America and its relations with the United States.

The contenders in Peru -- former president Alan García of an old social democratic party, and retired Lieutenant Colonel Ollanta Humala, an indigenous nationalist inspired by a former leftist military dictator -- reflect two trends that are increasingly at odds within a so-called pink tide sweeping Latin America.

The winner will determine the balance of power between a group of social democrats at the helm of countries including Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay and a camp of populist nationalists led by Venezuela and Bolivia. The social democrats pursue investment-friendly economic policies and cordial ties with Washington; the nationalists advocate state control of industries and cast Uncle Sam as the imperialist enemy.

``The `pink tide' is all over the place; it's not coherent," said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. ``This is not necessarily a great crusading wave of leftists charging the ramparts of capitalism, but it is a movement that has revolutionized Latin American politics and has brought more people into the decision-making process."

With 11 major elections scheduled in the region this year, leftist candidates run the gamut from union leaders to Sandinistas and former military officers. This series of battles for Latin Americans' hearts, minds, and votes could set an example for elsewhere in the developing world, as each camp vies to prove that its policies will better serve a region burdened by some of the world's most extreme gaps between rich and poor.

Today's Latin leftists are not the armed, Cold War-era guerrillas who pledged allegiance to the Soviet Union. But they are a far cry from the centrist technocrats who dominated the region a decade ago. Their rise is widely seen as a backlash against free-market policies and privatizations promoted by Washington since the 1980s that failed to improve life for the 43 percent of Latin Americans who live in poverty, according to the United Nations.

``The failure of trickle-down redistribution is what's producing this type of [left-leaning] electorate," said Mirko Lauer, a columnist for Peru's La República newspaper, in a telephone interview. Voters want to move away from neo-liberal economies, he said, but ``they don't want to move towards Fidel Castro."

Peru's runoff ballot today is perhaps the most important election for the hemisphere among the many contests this year and last, according to Gustavo Gorriti, a journalist and president of the Institute for Press and Society in Lima. ``There's a new confrontation between . . . radical, populist militarism and moderate social democracy. . . . And the results here will determine whither goes Latin America."

Leading the charge for the more radical left in the region is Venezuelan president and former army officer Hugo Chávez, who has polarized global opinion with his admiring alliance with Castro, his declared aim to lead a ``people's revolution" across the hemisphere, and his bellicose attacks on the United States.

``If Humala wins, then Chávez and, in a certain way, Castro could be strategically strengthened," Gorriti said .

García, who as president from 1985 to 1990 presided over a botched attempt to nationalize banks, disastrous hyperinflation that surpassed 7,600 percent, and human rights violations by a military fighting stepped-up guerrilla attacks, is now seen by many Peruvians as the lesser of two evils.

His challenger Humala, a political outsider who was imprisoned after a failed coup against then-President Alberto Fujimori, espouses an ethno-nationalism that appeals to many among Peru's rural, indigenous poor, but frightens the urban middle-class. A professed admirer of Chávez and Peruvian General Juan Velasco Alvarado, a leftist-nationalist who took power in a 1968 coup, Humala has battled to distance himself from anti gay, anti-Semitic, and anti democratic statements by his parents and jailed brother, who led a failed military rebellion last year.

Humala has vowed to revise mining contracts with international companies, impose windfall profit taxes, suspend coca eradication and cooperation with US anti narcotics authorities, and rewrite the constitution.

García, who has called his opponent a lackey of Chávez, has promised to expand social programs, cut politicians' salaries by 50 percent, and uphold democratic institutions and a free press.

A comprehensive poll released May 26 showed García leading Humala by 10 percentage points, but more recent tallies found Humala narrowing the gap.

Perhaps more telling, a UN Development Program study released in March found that 90 percent of Peruvians have lost faith in democracy because of bad politicians.

The populist left -- with its roots in Argentina's Juan Perón, and now embodied by Chávez, former coca-growers' union leader Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Humala -- in Peru has ``been disastrous for Latin America, and there is no reason to suppose it will stop being so in the future," Jorge Castañeda, former Mexican foreign minister, wrote in a recent Foreign Affairs article.

Castañeda, now a professor at New York University, said there is a huge divide between the ``modern, open-minded, reformist" left ``that is well aware of its past mistakes," and a ``nationalist, strident, close-minded" left that he said is not.

Leadership by the latter group, he contended, ``will lead to inflation, greater poverty, and inequality . . . and threatens to roll back the region's most important achievement of recent years: the establishment of democratic rule and respect for human rights."

As leader of the populist pack, Chávez is acclaimed by admirers at home and abroad for extending state control over the oil industry and using windfall profits for health and education, while thumbing his nose at the Bush administration. But he is increasingly viewed by critics within the left itself as a hypocritical authoritarian intent on extending his rule, silencing opposition, and meddling in other countries' affairs.

``The differences [between the two lefts] are so profound that the real story in Latin America is that tensions among countries have become stronger," said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.

Some Latin politicians are beginning to resent Chávez, with his massive oil wealth and visions of regional leadership, for throwing his weight around and trying to impose his view of revolution on others.

In late April, he pulled out of the Andean Community of Nations trade group because Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru are seeking free-trade agreements with Washington even though Venezuela benefits handsomely from unfettered oil sales to the United States. In May, he inserted himself into sensitive discussions over Bolivia's nationalization of gas reserves to the irritation of Argentina and Brazil, the biggest buyers of Bolivian natural gas.

With his overtures toward Iran, Russia, and China, and frequent controversial remarks, Chávez is increasingly alienating many who see themselves as democratic leftists. Addressing the annual meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries last Thursday, he referred to Venezuelan-born terrorist Carlos the Jackal, who led a 1975 attack on OPEC headquarters that killed three people, as a ``good friend."

His vocal support for leftist candidates Humala in Peru and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico has hurt their numbers in the polls.

A growing number of leftist critics say Chávez and his ilk are not socialist ideologues at all, but personality-driven autocrats using the state to concentrate power in themselves. Chávez recently said he would hold a referendum asking Venezuelans to keep him in office until 2031.

Phillip McLean, an Andean specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs in Washington, said Washington's response to the rise of the left in its backyard should be to offer attractive alternatives. ``Instead of just preaching free trade and anti-drugs, the US needs to get at hearts and minds by addressing concerns Latins have about poverty," he said.