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Tomgram: Nick Miroff on How George Bush Unified a Continent

Not quite a year ago, I wrote a piece called Moving Out of the Superpower Orbit. While the Bush administration, I suggested, was putting much effort into stripping the former Soviet Union, now Russia, of its Central Asian imperial "near abroad" -- that was the Russian term for it -- the U.S. "near abroad" in Latin American, our imperial "backyard," was quietly peeling away under the pressure of democratic "people power" movements. Both of these developments, I argued, revealed the essential weakening of the two superpowers that, for half a century, had held the world in a Cold-War grip.

Recently, a variety of writers have been exploring the stunning transformation of Latin America as it continues to be seismically shaken out of the U.S. orbit. To mention just a few examples: In Out of Fear, Ariel Dorfman considers whether the new, democratic Latin America can confront its most "endemic problems"; in Breaking Free of Washington's Grip, Noam Chomsky analyzes Latin America's emerging place in the regional blocs that seem to be coalescing in a post-Cold War world; while in Latin America Unchained, Mark Engler wonders whether there will be an independent economic (as well as political) path for Latin American debtor-nations trying to cut their ties with the International Monetary Fund and, implicitly, with Washington-oriented solutions to their desperate economic problems.

In the second piece posted here from the class I teach at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley (all of which will appear in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle Insight section), Nick Miroff offers the story of Latin America's transformation with a particularly striking twist. Tom


Che Rides Again (On a Mountain Bike)
By Nick Miroff

Has Latin America ever had such a unifying figure?

At political rallies, his visage is held aloft as a beacon to regional independence and self-determination. He's helped forge new trade partnerships to spur economic growth and alleviate poverty. And his leadership has fanned a gale-force electoral trend that's sweeping the hemisphere to topple one pro-Washington government after the next.

Who is this grand inductor of Latin American leftism? Venezuelan fireball Hugo Chavez? Blue-collar Brazilian Lula Ignacio da Silva? Bolivia's coca-farmer-cum-president, Evo Morales?

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

posted by Annamarie at 7:40 PM