The political experience of South America

Once South America was synonymous with dictatorship, bad governance, poverty, exploitation of the poor. Today I do not believe that the reality of the continent has changed. But reading carefully the complexity of the South American politics we discover that something is emerging which we do not understand. While the Western democracies are becoming increasingly 'democraduras' media drowned in the laws of profit, the Latin-American area is experiencing a Spring socialist who was confirmed in elections yesterday in Paraguay, giving power the Patriotica Alianza por el Cambio, a left-wing coalition led by "Red Bishop" Fernando Lugo after 61 years of dictatorship or pseudo-democracy from the very currupted Colorado party.

Today - excluding Uribe of Colombia - Latin America is governed by left-wing radical leaders (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina) or centre-left (Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru).
Time will tell if this is good news for Latin America. Lula, in Brazil, has already experienced how difficult it is to reconcile election promises with the reality of government. Chavez, in Venezuela has on his side the popular masses but has suffered an unexpected democratic stop to its programme of constitutional amendment.

Paraguay today is very poor and backward but has enormous wealth in the hands of a few families. We accept bets on the future of this country.

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)