The Guardian.
The transformation of Latin America is one of the decisive changes
reshaping the global order. The tide of progressive change that has
swept the region over the last decade has brought a string of elected
socialist and social-democratic governments to office that have
redistributed wealth and power, rejected western neoliberal orthodoxy,
and challenged imperial domination. In the process they have started to
build the first truly independent South America for 500 years and
demonstrated to the rest of the world that there are, after all,
economic and social alternatives in the 21st century.
Central to that process has been Hugo Chávez and his Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. It is Venezuela, sitting on the world's largest proven oil reserves,
that has spearheaded the movement of radical change across Latin
America and underwritten the regional integration that is key to its
renaissance. By doing so, the endlessly vilified Venezuelan leader has
earned the enmity of the US and its camp followers, as well as the
social and racial elites that have called the shots in Latin America for
hundreds of years.
So Chávez's remarkable presidential election victory on Sunday – in which he won 55% of the vote on an 81% turnout after 14 years in power – has a significance far beyond Venezuela, or even Latin America. The stakes were enormous: if his oligarch challenger Henrique Capriles
had won, not only would the revolution have come to a juddering halt,
triggering privatisations and the axing of social programmes. So would
its essential support for continental integration, mass sponsorship of
Cuban doctors across the hemisphere – as well as Chávez's plans to
reduce oil dependence on the US market.
