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So Much for Left Wing “Solidarity” in South America
*NIKOLAS KOZLOFF *
In Oliver Stone's recent documentary *South of the Border*, leftist regimes
in Latin America are depicted rather idealistically. In country after
country, Stone interviews the region's leaders who criticize the United
States and present a common anti-imperialist front. Yet, while it's
certainly true that politics has taken a decisive leftward shift from
Venezuela to Bolivia and beyond, many differences and tensions remain.
That, at any rate, is the impression I got when I read U.S. diplomatic
cables released by whistleblower Wikileaks.
Previously, in a couple of online articles, I analyzed internal political
fissures within the top echelons of the Brazilian political leadership.
U.S. cables reveal that some members of the Lula administration harbored
suspicions about Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, and, more often than not, saw eye
to eye with Washington when it came to wider South American geopolitics.
While these revelations are surely eye opening, it now appears as if they
may be just the tip of the iceberg.
Take, for example, the case of Argentina. Publicly, the nation's power
couple, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, has embraced Hugo Chávez and the
region's leftist Pink Tide. Yet in 2007, the U.S. Embassy in Buenos
Aireshttp://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2007/02/07BUENOSAIRES376.htmlnoted
that Néstor was engaged in a kind of diplomatic double game: on the
one hand, the Argentine president sought to stake out a position for
himself close to Chávez, while also maintaining a close working
relationship with the U.S. on particular issues such as counter-terrorism.
The U.S. Embassy saw Kirchner as a kind of latter-day, independent Charles
de Gaulle, a politician who would maintain a balance in relations between
Venezuela and the U.S.
Full -- http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12043
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