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Column 121310 Brewer

Monday, December 13, 2010

Are Latin Americans Ready to Fight via the Ballot Box?

By Jerry Brewer

Latin American nations throughout the 1950s faced many

critical problems that included poor healthcare, hunger, and
much associated poverty. Not much has changed today in
respect to those particular anomalies.

What have changed, graphically, are the rates of homicide in

Latin America, now among the highest in the world. Murder
increased by 50 percent from the early 1980s through the mid-
1990s alone. The violence in 2004 was “the main cause of
death in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico,
and Honduras.”

A prominent human rights group, PROVEA (Programa

Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos),
recently announced that a total of 13,985 people were killed in
Venezuela in 2009. Too, the group believes the figure could
be significantly higher, accusing Venezuelan government
officials “of using statistical loopholes to hide the true
dimension of the phenomenon.” Venezuela currently has one
of Latin America's highest murder rates.

Throughout at least the past five decades, the U.S. feared that
elements of communism and socialism could be an appealing
alternative to some nations of Latin America. By the 1970s and
beyond, leftists had acquired a significant political influence
and resulted in nations falling “under leftist and center-left
control.”

Currently there appears to be a new morphing towards

alternatives by the region’s voters. Venezuelan voters last
September, in parliamentary elections, delivered a strong
message to leftist President Hugo Chavez. The voter turnout
was described as one of the strongest showings of
Venezuelan voters in Chavez' more than 11 years in power.
Chavez’s PSUV Party lost their two-thirds majority in the
assembly and also did not attain a three-fifths majority.

Former President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, who has since

been described as a former centrist who morphed into a
radical leftist, was accused of violating his nation's Constitution
by sponsoring a referendum that was ruled illegal by the
Supreme Court. This in an effort to eliminate reelection term
barriers similar to what other Latin American leftist leaders had
done before him. With the approval and backing of the
Honduran Congress and the Supreme Court, the military was
ordered to remove him from office for acts that were
“considered illegal under the Constitution.”

In Panama last May, voters elected “a pro-business and

supermarket magnate, Ricardo Martinelli, giving him nearly
60% of the vote.” In this year's elections in Costa Rica, voters
chose centrist candidate Laura Chinchilla, the nation's first
female president, over a left-wing opponent. Last January
elections in Chile brought an end to a center-left coalition that
had been in power for 20 years, with the election of President
Sebastian Piñera. Piñera, a billionaire investor, is a member
of a conservative coalition whose platform included “reforms to
reduce the power of labor unions.”

Several regions have sustained serious allegations levied

against some leftist leaders. Those include allegations of
facilitating drug shipments through Venezuela, and alleged
cooperation with FARC guerrillas by Hugo Chavez and
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa.

Chavez came under media scrutiny in Argentina after

attending the UNASUR summit with a 2007 scandal, in which
Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, a Venezuelan-US
entrepreneur who claimed to be part of Chavez’s entourage,
arrived in Argentina on a private flight and was caught with
nearly US$800,000 in a suitcase. This was money reported
and believed to be destined for the presidential campaign of
Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez Kirchner.

Suitcases full of cash allegations recently surfaced again, this

time against Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega. According
to recently released secret U.S. diplomatic cables, Ortega
received "suitcases full of cash" from Venezuela, and is
believed to have used money from drug traffickers to finance
electoral fraud.

Allegations such as these have created a major cloud of

distrust and concern by an electorate.

Of equal concern is Russian and Iranian influence in Latin

America. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently
stated, “I’m concerned about the level of, frankly, subversive
activity the Iranians are carrying on in a number of places in
Latin America, particularly South and Central America.” Many
in Venezuela denounce the more than US$4 billion that
Chavez has spent on Russian weapons.

Voters demonstrating their opinions at the ballot box are

critical elements of sustaining true democracy in Latin
America. Deteriorating security environments, as well as
attacks on the independence of the media, are clearly attacks
upon freedom that breed continued oppression against
citizens.

Citizens must continue to rally support for democratic

freedoms. They must convince their leaders that they cannot
afford to pay the price in allowing anyone to subvert them into
continuing misery and a standard of living that, in some cases,
is simply disgraceful for human dignity.

——————————
Jerry Brewer is C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International
Associates, a global threat mitigation firm headquartered
in northern Virginia. His website is located at
www.cjiausa.org.

TWITTER: cjiausa