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Humala election, and, thus, when something like this occurs--Garcia attempting to defuse things with Chavez--we are kind of bewildered.
Here's what happened: Humala, a 100% indigenous Indian, with no money, came out of nowhere--representing the poor, the indigenous and the true Left--to win 30% of the vote in the prelim election, winning a runoff with corrupt ("free tradist") Leftist Garcia, and thus bumping the rightwing candidate out of the race. Humala surprised everybody. He then went on to win 45% of the runoff vote against Garcia's 55%, still with no money and facing hostile corporate news monopolies. This unknown INCREASED his vote by 15%, between the prelim and the runoff. So the truth of the matter is likely that Chavez HELPED him, not the other way around. And that makes more sense. Chavez is immensely popular in the vast poor and indigenous populations that straddle Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru. THEY could care less what Bush thinks--they hate Bush--or what the rich and their corporate news monopolies think, of "interference" from a hero like Chavez. The Bolivarian dream--the dream of the great revolutionary hero Simon Bolivar who freed them from Spain and freed the slaves--was ONE COUNTRY in this region anyway. The divisions--the national borders--are a Colonial invention (small, exploitable countries--as in Africa and the Middle East--as opposed to a powerhouse, united regional government, which is what Bolivar wanted, but died too young to help bring about).
As the result of this resurgent true Left and Humala's candidacy, Bush and the Corporatists had only one candidate they COULD endorse--the corrupt Leftist. Think about the irony of THAT! He's sort of a Clintonite (social liberal, free tradist). The 'free trade' part of it (and the corruption) will destroy Peru's economy, much like politicians similar to Garcia destroyed Argentina's economy, and Humala and the true Left will no doubt be back, with a yet bigger mess to clean up. (Argentina finally broke free from IMF/World Bank debt and the corrupt politicians who had incurred it--with guess who's help? Hugo Chavez and Venezuela helped bail them out!)
This huge, peaceful, democratic, Leftist revolution that is occurring in South America--with Leftist governments elected in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela and Bolivia--is unstoppable. It is very deep and widespread--because it is based on TRANSPARENT elections (hard work by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups and others) and strong civic organization. It is a reflection of the vast majority of South Americans, who are fed up with US domination and global free piracy. In Argentina, they took little hammers to all the ATM machines in the country--the middle class and the poor working together--as a protest against the goddamned international banking world. We're talking FED UP!
In Bolivia, the poor rose up and basically threw Bechtel Corporation out of their country--for privatizing the water in one Bolivian city and then jacking up prices to the poor, even trying to charge poor peasants for collecting rainwater. Then they elected the first indigenous president of Bolivia, socialist Evo Morales. Tens of thousands of Andes Indians came down out of the mountains to invest him in office, in a special pre-inauguration ceremony.
Beware of corporate news monopoly narratives on Latin America. Garcia is well aware of the power of the true Left--and of the empowerment of the vast majority poor and indigenous--as this peace initiative with Chavez clearly shows.
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"The time of the people has come." --Evo Morales
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