Since that proclamation, American statesmen have used the corollary to justify many interventions in the often-recalcitrant republics of the South. Woodrow Wilson was the first, in 1913 divining "wrongdoing" in Mexico and declaring, "I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men."
In 1955, a prestigious study group, with rare candor, laid out the economic imperatives underlying America's relations with the Third World: that American policy should focus on "expanding the sources of primary products and increasing the markets for industrial exports." Such an imperative was plainly consonant with replacing governments that were "loosening … the ties of civilized society" in a way that would reduce their "willingness and ability to complement the industrial nations of the West," as the study group delineated the threat inherent in communist doctrine.
Such concerns remain paramount in guiding American policy towards its Southern neighbors, where whispers of independent nationalism are increasingly sounding like revolution. As General James Hill, former commander of SouthCom, observed in 2004, "traditional threats" to American interests "are now complemented by an existing threat best described as radical populism."
This threat is polymorphic. In Bolivia, the cocaleros and La Coordinadora have embodied their ideological dissent in the massive protests that culminated in the termination of corporate control over Cochabamba's water system, protests that showed that "resistance is possible, victory is possible," as Oscar Olivera, one of the organizers of the protests, emphasized. More recently, the 2006 inauguration of Evo Morales, elected on a platform calling on Bolivians "to refound Bolivia in order to end the colonial state," and to "make people participate and give them the right to make decisions," suggests the effectiveness of the electoral route to change.
Venezuela, a democratic revolutionary government girded by the country's massive native oil wealth, has pushed even harder against the Washington Consensus, redirecting social spending toward the country's poor in an array of grassroots programs, and empowering people to control their lives. As British academic Julia Buxton notes, the Chávez government has been inclusive and humane, having "brought marginalized and excluded people into the political process and democratized power." What's more, its model of state intervention has been profoundly successful, causing the economy to grow by 28 percent in the past two years. Venezuela has become an exemplar, serving to "demonstrate the feasibility of defying the neoliberal model and establishing viable alternatives," as Steve Ellner, the leading scholar of Venezuela, observes.
Unsurprisingly, Washington does not countenance such policies. As Bush's 2006 National Security Strategy warns, "In Venezuela, a demagogue awash in oil money is undermining democracy and seeking to destabilize the region." This comes after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld likened Hugo Chavez to Hitler, commenting, "He's a person who was elected legally just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally and then consolidated power." The American embassy in Venezuela also recently announced that Chavez's government has "systematically undermined democratic institutions," and as a result has "Grown progressively more autocratic and antidemocratic."
It is hardly revelatory to comment on the spectacle of state priests repeating government propaganda. The case of Venezuela is no exception to this recurrent theme, with intellectuals echoing-and sanitizing-unfounded government claims. Professor Javier Corrales, for one, refers to Chavez's post-2004 "power grabs," intimating that the Chavez government has a profound lack of respect for democratic norms. Elsewhere, in a reply to several letter-writers in the March/April issue of Foreign Policy, Corrales contends that Chavez is a "new form of autocrat." In that same reply, he suggests that "the government has not met the burden of fairness" in conducting elections, adducing no evidence of any kind.
Such concern is touching, but one wonders why it is not directed at the crumbling ruin of American democracy, where perhaps that concern and criticism could make a difference, as well as be more truthful and accurate. Instead, it is directed at Venezuela, conveniently buttressing lies of state and laying the intellectual groundwork for, minimally, attempted destabilization. Maximal strategies, too, are possible, for it is no secret what we do to countries sitting atop oil wealth that are not "democratic" in the doctrinal sense of the term-meaning any country who is not falling in line behind the hegemon. We invade them, and in the process, slaughter their people, dropping cluster bombs on children in the defense of freedom.
But democracy is not the issue. As the Christian Science Monitor reports, the danger is that "much of the Latin American public is skeptical of the US-backed open-economy model and is tempted" to tread a different path; namely, state-directed economies under the umbrella of a broader structure of "economic integration," meaning South American integration. As The Washington Post comments, this liberationist ideology is not an isolationist one; "it is not that most of the leaders do not want to be a part of the global economy, it is just that they want more input in defining the terms."
This sensibility is seductive, and resultantly, "Washington's hemispheric influence continues to decline," The New York Times recently observed.
In the void left by Washington's declining influence, a flurry of social movements have risen across the continent, lending credence to the idea that "another world is possible," the slogan of the World Social Forum, recently held in Caracas. These nascent movements, in turn, buttress the idea that this statement is not merely a slogan but a thesis, one arguing for a radical restructuring of the world economy and of world power, one aiming to "give voice to the voices that have not been heard," as an Ecuadorian delegate put it.
Washington does not want those voices to be heard. Nor do intellectuals who uncritically repeat the justifications for state policies. But it isn't their choice to make. It's ours.
Ajl can be reached at msajl@amherst.edu