Resistance and speed will be fundamental qualities of the first guerrilla nucleus.     -Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare 

In 2009 popular American filmmaker Oliver Stone traveled south to Latin America to find out about the recent rise of populist leftism there.  The result was the film South of the Border.  He was given unprecedented access and interviews with the leaders of seven countries: Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador and Cuba.  The first six of these countries are now considered part of the "Bolivarian revolution" started by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.  All the governments are supported by broad social movements which helped bring them to power after decades of brutal colonialist intervention and repression.  The reforms instituted by them are some of the most forward-looking in the world.

Venezuela - Hugo Chavez

(Above: Chavez, the Bolivarian leader)

Brought to power in December 1998 by popular election on a platform of radical reform, Chavez represents everything the political leaders of previous Latin American regimes were not: locally born, poor, and attentive to the needs of the country's rural population.  Chavez led a revolution in land reform by encouraging small farmers to band together in groups of 50 to 100 families and with financial help from the oil-funded government, produce far better results for themselves and for the country, in terms of productivity, than industrialised farming was ever able to attain on the same land.  And this isn't unique to Chavez's Venezuela.  All the new Bolivarian governments emphasize land reform in their transformative programs.

Carlos Andres Perez, the president before Chavez, brutally suppressed demonstrations against steep price rises for essentials caused by an IMF "restructuring program."  This event led to the young Chavez forming an affinity group with other junior officers who didn't like the way Perez used the army to attack their own people.  As commentator and historian Tariq Ali says, the young military men were outraged because they thought their forces should be used to fight against outside invaders only.  This may seem like a basic tenet of military philosophy to us in the First World, but it was a marked departure from the Latin America of the 70's and 80's where local elites, and their military, often helped outside forces to control the region.  In other words, what Chavez and his allies refused to do was to accept the double standard that had long been used by American and European powers when dealing with Latin American regimes as their own. 

After he led a failed rebellion in 1992, Chavez was briefly taken out of the Venezuelan political picture.  But his popularity with troops was too great for the government to suppress the movement he led.  This bond amongst soldiers would save him later when he won election and a U.S.-backed coup attempted to supplant him.  He was captured and taken to a remote location.  Chavez describes in the film how he appealed to the soldiers sent to kill him repeatedly, over a number of days.  None of them could bring themselves to do it.  Eventually Chavez's own paratroopers came to his rescue and he returned to power in dramatic fashion.

Chavez took as his model in his new role as president Simon Bolivar, the leader who freed much of South America from Spanish colonial rule in the early 19th century.  Despite resistance from Venezuela's capitalist elite, and their control over the media, Chavez has defied expectations and remained in place in Venezuela.  And he has become a model himself to populist leftist movements on the continent.  His recent electoral losses were not as great as reported by the American press, and hardly demonstrate any significant loss in support amongst his core voters: the poor.  As Stone repeatedly shows in his film, U.S. media in particular manipulate and distort news about Latin America.  Instead the recent elections in Venezueal reflect the current economic hardship the country is enduring along with the rest of the world.  Since the elections Chavez has secured a number of deals involving oil and technology transfers, including a mulibillion-dollar deal with an Italian firm, and a deal with Russia to export 15 million barrels of oil in exchange for Russian firms building two nuclear reactors in Venezuela.  Chavez is also planning on supplementing the country's fossil fuels energy supply with wind farms in a deal with Galp Energia of Portugal.

Chavez's party remains in control of parliament and the land reforms remain in place, along with medical and educational advances for the poor, and a growing role in helping to fund (through oil revenues) other Latin American friends. 

Bolivia - Evo Morales

(Above: Evo Morales, Bolivia's indigenous leader)

Evo is a coca farmer.  He used to run the Bolivian coca growers' union, a powerful force amongst the indigenous people who represent 70% of the country's population.  He was imprisoned by the previous oligarchic regime for his involvement in the coca growers' and indigenous peoples' movement against land grants and water privatization deals that threatened their way of life.  Under IMF-encouraged moves that sold off water in Bolivia's richest region to Bechtel, and went so far as to make it illegal for people to collect rainwater, the movement that brought Morales to power grew into a cohesive, militant whole: "Che's revenge," as its known there (Che Guevara was killed by CIA-backed forces in Bolivia).  Along with the coca growers, Morales has reformed and challenged various agricultural sectors, including most recently the industrial sugar growers.

It's also here in Bolivia, as Stone points out, that the "war on drugs" comes into the picture.  It acts as the basis for U.S. media claims against Morales and other Latin American leaders who won't toe the line for Washington.  Even though coca is commonly used in Bolivia, and many elevated parts of the continent, to combat altitude exhaustion, it's treated by Washington as little more than an illegal substance.  Farmers have chewed it for centuries, that doesn't seem to matter in the ongoing, invented "war."  Meanwhile Colombia, with one of the most brutal governments in the world, is portrayed as a defender of right and truth in the U.S. because it allows the "war on drugs" to be used as cover for continued outside manipulation of the country's economy and military.

Stone is effective at making his point about U.S. media distortions by interspersing images from FOX, CNN, and the networks, with reports and footage that show the actual events: such as when right before an election in Venezuela, Chavez's supporters are blamed for a deadly shooting in Caracas and U.S. media, including CNN, run spliced footage seemingly showing the Chavez backers firing on unarmed civilians, when in reality they were firing back on snipers who had shot at them and others.  The people shown wounded and dying in the "official" footage weren't even located in the same area of the city.  The spliced images were provided by local media which is well known for its hostility to left-leaning regimes.  Local media in these countries follow the lead of their colleagues in the U.S. and provide them with what they want--reactionary coverage, supporting only the rich classes who are in the pockets of U.S. and EU business--thus forming a circuitry of convenient half-truths and outright lies. 

Beyond the manipulation of immediate events, there is a constant attempt to misportray local leaders' policies if they conform to their own peoples' needs rather than those of U.S. and EU business elites.  In particular, exercising sovereign control over raw materials, like the nationalising of the mining and oil industries that has taken place in some of these countries, are depicted by U.S. media as "unjust."  The standard is so perverse and anachronistic it's hard to know where to begin.  The implication seems to be that only the colonialistic extraction of these resources is considered right by American media. 

But each attempt to undermine the new Bolivarian governments has only brought them closer together.  Washington and the U.S. media don't approve of this either.  Neighboring nations are supposed to set upon each other when things get tough--that way the machinations of the IMF and U.S. Treasury can work better to divide and conquer.   However the old tricks aren't working anymore.  History is a hard but effective teacher.  And the social movements that back the new governments are large and difficult to control through the old means--if any of the leaders fell, someone would arise from the supporting movement to replace them within their own country, while the allied populist goverments in the other countries would continue to support each other and the new arrival on the political scene.  Nothing demonstrates this change from the past more dramatically than what has happened in Argentina. 

Argentina - the Kirchners

In 2001, through a series of global currency market schemes and failures, and after years of local neoliberal rule, the Argentinian economy collapsed.  The president resigned, riots broke out, but, unlike in the past, social groups joined forces and elected Nestor Kirchner their leader.  A well educated economist, Kirchner (who died in October of this year) was perhaps the most intellectually well heeled, and the bravest, of all the new populist rulers.  He took one of the most extreme steps forward: he told the IMF to fuck off.  Kirchner announced that Argentian had no intention of paying back its loan on IMF's conditions.  The debt had been used to extort the country into introducing self-destructive, anti-social measures, such as privatisation and non-intervention in markets (deregulation).  Kirchner quickly joined forces with Chavez, Castro in Cuba, and other regional leaders in buttressing his country against the currency devaluation and capital flight that followed his moves with the IMF.  Chavez even lent Argentina $6 billion to abate part of the IMF debt.

Kirchner saw the importance of defying the official, and unofficial, economic sanctions which had gotten their way like some kind of psychotic serial-killer in the region for decades.  Stone asks him, with some obvious relish, "When you say 'no' to a banker, what is it like?"  Kirchner answers in terms of how they saw his move up North: "You're either a subversive, on the left, a thief, or shameless."  Those are the only possibilities in the lock-step logic of the international financial organizations.

Kirchner goes on to say things in a blunt vein that are especially relevant for Americans as well as his own people today: "When you see a politician that is very friendly with the economic sectors, something's fishy.  Those sectors think only about their benefit and not the benefit of society."  He also relates to Stone how at a summit of world leaders then-president George W. Bush told him the best way to revitalize an economy was through war--again, something that Kirchner, as a fellow world leader, was expected not to repeat in public.

Nestor Kirchner's wife, Cristina Kirchner, succeeded him in the presidency of Argentina, but the country is still very troubled. Along with continuing problems in urban industry--where factories occupied by workers during the initial revolutionary takeover continue to operate at a fraction of productivity--there are a raft of unsolved social problems and debt left by previous governments.  Yet Kirchner's support remains strong.  Her position is strengthened considerably by the fact that Argentina was one of the earliest and worst of the neoliberal experiments.  Nobody amongst her voters wants to go back to that.

Paraguay - Fernando Lugo

(Above: Fernando Lugo)

Lugo is a liberation theologian and former Catholic Bishop who was raised by a family that contained several prominent members of a dissident political movement that challenged Paraguay's powerful and elite Colorado Party from within.  He is also an indigenous leader.  President Lugo tells Stone that he is convinced that it was the influence of liberation theology on the public and himself that led the country to challenge outside influences and chart a new course. "The indigenous, the landless, the uneducated, the sick, they should be our priority," Lugo says.  This is in keeping with one of main tenets of liberationism: those who have been oppressed and denied in the past must be made the basis of the future.  It is a deeply ethical view of history, not a utopian one, but one where society learns from its mistakes.   For a liberationist like Lugo, it is not possible to have a perfect society, one without injustice, any more than it is possible for a person to have an entirely pure soul.  But one can learn from one's past mistakes, from one's sins, and society can, too. 

The view is simple and yet intellectually and morally ambitious, an endlessly patient and historically mature philosophy.  "We are committed to honesty, to transparency, to give back dignity to our institutions, and with much more social justice," Lugo tells Stone.  He demonstrates the depth and variety of the new Bolivarian leaders and their supporting movements.

Brazil - Lula

(Above: Lula!)

Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, or just "Lula" as he's universally known, is a former labor union leader.  He runs Brazil, the largest economy in South America and one of the foremost "developing" countries in the world.  "In the past," Lula tells Stone in his usual energetic way, "everything that was American was good.  Everything that was European was good.  Everything that was Japanese was good.  But everything that was ours was bad."  As an organizer of workers, he says, he learned how people have to respect and trust themselves in order to gain and keep power.  Lula, besides Chavez, is perhaps the most dynamic and well known of the Bolivarians, and although he hasn't defied the IMF (he paid them off in full instead), he's gone further in reorganising and redirecting his economy than the others: making Brazil the largest user of ethanol for fuel in vehicles, supporting the large landless peasants movement that helped bring him to power, and demonstrating how a government can bring rural and urban workers together rather than using divisive politics to trick them and drive them apart. 

After Brazil paid off their debt, they amassed a large surplus which Lula has used to help his neighbors, too.  And the recent discovery of vast oil reserves off Brazil's coast, gives the country a reliable source of wealth for the future.  Lula's vision is far-reaching.  He says he would like to see a South American common currency, a constitution, and a labor federation.  Lula was set to end his last term when Stone interviewed him, but his party's next most popular leader, his chief of staff Dilma Rousseff, is now the country's president-elect, and she shares many of the same views.

Ecuador - Rafael Correa, & Cuba - Raul Castro

Correa's rise in Ecuador reveals other aspects of past outside intervention in the region.  The presence of a large U.S. military base at Manta in Ecuador is opposed by Correa and most of the public supports him.  Correa has proposed that the U.S. can keep the base open, but only if Ecuador is allowed to build one in Miami.  Since the base potentially threatens the entire region, Correa is in some ways on the Bolivarian front-lines.  His attitude is friendly yet assertive towards the U.S. government.  He has greatly reduced the influence of the DEA in the country.  They used to provide much of the training for the Ecuadorian armed forces, a common practice which saved on cost but gave the U.S. inordinate power throughout Latin America.  The signifcance of this move by Correa can be seen in the recent attempt by police units in Ecuador to hold the president hostage.  The popular movements that support him, along with the military, came to his rescue. 

Raul Castro of Cuba is interviewed along with Correa, and it provides Stone with an opportunity to contrast the old with the new.  He calls Castro the "godfather" in the region, but Raul disagrees.  He reminds Stone that other came before the Cuban revolution as well: not just Bolivar, but Sucre, and Toussaint L'Ouverture who led the only successful revolution by slaves in the history of the world in Haiti.  "Cuba is no longer alone," Castro says, and Correa agrees.  Some recent events have shown how true this is in dramatic ways.

A right wing military coup in Honduras (a putsch is the old technical term for it), resulted in the newly radicalised OAS rejecting the "interim government" brought to power there.  This is in sharp contrast with the past when the organisation, which speaks as a collective voice for the region, used to sanction such actions.  U.S. business is also having trouble re-establishing its old grip on the area because there are other, less intrusive options open to the populist governments.  If they can't cut a trade deal on an equal footing with America, they can go with Russia, or China, or India--a natural, positive consequence of globalisation.  All of these conditions make it much harder for any one country to dominate the region economically or to act unilaterally to violate sovereignty and democracy there.    

In his classic study Guerrilla Warfare, Che Guevara writes at one point about how if the Cuban revolution fails then another will rise up to take its place, perhaps in Venezuela--a prophetic passage.  How the future for Latin America looks today is another matter.  More hopeful, yes.  It is a changed world, and not just in this region.  Nestor Kirchner points out to Oliver Stone near the end of the film that unilateralism and interventionism are not only bad policies for the victimised countries, but for the great power that follows this path.  Likewise, he says, it is unwise for movements that challenge these hegemonic policies to rely too much on one leader--it not only makes them more vulnerable, it betrays their whole ethos of inclusion and equality.  Whether or not this broader, more inclusive, more pro-social view will hold in the region, and the world, remains to be seen.  History is open-ended, as proven by the very existence of these governments, the "concrete proof," as Chavez puts it, that people can change the course of events for the better.  Fukuyama was wrong.  Hegel was wrong.  There is no early end, and no perfect way out, of history.  There are only continual, conflictual transformations.  And the will to endure, and to turn power in a direction that serves society and the needs of the vast mass of the people.