Some US based groups that deal with Latin America are far out of touch with reality, and one of those is the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. They're recent article "A coca grower to lead Bolivia" argues that Evo Morales is likely to win in Bolivia because of growing US discontent.
First, they go a little overboard on the anti-US rhetoric in trying to prove that Bolivians want an anti-US candidate like Morales. But that's ok, because they are correct in the basic assumption that there is a dislike of current US policy in the country and that current counter-drug policies are not working well there. The US needs to work on that.
Second, and I say this nicely:
HAVE YOU SEEN HIS FREAKING POLL NUMBERS?????
One poll put Morales at 16% for the next presidential election. Other polls have his negatives at above 70%.
Think about this, 70% is about as high as George Bush's negatives in Bolivia. In fact, if there are two things a majority of Bolivians can agree on, it's that they don't like George Bush or Evo Morales. Just because someone has anti-US rhetoric doesn't mean everyone automatically likes him.
COHA belongs to the leftist version of the neo-cons, smart people who are blinded by ideology and incapable of accepting reality even when it's right in front of them. And in the same way neo-cons supported Chalabi even as it became evident he had little support inside Iraq, groups like COHA will support and believe in Morales to the bitter end, then make up some excuse why his candidacy didn't work out.
UPDATE: Looking back, the tone on that last paragraph was a little harsher than I meant it. I have significant disagreements with COHA, but they haven't dragged us into any poorly planned wars recently, so the comparisons with the neo-cons may have been a bit out of bounds. I'll try to be more constructive in my next criticism.
Contra-Cronkite
2 hours ago
2 comments:
COHA is like the girl with the curl on her forehead. When they're good (as on Haiti) they're very good and when they're bad (as on Venezuela) they're horrid.
Months later, this post looks pretty bad.
I stand by the analysis. In July 2005, Morales did not have the support of the majority of the Bolivian population. Over the course of the following six months, he ran one of the best political campaigns ever seen in Latin America. It's a credit to his campaign team and to him that he was able to turn around his poll numbers the way he did.
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