Maybe I’m Just Being Naïve, But…

I consider the nations of Latin America that have such a wide gulf between the minority of the population belonging to wealthy, landed traditional ruling classes who have had the power of the police and army behind them and the large majorities of the population who are relatively very poor and lacking in the basics of what we here in America take for granted as being rights: clean water, sanitation, health care, freedom of speech, due process, equality under the law, and the ability to make a living wage, among other things. I consider these nations and wonder what my own country has against the people in these lands getting a fair shake.

The United States has long held that the people in any particular country should have the right to freely elect their leaders. This is called representative democracy. But ever since the Latin American countries became independent from Spain and Portugal in the nineteenth century, democracy has been both restricted and intermittent. The “uneducated” masses have, until recently, been shut out of the governing process in many countries and, even when there has been the presence of elections, the military has too often stepped in to overthrow the elected officials, usually in the name of “fighting corruption”. If America were to stand true to its principles, then it should rejoice, in my opinion, in what is happening in several countries down south. For the people at-large there have risen up, gone to the ballot box, and elected individuals who truly represent them and their interests. I’m speaking of countries like Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

The U.S. government has long expressed the fear of leftist regimes spreading throughout Latin America by the type of guerilla warfare inspired by Castro’s success in Cuba during the 1950s. But what has happened there instead are peaceful and free elections leading to leftist governments.I understand that some of the leaders of these countries (especially Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales) have been very vocal in their denunciation of America’s national leaders and their foreign policy regarding their individual nations and the region as a whole. But we need to rise above the rhetoric and realize that it is in the interests of the world’s welfare as a whole for the poor to be respected and for their welfare to improve. If these leaders are working to help their people with their lives, then we should show respect and appreciation to them for that.

I feel fortunate to have been born and raised in the United States. I could have been a poor Bolivian peasant or a destitute Brazilian slum-dweller, with little or no opportunity to move upward in society or improve the economic status of myself or my family. Let’s all show some magnanimity and goodwill toward those new, more representative governments south of us as they seriously work to advance the interests of their own people, even if these interests sometimes don’t coincide with our own.