There can be few more spectacular sights in Latin America than El Reventador, the volcano that has been erupting so furiously over the past few weeks that it has cast its dust over the streets of Quito, about 100km away. Now the capital of Ecuador is experiencing the latest in a series of Latin American eruptions of a different nature: the peaceful election of a left-wing president whose declared enemies are corruption and poverty and who looks like the antithesis of the kind of leader the United States would like to see in the region.
The weekend victory of 45-year-old former colonel Lucio Gutierrez encapsulates the change of mood throughout Latin America. On Monday, a general strike is planned in Venezuela as part of an attempt to oust the President, Hugo Chavez, a man whose path to power was similar to that of Gutierrez, and the country teeters on the edge of civil war. In Argentina economic catastrophe could also herald seismic political change.
Before the dust settles, Gutierrez’s achievement deserves to be recognised. He easily defeated Alvaro Noboa, the banana billionaire and the country’s richest businessman.
The contrast could not have been greater. Gutierrez had the backing of the indigenous Indian population, comes from a humble background and was a former Latin American military pentathlete champion. Noboa was a chum of Charlton Heston, a polo player and the owner of a home on New York’s Park Avenue, who heavily outspent his rival. On the walls of the city over the past few weeks, a piece of graffiti perhaps captured the national mood. It used Noboa’s initials to spell out in Spanish the slogan: Not Another Dumb Oligarch in Power.
The success of Gutierrez fits into what is now a clear pattern in Latin American politics. It follows the landslide victory of Lula da Silva in Brazil, also based on a platform of battling inequality. In March Argentina goes to the polls and the front-runner is Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, another populist who has challenged the authority of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And it coincides with advances for the left in Bolivia and Peru.
Ecuador is a small country, but it has the massive problems of debt repayment, poverty, inequality, unemployment and government corruption. Like other Latin Americans, Ecuadoreans were led to believe that neo-liberalism, the global marketplace and the adoption of IMF policies would lead to better days. But they have found that life has not improved. Many who voted for Gutierrez and Da Silva felt they had little left to lose.
The most explosive countries are Venezuela, where Chavez faces opposition from all sides, including parts of the military; and Argentina, where discontent with free market policies grows sharper daily. The US has signalled its disapproval of Chavez, a man they see as too close to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and those who seek to remove him before his elected term o f office expires have been left in little doubt that they will do so with the tacit agreement of Washington.
But the US has to recognise that it cannot impose its preferred candidates on countries impatient for change. Gutierrez has already made it clear that he does not seek confrontation with either the US or the IMF. He may not have been as enthusiastic as his rival in welcoming the US troops stationed in their ”anti-drug” base in Manta in Ecuador, but he has made clear that they can stay. The Wall Street Journal last week declared him someone with whom the financial establishment could do business.
”This is the most difficult time because now we have to start to turn what the people want into reality,” Gutierrez said after his election. He knows that his room for manoeuvre is tiny, the obstacles huge and that the effect the new president will have on corruption and poverty may be less than volcanic. Pragmatism, not revolution, is the word of the day.
Last week Gutierrez jokingly promised that if he was elected, there would be no more volcanic dust in Quito. He may have failed on that promise, but he is still part of a wind of change — born of hope rather than resignation — that is blowing through Latin America. Many neighbouring countries will be watching to see how the new presidents ride that wind. — Â