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Grasso meets farc nyt { August 1 1999 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://web.nps.navy.mil/~relooney/3041_1004.htmhttp://web.nps.navy.mil/~relooney/3041_1004.htm
Week in Review
New York Times on the Web
August 1, 1999
Latin America's Leftists Say Adios to Revolution
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay -- If looks alone were what mattered, Jose Mujica could still play a Tupamaro rebel in some new Costa Gavras film about Uruguay's desperate revolutionaries. Never mind that this one-time guerrilla is now a member of Congress who monitors the budget of the same military that once tortured him. True to his old style, Mujica still chain smokes, rarely shaves and wears grubby, carelessly fitted blue jeans to the office.
But listen to what the 65-year-old had to say in an interview not long ago: "Since the Soviet experiment proved to be a colossal failure, the left is still searching for answers to today's social problems -- but through the system and not through some utopian notion that does not exist in reality."
Such thinking -- the acceptance of democratic pluralism and compromise, mixed with hefty dollops of self-criticism and the rejection of old doctrines and platitudes -- is helping the left re-emerge as a winning force not only here, but in much of the rest of Latin America.
Former Marxist guerrillas already participate in governing coalitions in Venezuela and Bolivia, and they field mayors in many cities and towns in El Salvador. Polls indicate that Tabare Vasquez, the Uruguayan socialist candidate, could do well in the presidential election in October, at least in a first round of voting. More moderate Social Democrats stand a good chance of taking power in Argentina in a coalition with centrists. And Ricardo Lagos, a Socialist Party presidential candidate, is running strongly in Chile, where elections are scheduled in December; if he were to win, he would become the first Socialist Party president in Chile since Salvador Allende, who was elected in 1970 and deposed in a coup in 1973.
As in Europe, the left in Latin America is doing well with voters in part because it has shucked old ideological trappings and moved toward the center. But here the changes are more abrupt; this is, after all, a region known for its polarized, muscular and often murderous style of politics. The belligerent style of the old left is fading in South America's most modern countries, even while guerrilla forces of varying sizes continue to struggle on in Colombia, Peru and Mexico, where establishing order has been complicated by drug trafficking. The idea that politics is an alternative to violence -- and not that violence is a mere extension of politics, as Mao and Che Guevara preached -- is growing in acceptance.
Even Fidel Castro says the days of armed struggle in Latin America are over. In his case and perhaps the cases of others, this may be more a change of tactics than a change of heart. But even if so, it is a reflection that the world itself has changed. Castro's Cuba no longer has the wherewithal to support revolutionary insurgencies. And even before the Cold War was over, the United States began shifting its favor away from repressive right-wing military regimes.
In most Latin American countries, this has brought about a less polarized climate in which leftists have far more space to operate than they had a generation ago. Then, they were being cut down in the streets or spirited out of their beds by goon squads, never to be seen again.
To be sure, centrists and economic conservatives were the first beneficiaries of the move away from military government in the 1980s. But today most of Latin America is in a recession, with unemployment rising and the gap between the rich and poor growing, and many voters are looking for alternatives. Latin voters also seem to be angrier than ever about corruption in government, an issue that has hurt traditional ruling parties. When the left draws closer to the center, it looks more and more like an attractive option.
"The Berlin Wall has fallen and the left has changed," said Jaime Estevez, a Chilean economist and a leading adviser to Lagos. "The Socialist Party under Allende was like an Eastern European party, and many Chileans felt threatened by it. Nixon and Kissinger supported the coup against Allende, but it is very simplistic to say they were the sole cause of the coup. Now we are a Western European-style party and only the most politicized on the right feel threatened."
Lagos, a mild-mannered Chilean Socialist running in a coalition with the Christian Democratic party, is leading strongly in the polls.
"It's a new world," Lagos laughed as he described his career. He was on his way to Moscow as Allende's ambassador to the Soviet Union when Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew Allende's elected government 26 years ago with support from Washington. Now Pinochet is under house arrest in London awaiting possible extradition to Spain to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity, and Lagos has cordial relations with the U.S. Embassy in Santiago.
Lagos said the Socialist Party had changed not only because the Cold War had ended, but because few people in the party liked what they saw when they were in exile in places like East Germany and the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s. Places like Sweden and Spain, according to Lagos, "were far more agreeable" for those in exile.
"What's our work now?" Lagos asked rhetorically. "Without affecting investment, savings and economic growth, we need to produce a society a little more just with less of a social gap and more equality of opportunity."
"A little more just" is hardly a call to man the ramparts -- but it is the kind of phrasing leftist politicians use these days to calm voters. The political pitch is different from country to country, of course, and some on the Latin American left have still not dropped the old oratory.
In a recent interview with the Argentine daily Clarin, Jorge Briceno, the military commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, threatened the United States for increasing its military involvement against Colombian drug trafficking and, by extension, against the guerrillas.
"We're not Yugoslavia," he said. "If the United States intervenes it will be another Vietnam."
But even in Colombia, the left is reaching for new messages and symbols. In July, another leader of the FARC held a summit in his jungle headquarters with none other than Richard Grasso, president of the New York Stock Exchange. The picture of Comandante Raul Reyes warmly embracing an icon of American capitalism was surely a staged gesture to show reasonableness, and it made the front pages of virtually every newspaper in Latin America.
Grasso invited Reyes to make a tour of Wall Street. The guerrilla leader is said to be thinking the invitation over.
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