The Summit of the Americas

I missed this too. Fortunately for me the reliably astute Alvaro Vargas Llosa fills me in a bit. He notes that when W went south he confronted three different faces of Latin America:

One is characterized by the return of populism, a movement that bears little resemblance to Jeffersonian populism. A second is defined by managerial inertia, and the third is best described as involving some progress at the cost of isolation.

The populist road is a familiar one for LA:

This type of Latin America made its presence felt in the streets of Mar del Plata, with violent demonstrations against globalization. Chavez is now expropriating factories and agricultural estates in Venezuela that he deems "unproductive." Kirchner is inflating Argentina's currency: In the last 22 months, the inflation rate has been higher than in the previous eight years. As shown by last week's legislative elections, he has built a grassroots following in the all-important province of Buenos Aires with massive distribution of food and household appliances and monthly cash handouts to millions of people. For his part, Morales, who is tied in first place in Bolivia, is campaigning on the promise to nationalize the second largest oil reserves on the continent.

We know where all this leads: These same policies consolidated Latin America's backwardness in the second half of the 20th century. In the three decades after World War II, agriculture grew at half the rate of industry because of the assault on private property in the countryside for the benefit of bureaucracy. The economic result can be captured with one example: Between the 1970s and the 1990s, Argentina's per-capita income was reduced by one quarter.

The inert leaders include the scandal plagued Lula, the perennially unpopular Toledo and the astoundingly ineffectual Fox. Fox and Toledo may want to move on FTAA but both are lame ducks who lack political wherewithal to get anything done on this front. Lula was always ambivalent and has enough problems with his left wing to stake anything on FTAA.

Finally we get the reformers who have problems of their own:

Chile and Colombia are two examples. Chile has just announced the imminent signature of its umpteenth free-trade agreement (with China), while Colombia is the only country in which there has been a significant increase in the number of new businesses, thanks to the elimination of some red tape and legal barriers. But these two countries have limitations. Colombians are engaged in a war against narco-guerrillas, and Chile has, for historic reasons, difficult relations with its neighbors, which limits its capacity to influence the area.

CSM also weighs in on all this and declares that Chavez is not the answer to LA's woes:

Two potential negatives loom for Chavez. One is his dependence on oil, and his current reckless spending of oil revenues based on the resource's current high prices. If the bubble should burst, he would be hard put to continue expanding social services at home and financing revolution throughout Latin America.

The other problem is the inevitable departure from the scene of his comrade-in-arms, Fidel Castro. Castro is 78 years old, and one or two recent lapses suggest that he is in failing health. The likelihood of Cuba's continuing along the path of communism after Castro seems slim. Communism in Cuba is already discredited with the masses and is held nominally in place by Castro's reign of oppression. Cuba's people are the prisoners of a regime that offers them neither political freedom nor a free market economy.

Neither communism, nor Chavez's woolly "not-communism-at-the-moment" kind of socialism seems likely to be a panacea for the challenges of today's Latin America.