The Populist Latin Revolution

While America has been fixated on fighting the Islamo-Facist Revolution, another Revolution has been going on closer to home in Latin America. A revolution that according to provocative Black scholar Shelby Steele started after WWII:

I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty. This idea had organized the entire world, divided up its resources, imposed the nation-state system across the globe, and delivered the majority of the world’s population into servitude and oppression. After World War II, revolutions across the globe, from India to Algeria and from Indonesia to the American civil rights revolution, defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy, if not the idea itself

With the exception of Cuba, Latin America never had their Revolution to end White Supremacy. As blogger Robert Mayer points out in his response to the ” Why isn’t Socialism Dead” (posted on this blog on May 6):

Latin America, next to Africa, is one of the most in-egalitarian continents in the world. Even Eastern Europe is no comparison. Military dictatorships, billionaire oligarchs, and foreign corporations have had their run of the place. Latin America is also still very much undermined by its Spanish colonial past. Most of the very wealthy in Latin American countries tend to be of European descent — in another word, white. Compare that to the poor, who are predominantly of Indian descent.You have yourself a genuine populist witches brew. A brew where people not only no longer believe in democracy, but advocate the complete redistribution of wealth based on racial terms.

Chile has been the most successful Latin Country to make the transition to a Free Market model, but it had the advantage of a relatively small indigenous population of Mapuche Indians to assimilate. Compare that to Bolivia, where they are over half and just elected Morales, a Populist one-of-their-own, who immediately sent the Army out to seize the gas fields. Problem is their neighbors in Brazil & Argentina (Through Spain) were the investors who developed those fields. Again they are relatively successful primarily European-descendant countries with their own Populist movement histories, as portrayed in the musical “Evita” and starring Madonna in the film version. Now the indigenous populist revolt has spilled over their borders to effect their Socialist economic well-being.