Meet the new boss, hey who is the new boss?

I rememeber Election night 2000 pretty vividly. Bush was announced the winner, then they all took it back, and then we waited around and they told us they had no idea. And months later we still didn´t know. I remember thinking ¨this is the United States of America and things like this don´t happen here. They happen in places like Mexico.¨

Well if it makes any of you feel better it turns out they still happen in places like Mexico. Although I suppose we´ll have to wait and see just exactly how ugly things get. As far as I know so far there hasn´t been much of any violence, which is the thing that suprises me the most.

The latest Google news articles tell me that the Conservative candidate, Felipe Calderon, holds something like a 0.5% lead in the popular vote over his Socialist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. I´m sure that will change several times before this is all said and done.

I read another article linked from Google news, amazingly enough written by someone at the Seatlle PI, who thinks this means that the recent socialist trend in Latin America is coming to an end. I suppose if 0.5% of Mexicans had voted the other way he would have interpreted this as meaning that Socialism is an unstoppable force in Latin America.

But to be fair the populist socialist movement emboddied by the self-declared ¨Axis of Good¨ of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and of course, Fidel Castro in Cuba have been dealt a series of set backs in recent weeks.

President Uribe of Colombia won a suprisingly strong re-election, making him the first Colombian President to be elected to a 2nd term since the 19th Century. This admist even more evidence that The Colombian DAS was involved in the failed 2001 coup against Chavez in Venezuela and increasing cooperation with the US and Bush Administration.

Peruvians chose to give former President Alan Garcia, who´s first term as President can only be described as disastrous, a second chance rather than electing the candidate that Chavez openly endorsed and campaigned for. This has led to a back and forth fury of insults between Lima and Caracas and now Chavez says he suspects electoral fraud.

Bolivians gave Morales´ party a solid victory in the recent Constituent Assembly but didn´t pass the Constitutional Referendum he was championing. This seems to point to ever growing split between the indigenous highlanders and the Lowlanders of European descent.

And to be fair one must really point out that Obrador, while definately a leftist and arguably a socialist, has done a fair amount to distance himself from the label of Populist Socialist. Obrador seems to like to portray himself more as a Roosevelt New-Dealer than a Che-esque revolutionary. And seems to have more in common with Chile´s Bachelet than Chavez.

But I find it fascinating that a socialist trend which essentially didn´t exist 5 years ago is now losing a series of nail-bitters across the Latin American map. Sure maybe it´ll just wither away and die, but that´s it´s far to early to put that nail in the coffin. And as the price of oil continues to go through the roof, the poster child of this movement gets stronger and stronger.