Bello: The travails of ALBA

摘要

On the night of October 12th, after comfortably winning a third term as the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales was in full rhetorical flow. Having dedicated his victory to Cuba's Fidel Castro and the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, he went on: "How much longer will we continue to be subjected to the North American empire or the capitalist system? This triumph is a triumph for anti-imperialists and anti-colonialists." So far, so reminiscent of 2007. That was when Chavez's anti-yanqui continental alliance, known as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (alba), hit its zenith. It had gained two new recruits with the election of Rafael Correa in Ecuador and of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Having won a new term by a 26-point margin, Chavez pledged himself to "21st-century socialism". A year earlier Mr Morales, a socialist coca-growers' leader of Amerindian descent, had won Bolivia's presidency proclaiming that he was "the United States's worst nightmare". In Argentina the election in 2007 of Cristina Fernandez, an alba fellow-traveller, prolonged the regime of her husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner.