Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Where constitutions are suggestions and even Elvis won't hide anymore...

Seriously, there are some mornings when the BBC Americas section just angers me.

Simple, pure anger.

Today’s anger is brought to you by yet another Latin American leader thumbing his nose at a country’s constitution. In this region that so desperately needs to gain international legitimacy, so much happens to keep these nations from moving forward. It’s almost like there’s only so much room for politically successful countries, so no matter what reforms are passed, no matter who is ousted from office, Latin America will remain a politically backward place.

Mr. Zelaya of Honduras is the newest offender of the pack. Before I get into this though, I want to give a brief synopsis of Latin America’s history with executive branches of government.

- Latin America is discovered by Europeans and subsequently serves as Spain’s bitch for centuries.
- Political revolutions begin, namely in Mexico, around 1910. Nothing happens in these revolutions. They happen about once every two to three years. It’s always a conservative replacing a conservative. Villa & Zapata run around some countryside. Santa Anna lost his leg, gave it a state funeral, had it dug up and paraded around the city, (GO AHEAD AND CHECK. I AM NOT KIDDING.) and then lost his cork leg in Texas.
- Most argue that it was until the PRI was elected in 2000 and Vincente Fox was the president of Mexico, however, constitutional reform was floating around Latin America in the 1980s. Since there was no money in the region, the idea of a weak executive didn’t bother politicians. They couldn’t afford to run and serve for more than one term.
- Then money started to pour into the region. And people got excited (read: greedy). That’s when presidents started closing down congresses and bribing militaries to back them into taking over the country until the next guy came along and bribed all of the original guy’s supporters into turning on him. Meanwhile, people in Latin America remain poor, uneducated, and receive no real services from the state. (Talk about a social contract in need of overthrowing.)
- Things calmed down a bit in the last ten years with Castro getting old and not being able to support crazy young guys, but then Chavez was elected and the crazy young guys got a big champion in him. Now people think it’s once again okay to try and change the constitution to give oneself more time in office. This clearly causes all kinds of problems.

So Mr. Zelaya tried to gauge public opinion about changing the constitution to allow for executive reelection. He was promptly escorted out of the country by the congress and the military. In a region where executives are notorious for abusing power once they’ve gained it via legitimate means, Zelaya had to see a negative reaction coming on that one.

So why the anger? Well…in true US fashion we’ve chosen a horse to back and it’s the wrong one. The right one being no horse, because the more we intervene in political decisions, the worse things get twisted. Sec. Clinton received Zelaya after he was booted out. Even better is that Obama wants to pretend he’s not intervening at all. For the most part, he’s not. He refuses to engage with Chavez, which may be one of the few things we agree on completely. But the invitation to Zelaya should have been rescinded. Sigh. Now he’s playing chicken with the Honduran border and Chavez is shouting his support louder and louder every day.

And people wonder why Latin America doesn’t make any kind of global progress. It’s a circus down there people. A CIRCUS.

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