Funes and leftism
When I posted about Mauricio Funes' victory, I predicted that it was now time for people to start pigeon-holing him into "good left" or "bad left." Moisés Naím has the first I've seen, talking about the "axis of Hugo" and the "axis of Lula." He emphasizes how Funes will be antagonistic toward the United States, an argument that ignores pretty much everything Funes has said both before and after his election. If he is part of the Axis of Hugo, then I guess the idea is that we refuse to believe anything he says. He's a puppet of Hugo Chávez because we say so.
3 comments:
I think I saw another scholar put him into a different category. He said Funes and Colom in Guatemala are the start of a "new left" in Central America that will combat the "old left" of Ortega and Zelaya. It's all a bit absurd.
If we end up with different subregional lefts, then we're really losing it.
Moisés Naím has the first I've seen, talking about the "axis of Hugo" and the "axis of Lula."
What Boz and Greg naturally fail to recognize is that Naim's postulation has more to do with the kinds of divisions that the U.S. foreign policy establishment would like to see than with the realities of the region.
If we end up with different subregional lefts, then we're really losing it.
The "we" of which you speak is "really losing it" precisely because its "analysis" of the region has more to do with its political prerogatives than with empirical facts.
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