Right wing bites back in a polarising Latin America

But at the same time there is a growing right-wing counter-offensive which began last June with the military coup in Honduras.

The overthrow of the legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya was only the opening broadside in a vicious reactionary offensive throughout the region.

The Pentagon and the hard-line forces in the US, together with privileged Latin American elites, chose Honduras as the "weak link in the chain" of the ALBA alliance, the place to call a halt to the spread of popular revolutionary movements inspired by Venezuela under Hugo Chávez.

Despite initially unanimous repudiation of the coup by regional governments and indeed by the entire international community, the illegitimate coup regime in Honduras consolidated itself with support from Washington.

Soon afterwards the repressive and reactionary Colombian government announced that it was granting the US new facilities at seven military bases: an obvious threat to neighbouring Venezuela and Ecuador, and indeed a cause of concern even among moderate leftist governments in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

Scarcely was the ink dry on the Colombian deal than the conservative government of Panama declared that it would grant the US four new bases: a sad and ironic retreat for a country which only a few years earlier had finally recovered control of the Canal Zone from its previous US overlords!

In the last couple of months rumours of war and destabilisation against Venezuela and other progressive governments in the region have multiplied. The Colombians have mounted series of provocative actions on the border, with paramilitary death-squads crossing over the Venezuelan border.

In Paraguay the progressive President and priest Fernando Lugo, who took office 18 months ago and has inspired hope for social justice and change in that poverty-stricken country, has been facing determined opposition by the landlord-dominated Paraguayan Congress and rumours of a possible military coup against him.

Similarly in Argentina, the progressive President Cristina Kirchner has seen popular reforms blocked by the landlord class and the bankers.

In neighbouring Chile, where another female President, Michelle Bachelet, has for five years made valiant efforts to throw off the entrenched legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship, the right-wing candidate Sebastián Piñera has just won the elections.

A billionaire and partisan of Pinochet, he has already made clear his hostility to Venezuela and his friendship with the Colombian and Honduran regimes.

Now also in Haiti the appalling tragedy of the earthquake has been followed by what amounts to US military occupation in the guise of disaster relief. The imperial power is very clearly reasserting control in its "backyard".

But the right is not having everything its own way. In Uruguay the left candidate, José Mujica, won a decisive victory in the presidential elections, and most importantly in Bolivia the indigenous president Evo Morales won an even more decisive re-election victory with 63% of the popular vote, a big increase on his previous results and a crucial advance in the consolidation of the revolutionary process there.

US abuse of power in Haiti, with troops occupying the country's main airport and presidential palace and impeding relief operations by other countries, has provoked protest even by the governments of France and Spain.

By contrast the shining example of the selfless work of Cuban doctors has been praised even by the Wall Street Journal.

What does this have to do with us in Britain? Well our government, while expressing admiration for Chávez' social missions in Venezuela and for Cuban medical aid in the region, continues to cultivate special relations with Uribe's regime in Colombia; indeed among the numerous occupations of our former Prime Minister Tony Blair is that of foreign relations advisor to President Uribe!

UK mining and oil giants like BP, Rio Tinto and Anglo Gold Ashanti are deeply involved in the region, and while in political and military terms it is the US which dictates terms, there is no doubt that the British government shares Washington's fundamental hostility to the process of popular liberation and socialism expressed in the ALBA alliance.

Perhaps they think we might get some ideas that things could be different here too!