As Economy Lags, Hugo Chávez's Movement Fades in Venezuela
As Economy Lags, Hugo Chávez's Movement Fades in Venezuela
"Predictions of the left’s demise in Latin America are exaggerated," points out AS/COA's Brian Winter on recent election results in Latin America.
BARINAS, Venezuela — As president, Hugo Chávez lavished millions from this country’s oil boom on his home state of Barinas. He built a soccer stadium, highways, apartment houses and a hospital. He sang Barinas’s songs, danced its folk dances on television and rode with its cowboys over its open plains.
Barinas returned the affection. Mr. Chávez and his party won elections handily here, and his father and later his brother Adán were elected governor. After Mr. Chávez died in 2013, the people of Barinas gave their votes to his handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro.
But boom has turned to bust, the economy is in shambles and the love affair is over….
... Brian Winter, vice president of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, an educational and business group, said that even many conservative politicians who hope to replace the long-running leftist governments in the region acknowledged the need to continue such policies because of lasting concerns over inequality.
“Predictions of the left’s demise in Latin America are exaggerated,” Mr. Winter said.
Yet few countries saved much from the boom. And now governments are grappling with a regionwide economic slowdown. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that growth in the region this year will be minus-0.3 percent and that next year it will be less than 1 percent....
