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Oh, Hugo Chavez is not the only leftist headache for Bush and Cheney, not by far, as Nikolas Kozloff (author of "Hugo Chavez: Oil Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S.") shows us. While Bush and Cheney have been trying to continue pursuing their Middle Eastern war for oil (that has lasted longer than WW II), South America has generally returned to democracy (Colombia and its Bush puppet leader is one exception).

And democracy has generally evolved into the election of leftist leaders as heads of state in many of the key nations in South America.

Because of its vast oil reserves (including their potentional offshore heavy oil fields), Venezuela will continue to be a specific target of White House efforts to undermine Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution."

But meanwhile, as Kozloff relates, South America (in part through Chavez's financial largesse) is starting to gel as a continent, with incipient efforts to create something akin to a South American common market.

Moreover, from north to south, the countries of South America are taking on American corporations and, in the case of Ecuador, the presence of the American military.

The revolution in South America is politically not as radical as Salvador Allende tried to undertake in Chile, but it is revolutionary in the sense that national sovereignty is being reasserted by most of the continent's nations, independent of puppet strings from D.C.

And clearly, democracy has returned to most of the continent. Evo Morales was elected president in Bolivia only because the vote of a peasant coca leaf worker counted as much as the vote of an aristocrat living in La Paz.

And Morales came to prominence as head of the coca growers union.

Yes, times are a changing in South America.

Perhaps the only positive outcome of the Iraq War is that Bush and Cheney didn't have the resources to reinstall military governments as a way of keeping the people of South America under the U.S. umbrella, forcefully.

Table of contents:

Introduction * Energy Integration * Rolling Back Free Trade Agenda * Setting Independent Military Course * Culture Wars * South America: A New Political Bloc? * Popular Forces Pressure Regimes to Radicalize * South American Governments: How Revolutionary? * Conclusion: South America Shakes off U.S. Control


"While official Washington and elite media have been mucking about in the Middle East, journalist Nikolas Kozloff has charted his own path amid the terrain-shifting upsurges in 'America's backyard.' He casts a sympathetic but critical eye at the leftward trend in South American politics, the battles over oil and media, the rise of indigenous movements and sometimes erratic populist leaders. If you get your news on Latin America from mainstream media, this wide-ranging book is a needed corrective."

--Jeff Cohen, author of Cable News Confidential and founder of the media watch group FAIR

"A much needed antidote to the mainstream media's canting coverage of Latin America. Kozloff is an acute observer of contemporary Latin American politics, and he proves to be an indispensable guide to the ideas, politics, and economics behind the region's yet latest attempt to wrest some wiggle room from Washington, as well as to the possibilities and perils that confront its 'New Left' leaders and activists."

--Greg Grandin, author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism



About the author:

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Ch�vez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. A senior fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and writer for Counterpunch and Political Affairs, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.


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