Peru cuddles up to Ecuador and Venezuela.
Oh goody.
Bolivia, Nicaragua. The old stand-by, Cuba. Ecuador trending and now Peru trending. Just what Latin America needs: yet another nation rejecting the free market, in favor of a statist kleptocracy.
The death of Pinochet provides a unique starting point. Pinochet, a butcher, but like Franco, set his country up for economic success. And also, like Franco, managed a civil transfer of authority to democratic institutions. Their countries, Chile and Spain, respectively, are now successful and responsible nations.
(Ion Mihai Pacepa:
In my other life, as a Communist general, I lived under two tyrants who killed and jailed over one million people. Pinnochet saved Chile from becoming another Communist hell. God bless him for that, and may he be forgiven for his later aberrations. Not only in Chile does power corrupt.)
Counterparts, such as Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Castro achieved far less. China's economy did not do anything until it unburdened itself of Maoist chains which suffocated its ingenuity and productivity. It is still recovering, and cannot fully recover until the communists are banished. Compare the per capita GDP of Taiwan ($27,500) and the People's Republic of China ($6,800). The PRC still has a long way to go.
Viet Nam still lags behind its east Asian neighbors ($2,800 per capita GDP). And Cuba was once the richest country in Latin America. To say that it is no longer is rather an understatement, to put it mildly.
And this is the model chosen by increasing numbers of nations in Latin America: statism and scapegoating; the abandonment of market economy; and idiotic and destructive economic "populism" (i.e. take other people's money, so that everyone is poor).
What was that about the Monroe Doctrine? A revival is needed, perhaps?
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