Word: ch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Fernández, like her husband and their left-wing ally President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, is a combative populist who critics say is too dismissive of the legislative and judicial branches, which are still weak institutions in Latin America. Her Sunday setback "indicates that Latin America's hyperpresidentialist project, which was fueled by the economic boom, faces walls and obstacles now," says Javier Corrales, a Latin America expert who teaches political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Another factor is the exit of U.S. President George W. Bush, whose own bid for excessive presidential power wasn...
Those forces have now turned Zelaya, an otherwise middling President, into the same sort of political martyr Chávez became seven years ago. Their dispute with Zelaya, in fact, arose from their fear that he was making a bid to become another Chávez. Earlier this year, Chávez, a democratically elected President who has enfranchised Venezuela's poor but has been widely criticized for undermining the nation's other branches of government, won a referendum that lets him seek re-election indefinitely. (Other Latin Presidents, like Bolivia's Evo Morales, have also pushed through constitutional changes...
What underlies this crisis, however, is a sort of Cold War reprise vexing the start of Latin America's 21st century. The Chávez-led, anti-U.S. group came to power because Washington-backed capitalist reforms so often simply widened the region's epic gap between rich and poor. But the bloc's socialist ideology, which critics say is a throwback to the authoritarian leftism of a bygone era, has élites across Latin America spooked in ways their parents and grandparents were when Fidel Castro still had influence in the hemisphere...
...coup attempt in Venezuela - which failed when a popular counteruprising compelled the military to restore Chávez to power - was a reflection of the region's new upper- and middle-class fear. But the Honduran coup seems more troubling because it feels more archaic. And that gives Chávez and company even more political fuel for their rhetorical assaults on Washington, which they can use to strengthen not only their regional sway but also their domestic power, which currently faces serious challenges as their economies struggle...
...play the Honduran crisis smartly. His call against "outside interference," to respect national sovereignty in ways Latin America felt the Bush Administration too often ignored, is particularly savvy. In fact, because Obama has been so measured in his response to Iran, Tehran's allies in Latin America, including Chávez, have had trouble gaining anti-Yanqui traction over that crisis. "Latin America's leftist governments have all been waiting for Obama to blow his cool, but it's not happening," says Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "It throws them off base...