Word: latinities
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...Politicos all over Latin America will be scrutinizing those mistakes as well. The Argentine poll was a referendum on Fernández's often confrontational leadership style - which voters and financial markets alike decided isn't all that well suited to rescuing South America's second-largest economy from the ravages of a global recession. The Fernández-Kirchner comeuppance may well be taken as a first sign that the economic downturn is reining in the region's increasingly powerful Presidents, especially the leftists who this decade have become a popular counter to U.S. political and economic hegemony...
...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...
...Organization of American States (which convened an emergency meeting over Honduras on Sunday) only when it demonstrates a commitment to democratic norms. Zelaya's defiance of his Supreme Court may not have been the behavior of a leader who respects the rule of law; but when soldiers in Latin America haul a democratically elected President out of his palace and into exile, the U.S. has no choice in this day and age but to roundly condemn it. Not just to throw Washington's hemispheric antagonists off base - but to keep the region's military troglodytes from making a comeback...
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...
...more reason Obama has to 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...