Latin-America go'in bananas

Things are moving right along way south of the border. I've been following developments in Latin-America very closely for the last 3 years and after seeing this graph on the BBC and reading an article in Upping the Anti #3, I feel a genuine sense of hope in the future that I have not felt since...well...ever.

The latest news is seeing the continuation of some interesting stuff in Bolivia, Venezuela, Mexico and good ol' Cuba.

Castro is still alive, kicking and massively influencing current Latin-American policy much to the Chagrin of the Pentagon and US wacko's.

Mexico's tortilla prices are shooting through the roof causing massive uproar and demonstrations. I'm wondering how this is going to compound the political problems that Mexico was facing just 2 months ago. It seems as though the new prez, who is nice and cozy with both George Jr. and Steve the Prime Minister, has been allowing massive corn exports to the US to feed their growing bio-diesel industry. (To see how this industry is tied up with Super-star US prez candidate Barack Obama, read the awesome article in Harper's mag about it).

I'm thinking he's gonna have a tough time fighting this one off especially that the opposition is so organized and determined to fight back. For those that don't know staple foods tend to mean a lot in countries that rely on them so. Indonesia and the Philippines had just gone through massive carnage when I was there due to the price of rice going up. Kinda of like when this happens in Canada, though the irony that one is about oil and the other about food is not lost on me.

Speaking of that type of irony, how hilarious is it that the US is ringing the warning bells about Hugo Chavez's new powers? It seems the US gets it nickers in a bunch when a president has the power to unilaterally nationalize industries for 18 months (Ok, there are other powers to do with defense as well), however no reporter I've seen has been contrasting this to the unilateral power (not really) granted to Bush to go to war by his congress four years ago.

Finally, while we're on the subject of nationalization, Evo Morales is making big waves to government revenues in Bolivia. I'm a big fan of government run industry as long as it is corruption free and run on a competitive level with other businesses, therefore remaining efficient and not monopolistic. I've seen a bunch of good examples in Sweden and Norway and long for the good ol' days of a cheap Via Rail, a well-run Petro-Can and...actually, I never really liked Air Canada.