PRAGUE -- The death of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former military dictator, provides perhaps an appropriate end for a year that saw the Latin American left return to glory, a revival that President Hugo Chavez's overwhelming re-election in Venezuela is but the strongest sign. For unlike in the days of Pinochet, fear of the left has mostly vanished in countries across the Latin American continent.
Indeed, the left has won in countries in which it has previously never held power. Despite the fact that the victories of Presidents Felipe Calderon in Mexico, Alvaro Uribe in Colombia and Alan Garcia in Peru put a stop to a supposed tsunami of socialist victories, the trend toward the left is unmistakable.
Chavez is no longer a lonely populist. In the Andean region, he is accompanied by two clones that are reheating his recipes: President Evo Morales in Bolivia and President-elect Rafael Correa in Ecuador. In the rest of the continent, the other left -- the one deemed reliable by Wall Street and London bankers -- will not join Chavez's postures, but neither will it join a crusade to unseat him.