Today Carlos Mesa and his pals at the Inter-American Dialogue (yet another in a long list of Washington democracy-promotion think tanks) achieved a long-held goal; to push Evo Morales out of office.
I think their gloating may be premature.
If you zoom out for the big picture, things aren't going that great for the democracy promoters. Why Washington still thinks it has any cred when it talks about democracy gives some sense of how out of touch these people are.
In January they ran a new president up the flag-pole in Venezuela, and nobody saluted. He's still blowing gently in the breeze, his backers in Washington totally stumped that the Venezuelan people didn't rush to support an obvious US puppet.
They thought they had a happy thing going when their bumboy Bolsonaro won in Brazil, but that is rapidly unravelling. As is Chile.
The network of Washington think-tanks stirring the pot (ie massively interfering in the politics of every country in Latin America) don't have the good sense to see that their chosen leaders lack popular support. They'll keep stirring, and if they can succeed in turning the military against the leaders actually elected by the majority of the people, we'll see a repeat of the wave of US-sponsored repression that swept the region in the 70s and 80s.
What's changed is that many of these countries have had some considerable success in implementing policies that have alleviated poverty and raised the standard of living, and they've done it in open defiance of Washington. That's why Morales remains popular in Bolivia, Maduro remains popular in Venezuela, and Lula was always the favourite of the majority in Brazil. Bolsonaro only won the election because Lula was in jail on some bogus corruption charges that had American fingerprints all over them.
At the same time, American prestige and credibility is circling the drain. How many people, seeing US "democracy" on full display these past three years in DC, can possibly believe America has any business lecturing anyone else on the topic.
The Inter-American Dialogue crowd believe in "market based solutions to the reduction of poverty." Of course they do! That's why they're funded by the US government and the usual billionaire and corporate foundations!
That market based solutions to poverty have never worked anywhere and are not working in America today will not deter them.
The American model of democracy is not a commodity worthy of export.
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