Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is more critical of the US than Osama bin Laden. Now Ronald Reagan's old nemesis has been re-elected President of Nicaragua. In the 1980's the Reagan administration helped finance the Nicaraguan Contras in their bloody civil war against Daniel Ortega, the radical leftist Sandinista who had ousted American-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza. In 1990, Ortega was voted out, and he's been trying to win re-election ever since. This year, Iran-Contra figure Oliver North campaigned against Ortega and the Bush Administration backed his opponent, but Ortega won. Does he represent the growth of leftist anti-Americanism? Should the US re-engage with its Latin America neighbors south of the border?
Anti-Americanism on the Left in Latin America
Credits
Guests:
- Alvaro Vargas Llosa - Director of the Independent Institute's Center on Global Prosperity
- Timothy Charles Brown - Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution
- Peter Hakim - President of the Inter-American Dialogue
- Héctor Tobar - Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of “Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of ‘Latino’”