The Latin America left is just a self-serving myth… and I am not so sure of much of the rest of the left either.

Sir, John Paul Rathbone, when referring to Latin America’s “limp” response “to growing Venezuelan authoritarianism and repression, writes” “This is solidarity gone too far, especially from fellow leftist governments.” “Leaders of the left should force Caracas to face the music” June 10.

In Latin America there are no leftist governments, there are just politicians pragmatically using the leftist agendas, in order to put themselves into power for furthering their own interests. Just look at Venezuela. A country in which just gas (petrol) and cheap foreign exchange for travelling abroad giveaways represents more than what is invested in all social programs put together. What has that to do with left… or with right policies for that matter?

No, the Latin America left is just a self-serving myth, and there are indeed many making good money promoting that myth. And the number of willing buyers of that nonsense in Europe and in the US, would seem to imply that perhaps much of what is supposedly left is not really left even there.

But that said much of the right is not that right either. In fact much, perhaps most, of the current left vs. right debates, remind us of boxers spitting out at each other, looking to increase the amount of money to be split between them and the promoters for the next fights… and of the so many dumb enough to buy and love the fake shows.

@PerKurowski

Go where the beef is

Sir, I really do not understand how, in “Latin Lessons”, July 10, you can even think about achieving a better US engagement in Latin America by entering the field of establishing comparison between the simple propagandas of “the $20m being spent on a four-month-long humanitarian health care mission, involving a visit by the Comfort hospital ship to 12 countries, to the scale of the health care plans launched by Mr chávez and his Cuban ally, President Fidel Castro”. That is like assessing the cultural efforts of Brittan in terms of how long the British Museum lends out their Tutankhamen collection to the world.

Of course the real dealings with Latin America have to occur in the real areas you mention such as energy, trade and of course migration, and there, if the US was to find a more constructive approach to Latin America, it needs primarily to start looking for a more constructive and consistent approach among themselves, in Washington at least.

The Inter-American Development Bank recently reported that the working migrants of Latin America remitted to their home countries $62.3bn in 2004 and if these represented 15% of what the workers earned, we are then talking about a yearly figure of around $415bn, of which the US contributes almost all, and clearly this beats anything that what Castro and chávez can come up using the money obtained by selling Venezuelan oil.