as it was called, have no idea who made up that expression, and he was joined by Néstor Kirchner, in Argentina, who had been tortured by the right-wing Dirty War military dictatorship when it was in power, and Michelle Bachelet, in Chile, who had been tortured, along with her mother, with her father, General Alberto Bachelet, who had remained loyal to socialist President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown and killed in the uprising, which was engineered by Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's C.I.A., and Chile's murderous, sadistic General Augusto Pinochet, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, who had been persecuted by the Brazilian military dictatorship, and his own brother tortured, Lula, being a union activist earlier in his life (always a target of the right wing), Evo Morales, of Bolivia, a former coca grower (not the drug producer, but the native, ancient use coca), Fernando Lugo, a beloved bishop of Paraguay, whose father had been imprisoned by fascist dictator (over 35 years as dictator) Alfredo Stroessner, and whose family had been exiled, Rafael Correa, who ran against the wealthiest man in Ecuador, and who closed the US out of the military base it had occupied at Manta, Paraguay, (said they could return when he could put a base in Florida), and Mauricio Funes, whose brother was murdered by the El Salvadoran military (right-wing, of course) and his son murdered, and maybe someone else I can't remember. All these people took office during George W. Bush's Presidency, while Bush's attention was turned to slaughtering the citizens of the middle east in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Next, the right-wing came after all the leftist Presidents and started funding opposition parties in the leftist countries massively, and setting up critical problems for the leftist Presidents, and employing major propaganda programs against them. In the last several years, they started sliming back into office, where they have started screwing up the economies, and ruining lives of the majorities all over again, the old, old pattern they have always followed. They always succeed in destroying social aid to the poor who have been starting to rise above stark poverty, throwing everyone right back into crisis all over again, while the elites all make money hand over fist, until, with nearly divine intervention, the people can send them packing again, and start trying to put the economy back together again.
Ancient, vicious pattern, but maybe the tide is going to turn this time without the destruction lasting as painfully long as the last time. Can only hope.
You are right, there was a real trend which brought a lot of good, a lot of help to the poor, gave so many a taste, a recognition that it is possible to start rising above despair and suffering if the good leaders are allowed to serve.
On edit:
I just remembered, in the same general block of time Colombia finally got, temporarily, a less brutal, fascist President, who set in motion the movement toward the Peace Treaty, which was to end a civil war which had been unstopped since the 1940's when the first leftist Presidential Politician was assassinated by the Colombian fascists, and bloody conflict raged until Juan Manuel Santos was able, after several years of peace talks in Havana, to put an end to it, only to have the fascist Colombian element start back up assassinating the leftists all over again, as they have, in abundance, in the thousands, so many times before, whenever they attempted to make peace with the fascists. At least this time, they actually signed an actual agreement before the corrupt, ultra-violent right started up slaughtering indigenous and social leaders again.
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