Mr. Chavez's Neighborhood

...Even in Argentina, perhaps the most anti-American country in the region, a full 43 percent of respondents have little or no confidence in Chavez...

...As Christopher Sabatini, senior policy director at the Americas Society and editor in chief of Americas Quarterly, points out, the elections of Morales and Cor-rea were based less on ideology than on practical grievances...

...Democratic politics is really very healthy in Latin America," says Hakim...

...During the 2006 Mexican presidential race, center-right candidate Felipe Calderon repeatedly associated his populist opponent with Chavez and wound up rallying to victory...

...Thanks in part to the Chavez albatross, Garcia defeated Humala in the runoff...

...That's not all...

...Of the seven Latin American nations polled, large majorities of Chileans (75 percent), Brazilians (74 percent), Peruvians (70 percent), Mexicans (66 percent), and Bolivians (59 percent) express little or no confidence in Chavez "to do the right thing regarding world affairs...

...This is a good period for the region...

...This allowed the more moderate Alan Garcia to frame the election as a choice "between Hugo Chavez and Peru...

...The Economist reckons that many Latin economies are experiencing their best performance "since the mid-1970s," with solid growth rates and a burgeoning middle class in countries such as Brazil and Mexico...

...Using his vast oil wealth, he has moved closer to Iran and Russia, signing energy and arms deals...

...Talk of a populist surge in the region contains some truth...

...Guatemala's recent presidential campaign was marred by bloody violence and a raft of political murders...

...This summer Chavez agreed to sell Iran cut-rate gasoline...

...Finally, a windfall of petrodollars has given Chavez influence beyond Latin America...

...Opponents lodge credible complaints about their autocratic tendencies...

...His center-left regime has pursued a sound economic agenda and backed a free trade agreement with the United States...

...ally...

...But a majority of Nicara-guans voted for one of the two center-right candidates...

...Thus far, Ortega has accepted the Central American Free Trade Agreement...

...As Pew puts it, "He is widely recognized—and widely mistrusted—throughout Latin America...

...Economic management has really never been better," says Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue...

...There is broad support for free-market economic policies across Latin America," Pew reports, "despite the election in the past decade of leftist leaders...

...Majorities in Brazil (65 percent), Chile (60 percent), Mexico (55 percent), and Bolivia (53 percent), along with a plurality in Peru (47 percent), agree that "most people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor...

...Corruption, cronyism, and crime remain widespread...

...Sabatini worries that a failure by Congress to approve the U.S.-Colombia free trade pact would "signal that the United States is abdicating its leadership in the region...

...There's a lot of reason to be very optimistic," says Sabatini, especially "about the most powerful countries...

...This is not to paint an overly sanguine picture...

...Indeed, the regional climate as a whole is relatively encouraging, given the financial crises of the 1990s and early 2000s and Latin America's history of coups and political upheaval...

...Argentina may now be part of the Chavez orbit...

...Among others, former Republican senator Rick Santorum has drawn attention to the potential threats posed by the Tehran-Caracas axis...

...Whether Latin governments are left or right is ultimately less important than whether they adopt policies that are forward-looking and modern...

...Panama just elected to lead its national assembly a pro-Noriega radical, who has been indicted in the United States for the 1992 killing of an American soldier...

...A breakdown in hemispheric cooperation could yield a power vacuum for Chavez to fill with his oil-soaked "Bolivarian" revolution...

...The leftward drift of many Latin American countries in recent years should not be confused with a massive shift into the Chavez Duncan Currie is managing editor of the American...

...In a recent conversation with Reich, a high-ranking Latin American security official expressed alarm over the consequences of isolating Colombia, whose center-right government is a strong U.S...

...Judicial systems need reform, as does education...

...She points to the emergence of "market-friendly reformers" in Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and elsewhere...

...Resource-hungry China is also competing for influence...

...by Duncan Currie Venezuela's cocksure president, Hugo Chavez, might take a sobering glance through the latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey, conducted this spring and released over the summer...

...In the 2006 Peruvian election, Chavez lent full-throated support to a radical nationalist named Ollanta Humala...

...I don't see this big, looming, radical lurch to the left," says Carol Graham, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution...

...And Ortega's victory was certainly "not a triumph of leftism," but rather "a triumph of electoral manipulation...

...Poverty is still a serious problem...

...In Nicaragua, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega regained power with less than 40 percent of the vote, thanks to election rules that make it possible for a candidate to win the presidency with just 35 percent...

...But Mexico and Peru are not, demonstrating the very real limits of his appeal...

...Chile is a true Latin American success case," which should caution against viewing the Latin left as monolithic...

...Most Latin governments, whether center-right or center-left, have upheld the institutions of democracy and embraced responsible fiscal policies...

...The term "leftist," though often used to describe authoritarian radicals such as Chavez, is also appropriated for left-wing democrats like Michelle Bachelet of Chile and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil...

...camp...

...Kirchner is not seeking reelection next month, hoping instead to be succeeded by his wife, the Argentine first lady...

...But even his two supposed proteges, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, are hardly carbon copies...

...The conservative Otto Reich, who served as a senior diplomat for Latin America under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, stresses that Washington need not fear the "democratic left," epitomized by Bachelet and Lula, which Reich separates from the "extreme," antidemocratic left, epitomized by Chavez...

...Since 1990, Reich notes, the Chilean economic miracle has been piloted by a center-left coalition, with stunning results...

...But Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua are three of Latin America's weakest, poorest countries, never fully integrated into the global economy...

...While Argentine president Nestor Kirchner has also cast his lot with the Chavez forces, the post-2002 Argentine economic recovery owes much to "neolib-eral" policies charted by former finance minister Roberto Lavagna, whom Kirchner sacked in late 2005...

...Meanwhile, as the Pew survey notes, "The image of the United States has eroded since 2002 in all six Latin American countries for which trends are available...

...Indeed, a whopping 72 percent of Venezuelans agree with that statement...

...in 2006, he bought fighter jets and helicopters from Moscow...

...Drug cartels are raising havoc in Mexico, murdering journalists and triggering bad memories of Colombia...

...Chavez may be a throwback to the old South American caudillos, who blended populism, authoritarianism, and military rule...

...Chavez-style radicalism may be present in the Andes, but it is not sweeping the region...

...The Pew survey found that Latin publics are, on balance, more satisfied with their quality of life and family income than they were five years ago...