ON Oct 9, 1967, Che Guevara faced a shaking sergeant Mario Teran, ordered to murder him by the Bolivian president and CIA, and declared “Shoot coward, you`re only going to kill a man.” The climax of Stephen Soderbergh`s new two-part epic, Che, in real life this final act of heroic defiance marked the defeat of attempts to spread the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America.

But 40 years later, the long-retired executioner, now a reviled old man, had his sight restored for free by Cuban doctors, paid for by revolutionary Venezuela in the radicalised Bolivia of Evo Morales. Teran was treated as part of a programme which has seen 1.4 million free eye operations carried out by Cuban doctors in 33 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. It is an emblem both of the humanity of Fidel Castro and Guevara`s legacy, but also of the transformation of Latin America which has made such extraordinary cooperation possible.
But the West utterly fails to grasp the significance of the wave of progressive change that has swept away the old elites and brought a string of radical socialist and social-democratic governments to power across the continent, from Ecuador to Brazil, Paraguay to Argentina, challenging US domination and neoliberal orthodoxy.

That is the process which last week saw Bolivians vote, in the land where Guevara was hunted down, to adopt a sweeping new constitution empowering the country`s long-suppressed indigenous majority and entrenching land reform and public control of natural resources — after months of violent resistance sponsored by the traditional white ruling class. It`s also seen Cuba finally brought into the heart of regional structures from which Washington has strained every nerve to exclude it.

The seeds of this Latin American rebirth were sown half a century ago in Cuba. But it is also more directly rooted in the region`s disastrous experience of neoliberalism, first implemented by the bloody Pinochet regime in the 1970s — before being adopted with enthusiasm by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and duly enforced across the world.

The wave of privatisation, deregulation and mass pauperisation it unleashed in Latin America first led to mass unrest in Venezuela in 1989, savagely repressed in the Caracazo massacre of more than 1,000 barrio dwellers and protesters. The economic meltdown the 1998 financial crisis unleashed a far wider rejection of the new market order, the politics of which is still being played out across the continent. And the international significance of this first revolt against neoliberalism on the periphery of the US empire now could not be clearer, as the global credit breakdown has rapidly discredited the free market model first rejected in south America.

Hopes are naturally high in the continent that Barack Obama will recognise the powerful national, social and ethnic roots of Latin America`s reawakening — the election of an Aymara president was as unthinkable in Bolivia as an African-American president in the US — and start to build a new relationship of mutual respect. The signs so far are mixed.

Earlier last month, Obama insisted that the Venezuelan president had been a “force that has interrupted progress” and claimed Venezuela was “supporting terrorist activities” in Colombia. If this is intended as political cover for an opening to Cuba, then perhaps it shouldn`t be taken too seriously. But if it is an attempt to isolate Venezuela and divide and rule in America`s backyard, then it`s unlikely to work. Venezuela is a powerful regional player and while Chavez may have lost five out of 22 states in November`s regional elections on the back of discontent over crime and corruption, his supporters still won 54 per cent of the popular vote to the opposition`s 42 per cent.
That is based on a decade of unprecedented mobilisation of oil revenues to achieve impressive social gains, including the near halving of poverty rates, the elimination of illiteracy and a massive expansion of free health and education. The same and more is true of Cuba, famous for first world health and education standards — with better infant mortality rates than the US — in an economically blockaded developing country.

Less well known is the country`s success in diversifying its economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union, not just into tourism and biotechnology, but the export of medical services and affordable vaccines to the poorest parts of the world.

Meanwhile, the common sense about the bankruptcy of neoliberalism first recognised in Latin America has now gone global. Whether it generates the same kind of radicalism elsewhere remains to be seen.

— The Guardian, London