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Wave of change (published in the Morning Star)

JEREMY CORBYN reports on the changing balance of power in Latin America.
NEWS that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been accepted to act as peacemaker between the Colombian government and the FARC guerillas is exceptional.
Its importance and significance cannot be emphasised enough.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez has been heavily backed by the US militarily, politically and diplomatically and he and his ministers have been feted in Europe.
The publicity machine in the Colombian capital Bogota has constantly proclaimed that Uribe's creation of a powerful militia force and his subsequent successful re-election show that the country's crisis can be resolved internally.
Over the years, thousands have died in Colombia and drug dealers, multinational companies and arms dealers have all exacerbated the crisis.
Left-wing forces and trade unions have paid an enormous price. Over the past five years, more trade unionists have been killed in Colombia than in the rest of the world put together. The recent deaths of congress members who were being held hostage demonstrated that nobody, whatever their rank, is immune from the civil war.
Chavez has emphasised that Venezuela has always sought normal relations with neighbouring Colombia. News that he is to mediate between the parties in its civil war represents an enormous slap in the face for the US, which has tried to dominate the whole region in the past through the Organisation of American States.
Resistance to George W Bush's attempts to impose a new economic order at the 2005 Buenos Aires summit was an important indicator of the changing balance in the region. Only former Mexican president Vincent Fox and Colombia backed the US proposals.
But, while Venezuela's enormous influence in the region is clear to see, from oil arrangements with Cuba and Nicaragua to direct aid and support for Haiti, it would be too simplistic to suggest that there has been a systematic shift to the left across the continent.
The Bolivian government of Evo Morales has huge popular support among the poor masses. His decision to bring the oil and gas industries under public ownership has enormous support, as do plans to improve health and education services.
However, the powerful people who have grown rich over the decades off Bolivia's poverty are fighting back, raising ominous parallels with the destabilisation of Chile by the US during the 1970s popular unity government of Salvador Allende.
Bolivia's rich and wannabes are being courted by Washington and media attacks on Morales and his government are intensifying. Such tactics were previously reserved for Chavez alone.
US destabilisation of Chile after three years of hope between 1970-3 ushered in the long, brutal nightmare of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.
In the end, the brave and tenacious opposition in the country forced a referendum which ended military rule at the start of the 1990s.
Since then, rule by the Concertacion, an alliance of Christian Democrats and Socialists, has undoubtedly brought more democratic stability, but it has also seen continued low levels of public spending and neoliberal economics.
The election of Michele Bachelet as president represented something of a turning point for Chile.
In response to strong social demands on health, education and public transport, Bachelet told the trade union federation that it did not need to demonstrate for social justice as the concept was safe with her.
However, the dark side of the Chilean state was shown only last week when police arrested over 600 people at a demonstration in the capital Santiago which was called, essentially, to send the message that the poor now expect their social demands to be met.
It is especially tragic given the country's past that, as most of the continent moves towards greater social justice, the left-leaning Chilean government has used such tactics against the very people who elected it.
Guatemala is the next Latin American state to go to the polls, with parliamentary and presidential elections next week.
Against a backdrop of povery and economic injustice, many families in the country rely on remittances from relatives in the US.
Many of these people are working in their powerful northern neighbour without papers or legal recognition. They are among the most exploited people in the world's richest nation.
Guatemalans who hope to enter the US face a terrifying and tortuous process, crossing the heavily policed Mexican border and then making the long journey across Mexico to reach the US border.
Ordinary travellers in Mexico have become accustomed to endless military roadblocks and searches for desperate migrants hoping for a piece of the wealth to the north. The dangers that they face as they attempt to reach Texas or California are even greater.
This issue has become a major factor in the Guatemalan elections, with Nobel prizewinner and candidate Rigoberta Menchu describing the migrants as "heroes."
While the other candidates in a CNN-sponsored TV debate did not go as far, they have all been forced to recognise that the migrants' plight is a product of corruption, exploitation and discrimination against the indigenous majority.
Immediately to the north, in Mexico, the disputed 2006 presidential election is still at the centre of political life.
Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who was declared the loser by the electoral commission, is continuing to carry out his pledge on behalf of "the legitimate government" to visit each of the country's 2,500 municipalities. In less than a year, he has visited 700 of them and 1.5 million Mexicans have registered as supporters.
Last weekend, President Felipe Calderon, whose Party for National Action is US-backed, was due to present his annual report to congress.
He was in the building for 12 minutes and handed in a written report after PRD deputies and allies and the assembly president had walked out.
Calderon later made his annual address to an invited audience in the presidential palace. Meanwhile, Obrador delivered his alternative speech to an open-air meeting in a town in Tlaxcala.
It reflected the theme of his campaign, which has highlighted economic injustice and low tax rates for the super-rich.
As if the latter point needed emphasising, the country's biggest magnate Carlos Slim has just been named by Forbes Magazine as the world's richest individual.
The Zocolo, the massive piazza that is the political heartbeat of the nation, rang to the sounds of culture and protest from groups across the country last Saturday, echoing the ever-louder demand for social justice across the continent.
Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk