WHILST the United States has been moving to the right South America has moved to the left. The presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Ecuador came to power partly by challenging Washington’s economic prescriptions. But this, even middle of the road bankers believe, is working out for the best.

[font=arial][size=3][b]It is important to report that this latest turn in Latin America’s chequered political history does not presage a return to the caudillo — the often flamboyant, dictatorial, populist. With the exception of Venezuela most of this anti-Americanism has two ingredients. First it is profoundly democratic. Second it is pro market reforms, even as it rejects publicly the so-called "Washington Consensus". No longer is it true, as political scientist Glen Dealy wrote over a decade ago, that "In Latin American minds the vision of freely competing factions seems a choice between chaos and privilege. Latin Americans maintain that union comes from unity, not from diversity. Their political beliefs are based on the corporatist medieval and renaissance political theory that predated the contractarian thought of Locke."