South America Will Be On Washington's Agenda

Yellow Times -- With the recent elections of Lula da Silva in Brazil and Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador, both considered populist in nature and prone to making neoliberals nervous about the state of the South American economy, the U.S.-backed government of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia is feeling a bit isolated.

Because of this coalescing of many key events: the popularity of "leftist" leaders, Chavez, Lula, and Gutierrez, the continuing tension and friction between Washington and Caracas, the emerging involvement of Venezuela, though at this point only alleged, in Colombia's civil war, the admission on Washington's part of both its commitment to Plan Colombia and the significance of FARC as the source of 44 percent of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, and the increasing importance of South American oil over the next 25 years, the United States will only become more intimately involved in the region.