So are Chomsky and Finkelstein backing the right horse, finally?

No. Simply because none of Chomsky’s heroes are going to deliver the prosperity and freedom that alone can make a winner. On the contrary, their horses are likely to bolt straight to hell, and carry the poor of that continent with them. Cuba didn’t teach them anything and neither will Chavez.

South America has a problem, but it’s root go deeper than the Colossus of the North. They are within its social and cultural structure. The Gringo is chiefly useful for misdirection and as a source of support for anyone who can convince Washington it is the lesser evil.

But like the Soviet Union before it, petroleum-funded radical Islam is likely to make a huge effort in the fertile soil of South America. And just as South American politics was twisted by the Cold War, and everything perceived through its warping prism, there is the danger that the War on Terror will produce a similar distortion. I sometimes wonder whether Islam will put down roots in South America in the same way that Marxist ideas did. It may, if only because apocalyptic ideas are potentially appealing to a certain way of thinking.