Colombia leader’s election win boosts U.S.
President Alvaro Uribe’s landslide re-election victory wasn’t only celebrated in Colombia. The clear win for the law-and-order conservative was a triumph as well for U.S. policymakers, who some observers say may be losing Latin America to a rising tide of leftist nationalism. In recent years, a wave of left-leaning governments has swept across South America — from Chile’s relatively friendly socialist Michelle Bachelet to the Washington-bashing Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Meanwhile, nationalization of foreign-owned companies is on the rise, most recently in Bolivia, while free market reforms have fallen to the wayside. Full Story