While Canada prepares (apparently) to tilt rightward, is Mexico preparing to head leftward?

While I can't vouch for its accuracy, the following comes from a Venezuelan news site proclaiming its devotion to "fair and balanced reporting":

• The inauguration of Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay shows that Latin America’s democratic march to the left continues, and could be a forerunner to Mexico’s 2006 presidential election.

• The Bush administration, already uncomfortable with Latin America’s new left, would become apoplectic if this movement reached the U.S.-Mexican border. A López Obrador victory in the Mexican election would signal the ultimate domino falling.

• Bush’s Latin America team fails to understand that the model of the new left in Latin America today is less Che Guevara than FDR and Tony Blair’s British Labor Party.

• The growing center-left ideological tilt among Latin American states is symptomatic of a growing movement towards a continental alliance and a political stance markedly different from that being fielded by the U.S.

That the USA has planned long ago to intervene in Venezuela and Latin America, with military power, should it be necessary for its own economic, imperialist survival and struggle to retain world hegemony, is scientifically sure, there should not be any doubts about this issue. Within the very Bolivarian movement, it is counter-revolutionary to use this threat as an instrument to brake the deepening of the revolutionary process.

As Simon Bolivar had warned already, this Yankee plague is simply there, it is our daily bread; as long as the Bolivarian Revolution exists, and is advancing towards global emancipation, so long the Damocles Sword of North American Fascism will hover over our revolutionary heads. (Emphasis in original.)

Is any of that in our favor?

It occurred to me that perhaps a smidgen more fairness and balance might be needed, so I looked elsewhere. Here's another take -- from someone I don't think is quite as far to the left:

If Lopez Obrador becomes President of Mexico

By Kenneth Emmond

What might happen if the worst fears of President Vicente Fox, Santiago Creel, Roberto Madrazo, and others are realized, and Mexico City’s mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is elected president of Mexico?

The short answer is no one knows. Still, plenty of apocalyptic doomsayers are willing to share their thoughts.

Last week Claudio X. Gonzalez, a high-profile leader of the business community, said, “All indications are that the person who will compete (in the 2006 presidential elections) is a political leftist who is retrograde and dinosaur-like, and will leave Mexico in bankruptcy.”

Gonzalez worries about polarization of the nation, the possible compromising of the rule of law, and the danger of a flight of capital.

The specter of a Lopez Obrador presidency also strikes fear in the hearts of Mexico’s bankers. One bank, eyeing the debt Mexico City has accumulated since 2000, predicts that a Lopez Obrador government would usher in an era of 20 percent inflation.

Some political scientists even aver that Lopez Obrador is “not a leftist,” that he is a populist opportunist whose political big chance happened to develop in the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Latin America is turning left. With Tabare Ramon Vazquez Rosas becoming the first ever left leader in Uruguay on 1 March, more than three quarters of the continent's 355 million people are living under leftist governments.

Vazquez's presidential ceremony in the capital Montevideo was a roll call of those who have turned the politics of this hemisphere upside down in six short years:

Hugo Chavez, who won in Venezuela in 1999, Ecuador's Lucio Gutierrez and Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who
won in 2002 and Nestor Kirchner of Argentina who came to power in 2004.

Vazquez's symbolic first action was the full restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba. Fidel Castro failed to appear, citing health reasons but promised a visit soon.

His foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque was welcomed with open arms.

On the horizon are potential victories for Evo Morales in Bolivia, Michelle Bachellet in Chile's December vote and Manual Lopez Obrador, the mayor of Mexico city and presidential candidate. (Emphasis in original.)

Because unless I am wrong, all signs on the horizon point to a (more than) potential victory for our own American Evita.