Morales’ exit stymies comeback for left

The sudden resignation of Bolivia’s Evo Morales sent shockwaves throughout Latin America, where the indigenous leader had been the last survivor among a wave of leftist leaders swept to power two decades ago as commodity prices soared.

But the upheaval that has recently rocked the region, threatening Trump allies and antiimperialist governments alike, defies easy categorization. From Honduras to Chile, popular frustration with anemic economic growth, entrenched corruption and gaping inequality is driving the region’s middle classes to rebel against incumbents of all ideological bents in what has been dubbed the Latin American Spring.

“Latin America has been the frog in the boiling pot for a long time,” said Marie Arana, the PeruvianAmerican author of a new book, “Silver, Sword & Stone,” exploring five centuries of abuse and economic exploitation of the region’s masses. “It’s gotten to the point where it’s less about ideology and more about practical matters as people for themselves see the rampant physical evidence that things are going wrong.”

The angst is greatest among the region’s newly empowered middle class and the traditionally disenfranchised groups that made great strides when the left came to power at the end of the 1990s with the election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Luiz Incio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Around 90 million people entered the middle class in Latin America between 2000 and 2012, according to the United Nations, a feat that tracked with a boom in prices for the region’s copper, soy and oil exports.

But as commodity prices have fallen, and leftist leaders once lionized for crusading against corruption are engulfed in scandals themselves, families earning enough for the first time in generations to pay taxes and send their kids to college are demanding higherquality public services.