taking Venezuela down a decidedly anti-US, anti-imperialist and seemingly socialist path–and taking other governments in the region with him. Chávez’s electoral victory was seen by many as the moment when a red tide began to wash over the region’s political landscape. In the summer of 2002, the Movement to Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia, led by militant coca growers’ leader Evo Morales, became the second largest party in the Congress while in December it achieved huge victories in municipal elections—in what was billed by the MAS itself as “la toma de los municipios”. The election to state power of Lula da Silva in Brazil (October 2002) was followed by Nestor Kirchner in Argentina (May 2003), Tabaré Vasquez in Uruguay (November 2004), Evo Morales (December 2005), (December 2006) Rafael Correain Ecuador (December 2006) and most recently Lucas Longo in Paraguay. The tide was checked in Mexico in the summer of 2006 when Lopez Obrador, presidential candidate of the PRD, fell just short of victory, and in Peru, where the nationalist Humala lost out to Alan Garcia, the once disgraced social democrat but reborn neoliberal. But it appeared to swell again with Daniel Ortega’s victory in Nicaragua—although, given his opportunism and religious rebirth, Ortega could hardly be viewed as on the Left notwithstanding his friendship with Chávez and Fidel Castro—and Rafael Correa. Thus it appeared that Latin America had turned against the US-inspired—and dictated—neoliberal policies of structural adjustment and globalization by electing to state power a number of parties on the political left—although “moderate” or “pragmatic”. Centre-left regimes,