George Bush and his Latin American allies have notched up a couple of recent successes in the elections just concluded in Colombia and Peru. Susan Moore looks at how they achieved this. BOTH countries have a majority of poor and indigenous people who want no part of a Us imposed neoliberal "free market" way of doing things, and in a free and open election would never elect any candidate who did. So how come that's exactly what happened?
On May 28, we're supposed to believe the Colombian people rejected chose to reelect right wing hard-liner and close Bush ally Alvaro Uribe Velez - who had to arrange for the constitution to be changed to allow him to run in the first place.
Undoubtedly the fact that Colombia been the state to receive the third largest hand out of US dollars, after only Israel and Egypt, played a not insignificant role in his winning 68 per cent of the vote.
So too did the President's success in portraying himself as a bringer of peace despite the fact that the Colombian state and the right-wing paramilitaries it supports are the prime delivers of violence in that deeply divided country.
During the campaign Uribe announced that the previously announced 15,000 demobilised paramilitaries had jumped to 26,000 and that half of them had been disarmed. While that is not the experience of many indigenous communities, the propaganda had its effect.
On June 4, lightning seemed to strike twice in one week as the people of Peru elected former disgraced president Alan Garcia who also happens to support the Washington consensus and will dutifully surrender his nation's sovereignty to the Bush administration.
As the results were announced, Garcia claimed that voters " have defeated the efforts by Mr Hugo Chavez to integrate us into his militaristic and backwards expansion project he intends to impose over South America. Today, Peru has said no."
Throughout the campaign Venezuelan President Chavez was accused of intertering in the election by making clear his support for opposition candidate Ollanta Humala who had won the first round of the elections with 30 per cent of the vote.
Humala, who the United States perceive as a "second Chavez" is in fact an ambiguous figure, describing himself as "neither left nor right" while Colombia under Uribe has been the state to receive the third largest hand-out of US dollars, after only Israel and Egypt, opposing the signing of a Free Trade Agreement with the US.
He is also suspected of having participated as an army officer in acts of torture in 1992 during former President Fujimoro's dirty war against the Shining Path guerrillas.
In fact while these accusations were widely voiced during the campaign, they will not be investigated for fear of implicating the army as a whole.
The fact that Humala represented the aspirations of the popular masses in the election is itself as indictment of the weakness of the Peruvian left.
While Chavez was accused both inside and outside Peru of interfering, in fact the real puppet master was the White House itself.
Denunciations of Chavez himself played their part in both election results. In February, Condoleeza Rice denounced Chavez for leading a "Latin brand of populism that drain". She cited Venezuela's relationship with Cuba as being a particular problem.
In May during Chavez's visit to Europe, Bush announced a ban on arm sales to Venezuela - essentially a symbolic gesture indicating the distancing that the White House wants to put between itself and the new symbol of resistance on the continent.
In addition, for many weeks before the Colombian and Peruvian elections, CIA, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), US Agency (USAID) and International Republican Institute (IRI) operatives were all over both countries setting in place the process needed to assure both their candidates won regardless of whether the majority of people wanted them.
While Washington will breath a sigh of relief over the outcome of both polls as their co-thinkers win in both Peru and Colombia, the tide of anger against neoliberalism which saw the election of Chavez in the first place has not been rolled back.
The struggle for land reform, against privatisation, for women's rights and human rights will continue in these two countries as across the continent. George Bush should not sleep too soundly.