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 News from Around the Americas | November 2006 
Latin Americans Cheered by GOP Setback
 E. Eduardo Castillo - Associated Press
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Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich talks about the GOP loss of Congress while addressing medical practitioners at a family practice Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006, in Alpharetta, Ga. Exit polls conducted with Tuesday's elections indicate only 30 percent of Georgia voters think the Republican would make a good president, while 63 percent say he wouldn't. Seven percent declined to answer the question. (AP/John Amis) |
Mexico City traffic officer Raul Cervantes couldn't remember the name of the Republican Party on Wednesday - all he knew was that President Bush had taken a beating and that was enough to make him happy.
Politicians, analysts and ordinary citizens across Latin America cheered the Democrats' takeover of Congress as roping in a president who went to war against Iraq, ignoring widespread world opposition to the invasion.
'When the people who make Bush's plans happen aren't around, we will be better off,' said Cervantes, directing traffic on a major Mexico City avenue.
Most in the region agree that Washington's new political landscape will do little for their countries' agendas, such as Mexico's hope of stopping a border wall meant to stem illegal immigration.
And few believe the Democrats will push through a migration accord that would allow Latin Americans to more easily work legally in the U.S., or smooth relations with Latin America's growing camp of leftists, from Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez to Nicaragua's newly elected Daniel Ortega.
Regardless, many in the region cheered.
'Of course, the citizens of the United States are humans with a conscience. It's a reprisal vote against the war in Iraq, against the corruption' within the Bush administration, Chavez said. 'All this fills us with optimism.'
Ortega, delivering his victory speech in Managua, Nicaragua, on Wednesday after winning last weekend's presidential election, told thousands of cheering supporters that the American people had thrown the Republicans out of Congress 'because the Republicans always want to be at war, and that has been rejected.'
In the Dominican Republic, which has 1.3 million citizens in the U.S., Radhames Gomez Pepin, director of the left-leaning newspaper El Nacional, said Democrats' plans to raise the minimum wage will help Hispanics and Latin American immigrants.
'I believe Hispanics will benefit,' he said. 'Perhaps some of the persecution against them in schools and cities will end,' he said. |
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