Brazil has suffered it for as long as the Lula administration took office, predominantly from the provincial governments, recalcitrant in the pursuit of what in the U.S. passes off as 'the politics of personal destruction'. This same venom surfaced in Bolivia, predictably, against their first indigenous president ever, and now trickled down to become roadblocks and food shortages in Argentina, against the first ever female president elected by the popular vote, an administration a few months old.

An easy read of the situation, from either pro or anti factions, yields bits of the truth, perhaps more so from one position than the other, but after all the arguments are exhausted, the feeling remains of an incomplete picture, a vacuum that the world-famous southern melancholy fills in quite nicely until the next crisis puts everyone, management and labor, back on a politically clearer, survival mode.

This is the vicious circle of South America for the last hundred years. In many respects, it's Latin America's fate as well, though in the north, the plutocracy- whether noveau rich middlemen, arriviste or entrenched oligarchies -is more of the stolid, unmovable kind, until it crumbles under the gunfire of revolutions. In the southern mythology, the pendulum swings with more apparent freedom from one extreme to the other, or at least it did before the return to democratic rule.

This bigger flexibility made leaders of all stripes both more defiantly self-confident and their talk more incendiary, as if exorcising doomsday prophecies that proved self-fulfilling afterwards. In the last chapters, Santa Cruz held a referendum for the province to become independent and the Argentinean farmers set up roadblocks on state highways. It is very telling of the infrastructural design that these blockades also serve the purpose of an ad-hoc siege of Buenos Aires, not only the sole destination, in both internal and external markets, but the seat of the vast majority of the population and its democratically elected government, which is seen as their enemy.

The development of the Democratic Party nomination process in the U.S. has raised the issue of identity politics, but while still highly debatable, there is little doubt that gender and race politics has added spice to the southern confrontations. True, the second Kirchner administration in Argentina has opened itself to attacks that typically come late into a first term simply because it presented itself, for political gain, as a direct continuation of her husband, the first Kirchner term - and so Cristina Fernandez's fate is not too different from the harsh treatment an embattled George H.W. Bush's administration suffered, rightly or wrongly, when identified as Reagan's third term.

Mrs. Fernandez de Kirchner's heavy-handed government style was also contrary to the gist of her campaign, to be the 'gentler, kinder' Kirchner - and the comparisons with G.H.W. Bush's poltical fate become more obvious. In both cases, such promises of humility turned into sudden bravado come from the political reality of facing an opposition in disarray, which in turns breeds the idea that political opposition only counts if identified by a political party. This is, of course, never the case, a hard truth learned even in the U.S., a country where the establishment forces are deemed so entrenched as to make it almost one and the same with the government. The more strident labor opposition was suffered by FDR and Truman, while the so-called military-industrial complex grew under opposition of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who grew so alarmed that he made it the central point of his farewell address, one that would have consumed any other politician in those red-baiting days.

The question is whether these embattled, yet popular leaders, are guilty merely of lack of administrative finesse, a funny charge to raise in the face of the tremendous inequalities that riddle this whole continent, or are simply delusional in thinking there is a middle ground to such political battles. There are no shortage of those who point out the ironic role reversal of a ruling party having to condemn the same tactics his allies employed to successfully lead them to power. The governments, in their response, effectively argue for a double standard on the mere issue of inequality- that is, one thing is the blockade of the poor and quite another the attacks from the 'rich'.

However well-intentioned this may seem, and for some it is not even that, it is clearly not the way for a government to promote the rule of law, to have its application suspended against large swaths of the population but not against others, in effect, by government fiat as to whether the merit of a protest deserves to break the rules. On the other hand, while these governments often fail by loosening their own civilian shock troops- a reminder from their days in the wilderness -onto protests, they have mostly refrained from using federal troops. This is not merely done out of altruism, perhaps such a move would create image problems for these governments, but it is nonetheless a laudable move.

That these confrontations only come to an end when the countries themselves collapse under a new fiscal crisis would indicate there is no negotiable way out. The mantra of 'redistribution of wealth', a vote-getter for politicians down south, can only be stretched so far. The question is whether 'redistribution' should be the sole end and purpose of South American politics.

The truth is, the wealth of Latin oligarchies, whether ancient or newly made, comes from their monopoly. The apparatus of the state, as reorganized by the educated middle classes in the last half century, as the current governments now do, finds a way to 'redistribute' wealth in a way that allievates the economic injustices but, on the other hand, by instituting a system that taxes the monopolies while subsidizes their well-being, the remedies are merely temporary, and not the solution to the problem. Up until the moment that these political forces are unchallenged, their search for an alternative will not take place.

This is why, regardless of one's opinion of their true intent, these shocks to the systems are a wake up call for action. Hopefully, not for revolution, but to ensure a climate of fair competition, sound fiscal policies, and flexible but firm tax code - a set of rules of law tailored made to be fairly applicable to all, all the time, a bit of predictability will go a long way in re-establishing trust and pave the way for progress, to take the Southern Cone out of its repetitive calamities.