BoRev.Net

By Revolter

It was a huge red-clad celebration for the Latin American left on Monday, as Mauricio Funes became the first FMLN President of El Salvador. With Chavez's absence at the inauguration, Hillary Clinton was able to suck up to Funes while pushing some weird, two-faced agenda.

Hillary came dressed to pander, sporting a Bolivarian red pantsuit and talking up the US's "new approach" to the region. She even invited Funes to Washington to meet with Obama, whom "some may say . . is left of center". Yeesh.

Of course she'd already undermined her own messaging earlier that morning, when the Miami Herald published a genuine White House-issue Hillary Clinton op-ed, laying out the cornerstone of this new approach: the "re-launching" of the Bush administration's Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas (PPA) initiative. Pathways, or Caminos for the brown people, is comprised of of the United States, the 10 countries with active U.S. trade agreements, the 2 countries Washington's got a hard on for (Colombia & Panama), plus Uruguay for some reason.

How's this for change? The PPA is vigorously supported by the Heritage Foundation because it "could result in new momentum for concluding a broader Free Trade Agreement of the Americas." Yikes.