MEXICO CITY _ It's 8:23 a.m. and a vast crowd of people are already standing in line outside the heavily protected fortress-like U.S. embassy. Some have been here since before dawn. Hundreds more will come.
Almost all of them want to leave Mexico. Now.
The air in the narrow side street leading to Mexico City's lovely Paseo de la Reforma where the embassy is located, is charged with fear and hope. Starbucks, besides selling strong coffee with lots of sugar, has been turned into a temporary office for visa paperwork. It's chilly, and the cold is felt both inside and outside the body. You can feel the anxiety.
A woman is dressed as if for a party ... in an attempt to impress. A lot of the men are wearing ties loosely knotted round their shirt collars _ which are too small to be buttoned up. They, too, are trying to make a good impression. If they don't convince one of the American consuls that they have jobs and savings, they won't get tourist visas.
The idea, of course, is that the people leaving as tourists will supposedly come back to Mexico. But everybody knows that more than half the undocumented Mexicans in the United States got there by plane, as tourists, and later, when their visas expired, simply stayed _ illegally. One out of every six Mexicans has traveled north to live in the United States. They either do it nicely or the hard way.
The street is a tough place in Mexico.
Before getting to the embassy I heard Mexican President Vicente Fox say on TV that there are 3.8 million people in Mexico living on less than $1 a day, and 17.3 million more who survive on less than $2 a day. Yes, the street is very tough.
These poorest of Mexico add up to the equivalent of the total population of Mexico City. And when I imagine a city made up of 20 million wretchedly impoverished people, I ask myself: How did we get to this point? Why have we done so badly?
The vocabulary of Mexicans is marked by the experience of a life of poverty: "You don't remember the poor anymore," they say, in mock reproach. "Until the body can take it," to explain how long will they be able to survive. "Poor but honest," they say. "We, the poor..."
The conditions in Mexico are about the same all over Latin America. This region has the worst income distribution in the entire world. The rich are very rich _ the wealthiest 10 percent take almost half the nation's total income _ and the poor keep getting poorer. Little has changed in the last 20 years.
For this reason _ extreme poverty, inequality, social injustice _ left-leaning political parties are successfully coming into power in Latin America. It's no magic trick.
They simply say they are fighting for the oppressed, not for the elite. And that strategy, which seems so straightforward, has worked.
The political left is on a springboard. In the next few days, we'll see whether it jumps or slides.
(President) Lula da Silva, overcoming the scare in the first round, won re-election in Brazil last week. He was able to paint his opponent, Geraldo Alckmin, as the elitists' candidate, and then proceeded to annihilate him in the second round.
Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader, is substantially ahead in the vote count (after Sunday's election) and is poised to return to power in Nicaragua after 16 years.
And, unless he makes a really serious mistake, Hugo Chavez will be re-elected in Venezuela on Dec. 5. He's covered all his bases. If things don't come out right, he has the control of the army and of the electoral vote-counting system.
However, not everything that Chavez touches turns into black gold. The Venezuelan leader can sometimes be the kiss of death for a candidate.
Three presidential candidates who were linked to Chavez _ in Peru (Ollanta Humala), in Ecuador (Rafael Correa) and in Mexico (Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) _ lost in elections where they were once thought to be sure winners.
Likewise, Chavez's boorish performance at the United Nations _ where hecalled U.S. President George W. Bush a "devil" _ was a costly mistake. Venezuela did not succeed in securing a seat on the U.N. Security Council, even though, as the opposition points out, the Venezuelan leader gave away $22.5 billion to 25 countries in the attempt.
The Chavez version of the populist and authoritarian left _ and this is important _ is not the same as the left in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. There are leftist leaders of very different shades in the political spectrum. It is the other left _ democratic, fiscally responsible, noninterventionist, opposed to war... _ that is making such headway in Latin America.
The problem is that Latin America's youth can't wait till adulthood to find out if the left is capable of good governance. Generations of Latin Americans have grown old waiting for prosperity or, at least, for a society of equally opportunity.
The lengthy lines at U.S. embassies _ which remind me of the ones at Disneyland _ here and in other Latin American capitals are a terrible omen: hundreds of thousands of people are simply giving up.
We've already lost them. They can't depend anymore on their countries. They cross their fingers and hope for an American visa. And it doesn't matter if they don't get one. They will go north anyway _ illegally and at terrible risk.
Unlike their grandparents and parents who expected a better future, they do not. They are going to the United States to find it.