The Costs of Indifference: Latin America and the Bush Era

Omar G. Encarnación is associate professor of political studies at Bard College, where he teaches Iberian and Latin American politics. His most recent book is Spanish Politics: Democracy after Dictatorship (Polity Press, 2008).

 

 

As the presidency of George W. Bush draws to a close, it is time to take stock of how various parts of the developing world have fared during his time in office. With respect to Latin America, the Bush era is likely to be remembered with a profound sense of disappointment. There are no parallel examples to Bush’s AIDS and malaria initiatives in Africa or the tsunami relief campaign in Asia, which generated tremendous goodwill for the United States.

 

Indeed, one is hard-pressed to find a bright spot in US–Latin American relations since the advent of the Bush administration in 2001. Fighting poverty and inequality, strengthening democracy and the rule of law, and promoting economic development and trade—the very things that since the end of the Cold War have come to define the common agenda of the United States and its southern neighbours—have barely progressed.

 

Perhaps the brightest area is trade, with the creation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which was ratified by the US Senate in June 2005. But this “success” was eclipsed a few months later in November 2005 by the complete collapse of talks over the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in the Argentine city of Mar de Plata. The Latin Americans rejected Bush’s proposal for a broad agreement to liberalise trade across the Americas, and the participants went home without any concrete plan to restart the negotiations.

 

Not surprisingly, the Latin American verdict on the Bush era is already in, and it is decidedly harsh. The region’s leaders have taken to referring to ties between the United States and Latin America as “the forgotten relationship”, as Mexico’s former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda aptly put it in a 2003 essay.¹ Just a year before, Castañeda had resigned his post, citing frustration at the lack of progress in US–Mexican relations.

 

Ordinary Latin Americans have shown themselves openly contemptuous of Bush, arguably the most unpopular US president in Latin America ever. Bush’s 2007 tour of Latin America, a farewell of sorts (it included stops in Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Guatemala and Mexico), provided ample evidence of the Latin Americans’ dislike of the US president. Anti-Bush protests broke out virtually everywhere he went, including São Paulo, South America’s largest city, where a rally demanding that “Bush go home” left twenty people injured and prompted the police to use tear gas to pacify the demonstrators. 

An Unexpected Turn 

The disappointment that mars Bush’s legacy in Latin America stands in striking contrast to the optimism that once prevailed. During the US presidential election campaign in 2000, Bush promised to put Latin America at the top of Washington’s foreign-policy agenda, or at the very least on the same footing as western Europe and Asia. He also touted as assets in developing close ties with Latin America his years as governor of Texas, the US state with the longest border with Mexico, and his ability to communicate in Spanish.

 

Things got off to an auspicious start with the “Cowboy Summit” between Bush and President Vicente Fox in Mexico in February 2001. This meeting was highly symbolic, not least because it was Bush’s first trip abroad as president of the United States. The fact that Mexico was just emerging from seventy years of one-party rule understandably caused Bush’s visit to be seen as a sign of Washington’s support for Mexico’s budding democracy. Bush’s own words to his Mexican hosts could not have been more reassuring: “America has no closer relationship.” What went wrong?

 

Ideological differences were clearly a factor. Bush, one of the most right-wing presidents in recent US history, had to confront an assortment of left-wing regimes across Latin America (the so-called “Pink Tide”) which do not see eye-to eye with Washington on many issues.² Nothing suggests this better than the blatantly hostile relationship between Washington and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, the enfant terrible of the Latin American left.

 

Chávez has wasted no opportunity to attack Bush personally, as he did most famously in a 2006 speech at the United Nations that referred to the US president as “the devil himself” and a “world dictator”. Nor has he resisted any chance to rattle US foreign policy and impede inter-American co-operation. His government has subsidised the sale of Venezuelan petroleum to nations that are at odds with the United States, like Cuba; it has embraced declared US enemies (Iran most notably); and it has provided financial support to the Cocaleros, Bolivian farmers who oppose coca eradication, a US policy priority. Last but not least, Chávez has fuelled anti-Americanism across Latin America with the creation of Telesur, a continental television news network based in Caracas that is devoted to influencing public opinion. Such behaviour has made Chávez the biggest Latin American thorn in the side of the United States since Fidel Castro attempted to export his Marxist revolution at the height of the Cold War.

 

The lion’s share of the blame, however, lies squarely with the Americans, the senior partner in the US–Latin American relationship. For much of its time in office, the Bush administration virtually ignored Latin America and its problems. Tellingly, no comprehensive strategy for promoting economic development and strengthening democracy in the region was articulated until 2007, just one year before the end of Bush’s second term. Moreover, whenever attention was focused on Latin America, it evinced a large dose of paternalism and manipulation whose goal was to advance US foreign-policy priorities, such as the global war on terror.

 

This shabby treatment of Latin America exposes a myth about the Bush administration: that it embraced a universal “neo-Wilsonian” foreign policy intended to promote democracy and the rule of law around the world. In Latin America, the Bush administration pursued the antithesis of Wilsonianism: a cold-hearted and cynical policy of realism that called for the United States to engage itself with the nations of Latin America only when necessary, and then mainly to promote and protect its economic interests and national security. Implemented consistently and robustly, this policy showed no concern for the consequent neglect and even the weakening of democratic governance across Latin America. 

A Casualty of 9/11 

Paradoxically, the roots of Bush’s realist policy in Latin America can be found in the same historical events thought to have made Bush “the most Wilsonian president since Wilson himself”: the attacks on the United States of 11 September 2024 by Islamist terrorists.³ This unprecedented assault on the homeland established a new paradigm for US foreign policy. As stipulated in the National Security Strategy announced by the Bush administration in September 2002, to avert further attacks on America, US foreign policy would emphasise preventive action against rogue states suspected of aiding or abetting terrorism. It would also promote a balance of power favouring freedom, based on the notion that democracy is the best antidote to terrorism. In sum, this new strategy made homeland security, international counter-terrorism and the coercive democratisation of the Middle East the focus of US foreign policy. These new priorities were nothing short of devastating for Latin America. Indeed, it is hard to think of another region of the world that suffered more collateral damage from Washington’s newfound preoccupation with protecting the homeland from terrorists and bringing democracy to the Middle East by force if necessary.

 

After 9/11, Latin America ceased to matter to Washington. This point was powerfully underscored by Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, which upset many at home and abroad by making not a single reference to Latin America and its many social and political problems, even as the president touted new health initiatives for Africa. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in the 2004 presidential race, chastised Bush for “not being a good neighbour” to Latin America. Bush’s critics in Latin America were decidedly less kind. “Apparently, to the Bush administration, the struggle against AIDS in Africa is more important than the poverty and resultant destabilisation currently affecting its neighbours and natural partners,” commented the conservative Colombian newspaper El País on 31 January 2003.

 

An aborted immigration agreement with Mexico was the most immediate and obvious casualty of the new US foreign-policy priorities articulated in the wake of 9/11. As the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress grew increasingly concerned about the threat to national security posed by so-called “porous borders”, immigration reform began to languish. Rising xenophobia among the US public further diminished the prospect for immigration-law reform. The birth of the “Minuteman Project”, the volunteer militia dedicated to patrolling US borders, whose members have been characterised by Bush as “vigilantes” and by Mexican officials as “immigration hunters”, attests to the virulent anti-immigrant sentiment that arose in post-9/11 America. The Bush administration’s bill for comprehensive immigration reform combined steps to tighten border security with a path to US citizenship for millions of illegal Latin American immigrants. It also expanded existing guest workers’ programmes for migrant labour from Mexico and Central America. But by the time the bill reached the US Congress in June 2007, it was dead on arrival.

 

Much to the chagrin of the Latin Americans, the United States redirected its foreign aid and diplomatic resources towards counter-insurgency, in keeping with the demands of the global war on terror. The existing “Plan Colombia”, originally conceived to combat the flow of illicit of drugs, was transformed into a broader anti-terrorism campaign targeting Colombian left-wing guerrillas. More upsetting to the Latin Americans, however, was watching the United States wage a war on terror whose tactics eerily mirrored the very ones it had denounced during the 1970s and 1980s when many Latin American governments were eradicating left-wing terrorist gangs and dissident groups: torture, death squads, and shabby judicial procedures. The fact that many of the human-rights violations perpetrated by the United States took place on Latin American soil (at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre in Cuba) only deepened regional disgust at US foreign policy. According to a Zogby International poll of September 2005, 86 per cent of Latin American leaders in the public and private sectors, mass media and educational fields disapprove of US leadership around the world.

 

More disturbing still was the Bush administration’s coercive tactics when pressuring Latin American governments to support the war in Iraq, the main theatre of operations in the global war on terror. Perhaps reflecting the long history of US military interventions in Latin America, most governments there opposed the 2003 US occupation of Iraq (only seven out of thirty-four supported it). Those that supported the war—Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Colombia—were either in the midst of sensitive trade negotiations with the United States, or huge recipients of US military aid, and thus not in a position to oppose the United States. (Ironically, all bar Colombia had themselves suffered US military occupation during Woodrow Wilson’s “democratic crusade”.) Among those which opposed the war, the United States reserved its most vindictive treatment for Mexico and Chile, two countries that dared to cast a vote at the UN Security Council against authorising an attack on Iraq.

 

The Bush administration simply expected presidents Vicente Fox of Mexico and Ricardo Lagos of Chile to go along with Washington at the United Nations. When both resisted, mainly because of the overwhelming anti-war sentiment of their respective publics, the Bush administration reacted furiously, blatantly ignoring the standing of Chile and Mexico as sovereign members of the international community. In February 2003, Tony Garza, the US ambassador to Mexico, warned that Washington would not take kindly to a UN vote against the United States. More ominously, a month later Bush himself said a negative vote from Mexico “might result in future discipline”, although he stopped short of specifying reprisals. These reactions prompted Mexico’s UN representative, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, to complain that Washington’s heavy-handed arm-twisting reflected a view of Mexico as being “America’s backyard”. This resulted in his dismissal at the demand of US Secretary of State Colin Powell. US officials told Chile that its application for a free-trade agreement with the United States would be postponed indefinitely (the agreement was eventually signed in 2004). 

Reluctant to Help 

The cost of Washington’s post-9/11 lack of interest in Latin America can also be measured in the economic consequences for the region, which were nothing short of devastating. As the Bush administration readied itself for war in Iraq, several South American nations began to slide towards financial crisis. Argentina endured the most harrowing experience. The most visible sign of its economic crisis was the collapse of the banking system, which meant the loss of savings and pensions for many ordinary Argentineans, a key factor in the creation of one and a half million “new” poor in just six months. Just as dramatic was the political toll of the economic meltdown: between October 2000 and August 2002, Argentina went through five presidents and five economy ministers, many of the departures forced by rioting in the streets of major Argentine cities. Remarkably, democratic order was preserved.

 

Completely oblivious to the potential political ramifications of South America’s economic crisis for the region’s fragile democracies, to say nothing of Washington’s own contribution to its making, the Bush administration responded with shocking indifference. Washington believed that the crisis was a phenomenon confined to Argentina and that the country had to hit rock bottom before anything could be done to remedy the situation. As US Treasury Secretary Paul O’ Neill put it, the United States “would not play the role of economic fire chief”. In a direct repudiation of the practices of the Clinton administration, and of his predecessor at the Treasury Department, Robert Rubin, who had arranged large loans for Mexico and South Korea during the 1990s, O’Neil announced that there would be “no large bailouts, no bilateral assistance”. The rationale behind Washington’s new tough stance was, as O’Neill put it, that countries “had to own their policies”. In other words, Argentina was responsible for its own economic misfortune and it deserved to be taught a lesson.

 

Once the crisis hit Brazil, an important trading partner of the United States and the primary recipient of US investment in South America, Washington began to take action. But even then, Bush administration officials doubted there was much they could do. In August 2002, in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press television programme to announce an upcoming trip to Brasilia to discuss ways of containing the economic crisis, O’Neill pointedly questioned the wisdom of extending financial assistance to Brazil either through the Treasury Department or the International Monetary Fund (IMF); he suggested that “any new money would likely be stolen by corrupt officials and end up in some Swiss account”. The comment sparked diplomatic outrage in Brazil, prompting the Brazilian foreign minister to summon the US ambassador to Brazil to explain O’Neill’s remarks. It also sent panic through domestic and international financial markets, causing a slide of 5 per cent in the Brazilian currency the day after O’Neill’s NBC appearance. O’Neill’s comments undercut the purpose of his visit to Brazil by inflaming anti-American sentiment. “O’Neill: Brazil does not want you here,” was the headline in a Brazilian financial publication in the week of the secretary’s visit.

 

There was considerable hypocrisy in Washington’s cold response to the South American economic crisis. For one thing, this stance appeared to apply only to South America, since Washington continued to provide financial assistance to other countries on the brink of financial chaos, such as Turkey, whose bloated public sector and unstable banks, to say nothing of widespread political corruption and lack of accountability, make the average South American nation appear a model of economic rectitude. But such beneficiaries were crucial to the advancing of US interests abroad, especially the war on terror. In any case, Washington’s explanation for refusing to help the Latin Americans—its accusations of corruption and incompetence—hardly applied to the countries in most need of assistance. Uruguay is probably the least corrupt country in all of Latin America, its economy one of the most stable, and its democracy one of the most developed. Brazil, under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, had been a model of fiscal discipline and economic reform, a point O’Neill was forced to concede upon arriving there by noting that under Cardoso, “Brazil has the right economic policies in place to maintain stability.”

 

Just prior to its economic collapse, Argentina had a reputation as the paradigm of the efficacy of the “Washington Consensus”, the package of neo-liberal economic reforms that the US Treasury Department and international finance organisations such as the World Bank and the IMF have been pushing in Latin America since the early 1990s. The consensus emphasises the privatisation of state-owned enterprises, fiscal austerity, and the liberalisation of trade by ending the protection of local industries from foreign competition. The decade before the economic crash, Washington politicians and the heads of the IMF and the World Bank had been falling over one another in praising Argentina as the most disciplined example of economic liberalisation in Latin America, if not the entire developing world, because of the speed and tenacity with which it had moved to dismantle much of the state-owned economy and open its borders to international corporations.

 

Befitting its status as the main showcase of the Washington Consensus, Argentina was showered with financial assistance. Indeed, the IMF did not stop throwing money at Argentina until disaster seemed imminent in late 2001. Ironically, financial assistance then might have made a difference; at the very least it would have softened the pain. Moreover, officials at the US Treasury Department, the IMF and the World Bank had known as early as 1998 that Argentina was on an irreversible course towards a massive economic crisis because of uncontrolled spending, huge deficits and escalating foreign debt. Yet they were unwilling to criticise the country for failing to rein in spending, fight corruption, and strengthen its tax-collection capacity as this would have exposed the flaws of their star pupil. Nonetheless, O’Neill felt comfortable in chiding the Argentines for not doing their homework.

 

In the end, in August 2002, the US Federal Reserve granted Uruguay an emergency $1.5 billion bridge loan to keep its banks afloat until further aid from international financial institutions was available, and supported an unprecedented $30 billion loan package for Brazil. Washington was less forgiving with Argentina, its former economic model. Before financial assistance was secured from the IMF in the form of a $12 billion loan, Argentina was forced to pass a draconian law that guaranteed zero deficits, a tall order for any country to live by—and a questionable economic policy. There was no carrot attached to the stick. The United States did not offer Argentina the kind of political backing that would have helped restore the confidence of international investors, such as Clinton did in 1995 by promising Mexico that the United States would not let its economy collapse. Nor did the United States offer any special access for Argentine products to the US market or even trade credits. Argentina seemed like the ideal laboratory for this experiment in economic “tough love” since the risks to the United States were perceived to be minimal. Unlike Mexico, Argentina does not share a border with the United States; nor is it an important trading partner like Brazil.

 

This harsh treatment does much to explain the animosity that Argentines feel towards the United States. A 2005 poll by the firm GlobeScan found after surveying residents in twenty-one countries that the Argentines had the darkest view of US international influence, with 65 per cent of respondents labelling it “mainly negative”. Little wonder that when Bush set foot in Buenos Aires in 2005, on his way to inaugurate the Summit of the Americas at Mar de Plata, the Argentine public let him know how they felt about him and the United States. Small bombs were tossed at US banks and chain stores, US flags were burned, and thousands joined former soccer star–turned–political commentator Diego Maradona in massive popular protests that contributed mightily to the summit’s failure. 

Lip Service to Democracy 

On 5 March 2007, in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., President Bush finally unveiled a comprehensive strategy to promote democracy and economic growth in Latin America. The administration’s signature programme to advance democracy and the rule of law worldwide, the Millennium Challenge Account, which encourages democratic reform in exchange for foreign aid, largely excludes Latin America because it is targeted at desperately poor countries without access to private capital. In announcing his new initiative, Bush declared himself to be “scandalised” by increasing levels of poverty in Latin America, which he feared “would cause some people to question the value of democracy”. He went on to articulate a comprehensive plan for economic development and democracy in Latin America anchored upon: (1) building government institutions that are fair, effective and free of corruption; (2) meeting basic needs like education, healthcare and housing; and (3) maintaining economies that make it possible for workers to provide for their families and rise in society. To launch the programme, he pledged $75 million to help Latin Americans learn English and $385 million for housing and medical assistance.

 

Its lateness and economic paltriness aside, there was no shortage of cynicism in Bush’s strategy. The basic rationale for the policy—that poverty in Latin America could sap people’s faith in democracy—had an especially hollow ring to it considering that the Bush administration had basically stayed on the sidelines as democracy came under threat from a wrenching economic crisis which sent millions into poverty and despair. The disingenuous nature of the proposal was indicated in its timing: it followed testimony in the US Congress from seasoned observers such as Peter Hakim, director of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, that “relations between the United States and Latin America have reached their lowest point since the end of the Cold War”.⁴ The new strategy was more a public-relations exercise than a genuine attempt to tackle Latin America’s problems. The strategy also followed the collapse of negotiations over the FTAA, which Bush had hoped would be his big Latin American legacy, and was announced just before his 2007 tour of Latin America. Certainly, Bush did not wish to arrive in Latin America empty handed.

 

On the flip side, the new strategy represented a welcome respite from what had passed for democracy promotion in Latin America prior to 2007. For a president who took such pride in espousing a muscular pro-democracy foreign policy, Bush’s record on strengthening democracy and the rule of law in Latin America was dismal. His efforts in this regard had been focused on attacking the Chávez government, which was repeatedly depicted as the biggest threat to democracy in the region. In January 2005, at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice characterised Chávez as “a negative force” who governs in an “illiberal way”. The Bush administration also tried to persuade, with little success, the Organisation of American States (OAS) to form an ad hoc committee to monitor the state of Latin American democracy, which many of the organisation’s members perceived as a thinly disguised attempt by Washington to use the multilateral body to harass Venezuela.

 

To be sure, Chávez gave the Bush administration plenty of ammunition with which to depict Venezuela as an “illiberal” regime and to argue that Chávez’s self-described “Bolivarian” revolution had jeopardised democracy. Since coming to power in 1998 through free elections, having previously failed to gain control of Venezuela via a military coup in 1992, Chávez has “refashioned authoritarianism for a democratic age”.⁵ He has turned the Venezuelan legislature and the Supreme Court into puppets of his government (the result of changes to the Venezuelan constitution that eliminated the Senate and expanded the size of the Supreme Court), and has showed no qualms in muzzling the media into outright submission and in repressing many of his enemies in civil society, including organised labour. He has nationalised the country’s main industries and businesses (especially those linked to the all-important oil sector) and treated their budgets as if they were his own personal bank account.

 

Yet in criticising Chávez for his illiberal practices, the Bush administration was blissfully oblivious to its own illiberal behaviour towards the Venezuelan leader. Much has been said about the presumed US participation in the coup attempt to oust Chávez on 12 April 2002, when he was captured by military officers working in tandem with a variety of opposition groups and held captive for a few days. The Bush administration has strongly denied any direct involvement in this plot, a claim supported by an investigation by the US State Department’s Office of the Inspector General, which found “nothing to indicate that U.S. assistance programs in Venezuela, including those funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), were inconsistent with U.S. law or policy”, or that US support for individuals and organisations in Venezuela “directly contributed, or was intended to contribute,” to the coup.⁶

 

But it was the Bush administration’s response to the coup rather than any involvement in it that showed Washington’s true colours when it came to democracy promotion in Latin America. It robbed Washington of any moral authority to denounce Chávez or to assume the role of defender of democracy in the continent. The attack on Venezuela’s democratically elected government drew no overt criticism from the Bush administration. Indeed, for a brief but highly symbolic moment, the events of April 2002 echoed the days when US officials did not particularly care whether Latin American political leaders were democrats or despots, provided they did not threaten US interests. “A victory for democracy,” was the White House’s premature response to Chávez’s ouster. Only once it had become clear that a military coup had in fact occurred in Venezuela, and that the entire OAS bar the United States had condemned it, did Secretary of State Colin Powell issue a corrective statement noting that “defending democracy by undemocratic means destroys democracy”.

 

Interestingly, in condemning the coup, the Latin American leaders invoked the Inter-American Democratic Charter, approved by the OAS in September 2001, which obliges all the organisation’s members to support democracy across the Americas, especially when a democratically elected government is under attack by the military, a terrorist organisation, or any other anti-democratic force. Ironically, the United States, which has repeatedly accused Venezuela of violating this charter, was in fact the first country to do so with its enthusiastic support for the anti-Chávez coup.

 

While busy attacking Chávez, the Bush administration ignored equally delinquent leaders in the region, thereby giving the impression that the call to strengthen democracy and the rule of law applied only to its enemies and that its friends would be given a free pass. The Bush administration conveniently shelved its defence of democracy whenever other interests appeared on the horizon, as was the case with Ecuador in 2005. President Lucio Edwin Gutiérrez twice shut down the Supreme Court with nary a complaint from Washington. Like Chávez, Gutiérrez had first risen to political prominence courtesy of a failed military coup (in 1998). Unlike Chávez, however, Gutiérrez jettisoned the populist agenda and the support of left-wing parties that later saw him elected to office (in November 2002). Once the leader of Ecuador, he became a staunch Washington ally by supporting the FTAA and the neo-liberal economic prescriptions of the Washington Consensus.

 

Washington hit another disappointing note for democracy when it sought to undermine Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the Brazilian presidential election campaign of 2002. Hoping to scare the Brazilian electorate, and thwart the progress of left-wing regimes across Latin America, Bush officials, led by Treasury Secretary O’Neill, pointedly questioned Lula’s capacity to govern. The Republican leadership in the US Congress sought to paint Lula as a “closet communist”. On 24 October 2002, just after Lula’s victory, Henry J. Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, wrote a letter to the White House urging his isolation, warning that “Lula is a dangerous pro-Castro radical posing as a moderate”. Right-wing US groups cautioned that Lula might reactivate Brazil’s nuclear programme and form a hostile alliance with Cuba and Venezuela.

 

Ironically, few politicians have done more to advance democracy than Lula, who cut his teeth as a democratic reformer while a trade unionist and community organiser under Brazil’s military regime in the late 1970s. More ironic still is that the Bush administration ended up benefiting tremendously from Lula’s rise to power in Latin America’s largest democracy. His moderate policies and conciliatory attitude towards the United States have served as a powerful counterweight to the radicalism and hostility purveyed by the likes of Chávez. 

Looking Ahead 

Whether a new administration in Washington will seek to reverse Latin America’s marginalisation in US foreign policy is uncertain. With much of the foreign-policy oxygen absorbed by ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the presidential contenders in the 2008 campaign have revealed few specifics about their plans for Latin America. Of the two contenders for the US presidency, Republican senator John McCain of Arizona and Democratic senator Barack Obama of Illinois, it is the latter who has expressed the most encouraging ideas. Obama’s Latin America policy was announced in a speech delivered in Miami on 23 March 2008. It calls for a major diplomatic initiative in Latin America to promote freedom as Franklin D. Roosevelt described it: political freedom, by advancing democracy and the rule of law; freedom from want, by combating poverty, hunger, health problems, and global warming; and freedom from fear, by addressing common threats like drug-trafficking, transnational crime, and terrorism.

 

How any of this is to be accomplished, however, remained unclear in Obama’s speech, but in the full Latin American plan released by his campaign he pledged to reinstate the position of US “Special Envoy to Latin America” (discontinued by the Bush administration in 2004) to “bring senior-level attention to hemispheric matters that might otherwise get buried in the normal diplomatic process”. This person would have “a direct line to the president and would serve as a focal point for policy making in the White House as well as be available to Latin American leaders”.⁷

 

Although Obama made pointed reference to five decades of failed US policies in Cuba, he stopped short of calling for an end to the US economic embargo on the Castro regime. Many observers believe that the embargo, which remains popular with Cuban Americans, has had the unintended consequence of allowing Castro to remain in power by boosting his anti-US credentials with ordinary Cubans.

 

There was very little in Obama’s speech about how to “fix” the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the linchpin of economic relations between the United States and Mexico, which he has criticised on the campaign trail for being unfair both to American and Mexican workers.

 

Regrettably, his approach to tackling the issue of narco-trafficking, arguably the biggest threat to political stability and the rule of law in Latin America today, seems like business as usual. There was passing reference in Obama’s speech to the Mérida Initiative, the Bush administration’s latest attempt to engage the Latin Americans in the war on drugs. Announced in October 2007, the Mérida Initiative, which Obama appears to endorse, addresses increasing violence along the US–Mexican border fuelled by feuding gangs, which in 2006 left more than two thousand people dead, including gangsters, police officers, government officials, soldiers, journalists and innocent bystanders. The initiative allocates $1.4 billion in the next five years ($500 million in 2008) in aid to Mexico and Central America to fight drug dealers by allowing for the purchase of transport planes, scanning equipment at the border, new communication systems, and training and technical advice for the Mexican police.

 

To highlight its flaws, critics of the Mérida Initiative have mocked it as “Plan Mexico” (after Plan Colombia). Plan Colombia, in which some $5 billion has been spent since 1999, has failed to eradicate political violence in Colombia, let alone slow the flow of illicit drugs into the United States. Indeed, the only apparent result of Plan Colombia is to shift illicit drug activity from Colombia to Mexico. Neither plan, critics complain, gets to the heart of the matter: police corruption across Latin America, the desperate economic conditions that drive many Latin Americans into the drugs trade, and the seemingly insatiable appetite for illicit drugs in the United States.

 

Obama, like the rest of the US political class, can afford the luxury of being elusive about Latin America. Even after taking into account the horrors of the illicit drugs trade and its nefarious social consequences, the fact remains that Latin America is one of the least worrying parts of the world for the United States. Therein resides the ironic root cause of Latin America’s marginalisation in US foreign policy. Latin America appears “too good” for its own sake in lacking the things that make Washington politicians sit up and pay attention to the developing world: humanitarian catastrophes in the form of famines or vicious civil wars, as in Africa; autocratic regimes with weapons of mass destruction, such as North Korea; and religious zealots willing to blow themselves up for their cause, as in many parts of the Middle East. Rather than rewarding the Latin Americans for their good behaviour, Washington seems inclined to punish them with indifference and neglect.

 

 

Endnotes

 

 

1. Jorge G. Castañeda, “The Forgotten Relationship”, Foreign Affairs 82, no. 3 (May/June 2003).

 

2. Hugo Chávez’s rise to power in Venezuela (1998) was followed by that of Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil (2002), Nestor Kirchner in Argentina (2003), Tabaré Vásquez in Uruguay (2004), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2005), Michelle Bachelet in Chile (2006), Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (2007), and Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2007).

 

3. See Lawrence F. Kaplan, “Regime Change”, New Republic, 3 March 2003, p. 21.

 

4. Peter Hakim, “US Policy towards Latin America” (statement to the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs), Washington, D.C., 1 March 2025 [http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/hak030107.htm].

 

5. Javier Corrales, “Hugo Boss”, Foreign Policy (January/February 2006), p. 33.

 

6. US State Department, Office of the Inspector General, “A Review of US Policy toward Venezuela, November 2001–April 2002”, Report Number 02-OIG-003, Washington, D.C., July 2002, p. 3.

 

7. Obama ’08, “Renewing US Leadership in the Americas” [http://obama.3cdn.net/85c9392c81570937d6_lqomvygpq.pdf].