One
thing had to dawn on Bush while on a recent seven-day, five country
Latin American tour: the Monroe Doctrine is deader than a doorknob.
Unilaterally
proclaimed by the U.S. in the 19th Century, ostensibly
to keep European competitors out, the doctrine secured domination
of the lands to the south – frequently guaranteed by armed intervention
and U.S. instigated coups – until recently. Now, it is apparent
that not only is that big brother relationship no longer tenable
but that the U.S. is rapidly losing any influence at all in the
region.
If
public opinion polls are an indication, Washington has scant influence
there or respect at all. Much can be ascribed directly to the
Bush Presidency and his Administration’s actions, most especially
the war in Iraq and its policies in the Middle East as a whole.
Further, the “market friendly” neo-liberal economic policies foisted
off on Latin America countries for decades under the rubric “Washington
consensus” – weakening social service programs, privatization,
removal of restrictions on foreign investment and free reign for
“market forces” as against planned development strategy - have
failed to live up to their hype. A
lot more wealth has been going out of the region than what’s coming
in and what is being returned from the “market” or foreign investment
all too often flows into the pockets of formerly entrenched elites,
while economic disparities increase.
Throughout
the region, at a historically breathtaking pace, the peoples in
the south of the Western Hemisphere are electing new leaders and
rejecting the economic policies that have been foisted off on
them by the colossus to the north, in collusion with local elites.
Writing
in the New York Times March 17, novelist Luisa Valenzuela
observed that for the Latin Americans, “The dream of a single-currency
Latin American Union, modeled on the European Union, to create,
insofar as possible, a buffer against the hegemony of the United
States no longer seems so impossible.” At a moment when the Latin
Americans are rejecting the economic dictates from institutions
like the U.S.–dominated International Monetary Fund, moving across
the board for economic independence and regional cooperation,
the Bush Administration has apparently decided to push in the
opposite direction. The continent’s two largest countries, Brazil
and Argentina don’t want bilateral “free trade” agreements with
Washington. Former CIA operative Philip Agee described the Bush
tour as “a mission to lure five countries away from regional economic
integration.” Valenzuela observed that “in Uruguay, all Mr. Bush
seemed to be trying to do was irritate the other governments of
South America by promoting a Free Trade Area of the Americas project
in opposition to Mercosur, the southern common market formed in
1991 by Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and, somewhat later,
Venezuela.”
Furthermore,
the White House can hang up any thought of trying to dictate or
shape the politics of the region – like trying to “isolate” Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez. Such maneuvers simply won’t fly. While
Brazilian President Lula da Silva will meet the U.S. President
at Camp David later this month, he has a state visit to Caracas
slated for next month. Argentine President Kirchner made it clear
to the U.S. President that he has no intention of joining the
anti-Chavez campaign. To add insult to injury, Mexican President
Felipe Calderon, openly broke with the policy of his predecessor
and fellow PAN party member Vicente Fox and opted out of the anti-Chavez
drive. For all the talk about the differences between various
Latin American leaders – and they do exist – nearly all seem to
agree on one thing: no more dictates from el Norte.
Much
is being made of the political differences among the various new
leaders in Latin America. It would be news if there were no differences.
However, the effort to picture the continent as divided between
a group of “moderate” governments on one hand and “radicals” on
the other, widely misses the mark, especially as it is usually
delineated, on the basis of attitudes toward Washington. There
is significant spread in the ideological and political approaches
amongst the new Latin American leadership; that, too, is reflection
of the new independence and it should be obvious by now that efforts
to drive a wedge between two alleged camps is futile. The direction
of history is clear and it is being driven, to a large extent,
not be personalities but by vibrant social movements from below.
On
March 12, the Organization of American States held a meeting on
the “Impact of poverty,” to consider “the role poverty plays in
eroding social cohesion, leading to a lack of security and an
increasingly vulnerable state.” What the conferees came up with
went unmentioned in the media but three days later the OAS press
office reported that Secretary General José Miguel Insulza told
the delegates that “the persistence of inequality and poverty
represents one of the main challenges to development, democratic
governance and security in the hemisphere". "As a result",
he said, "these threats should be confronted with a new multidimensional
perspective that focuses on political, economic and social factors".
There
are approximately 534 million people living in the Latin American/Caribbean
area. Of these, 132 million live on less than $2 a day, and 57
million live on less than $1 a day. The region is also one of
the most unequal regions. According to the World Bank "the
richest one-tenth of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean
earn 48 percent of total income, while the poorest tenth earn
only 1.6 percent".
According
to economist Mark Weisbrot, Latin America's economic growth over
the last 25 years has been “a disaster - the worst long-term growth
failure in more than a hundred years", and “it is easy to
see why candidates promising new economic policies have been elected.
In countries “where the poor get only a few cents out of every
new dollar, growth bypasses the poorest,” the New York Times
observed editorially last May. “Latin America is the world's most
unequal region. That means growth will not reduce poverty unless
Latin American governments redirect it to the poor.” That’s what
the new governments – with the support of massive and effective
social, political and labor movements - are doing. There’s been
quite a bit of success for the policies, most of which have faced
opposition from Washington.
On March 14, Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte derided
Bush for failing to contribute to development in poor countries,
and hailed Chavez` Venezuela as a country "with an overdose
of democracy." “It cannot be possible that
the US Government does anything it pleases in much sensitive areas
such as waging wars, setting international prices, but at the
same time it does not have the strength to convince developed
countries to suppress protectionist barriers,” Duarte said in
a television interview. He added that he would believe in Bush
"when there is technology transfer, when tariff barriers
are lifted and when he stops treating our fellow citizens in a
miserable way when they try to travel to his country."
"What is the Mercosur regulation that is endangered because
of Venezuela?” asked Duarte. “Venezuela has an overdose of democracy,
with one election after the other. It is the only country where
the Constitution provides for a (presidential recall) referendum
in the middle of the presidential term.” The Chavez presidency,
he said "is the result of the Venezuelan historically corrupt
leadership, and all leaderships are the fruit of failed liberalism."
“When
President Bush set out on his five-nation tour of Latin America
on Thursday March 8th he was hoping to obtain support for Washington’s
effort to isolate Venezuela and tighten its stranglehold on Cuba",
wrote Circles Robinson from Havana for Prensa Latina. “However,
once he touched down in Brazil, and later Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala
and Mexico, it became apparent that he is virtually alone on the
issue. Instead, most of the region wants to maintain or increase
ties with Cuba and Venezuela.”
Fidel
Castro’s active participation by telephone in a three-way meeting
with Venezuela’s Chavez and Haiti’s President Rene Preval on Tuesday
dramatically underscored this. "Fidel was very keen to make
sure the trilateral cooperation succeeds", Preval told a
news conference. The three countries agreed to $21 million dollars
of funding from Venezuela to extend medical programs carried out
by Cuban doctors in rural Haiti.
When
the Bush caravansary was announced, it was expected that he would
receive a warm and cooperative reception in the three capitals
presided over by right wing regimes: Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.
However, his reception in the latter turned out to be one of the
more tempestuous. President Calderon not only slipped out of the
anti-Chavez camp, he raised sharp questions about things like
the “Berlin wall” being erected on the border with his country.
He was rebuffed in his effort to delay implementation of the section
of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that will allow
Mexico to be flood with low cost, U.S.-subsidized imported corn
and beans which threaten to drive even more small Mexican farmers
into destitution.
In
Colombia, there were anti-U.S. demonstrations in 20 cities and
riot police attacked protestors at Bogotá’s National University
and several were injured. In Guatemala, workers protested the
recent round-up of some 300 immigrant workers in Massachusetts.
President Oscar Berger, who raised the matter in his welcoming
speech, is reported to have pleaded with Bush for clemency to
avoid their deportation, but the suggestion was ignored.
Meanwhile,
in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez
noted that the Bush Administration has reduced resources available
to fight drug trafficking, because it has been concentrating in
its war in Iraq. In an address to the Regional Summit on Drugs,
Security and Cooperation he charged that that drug trafficking
has increased in the region as a result of Washington’s neglect.
Such uppity talk would have been unthinkable only a few years
ago.
It
appears that the main consensus arriving out of the recent Davos
Switzerland conference of world capitalist movers and shakers
was that 1). the world economic situation is healthy and secure,
however 2). political threats are arising because globalization
is producing economic inequities on a world scale and demands
are increasing for limits on “free trade", arising from working
people seeing most of the increased wealth they create going into
the pockets of the already rich. I
guess little did they suspect that a few weeks later a crisis
in the U.S. home loan industry would shake the first conclusion.
Nonetheless, the poverty and inequities remain and the consequences
were obvious throughout Bush’s Alice in Wonderland trip through
Latin America.
Bush
didn’t go south empty-handed. But his promises were relatively
lame, especially when measured against the benefits the region
is reaping from increased economic integration and mutual aid
agreements, such as with Venezuela and Cuba. According to the
Financial Times, the much-touted ethanol “green fuels”
agreement with Brazil, involving contributions from the two countries
and major international banks amounts to only $25 million. Latin
American commentators are openly deriding the U.S. healthcare
initiative which will involve a U.S. Naval ship calling at the
ports of 11 countries.
One
of the gifts the U.S. President had in this satchel as he embarked
on tour was the promise that the Overseas Private Investment Corporation,
the government agency that guarantees U.S. investment abroad,
would increase funding for cheap mortgages for the working people
of the region. A Brazilian newspaper editorial denounced the move
as “mean,” “anachronistic” and “totally out of touch". But
it would appear to have a logical reason, albeit a neo-colonial
one.
On
March 14, Europe’s largest bank, HSBC Holdings Plc, already smarting
painfully from its involvement with the U.S. subprime mortgage
crisis, announced it still plans to increase lending to high-risk
borrowers in Latin America. Sandy
Flockhart, HSBC´s president for Latin America, said the London-based
company will offer credit cards and other loans to even more individuals
with no borrowing history as part of a plan to produce a greater
share of its revenue in the region. According to the Mexican newspaper
El Universal, the largest banks in Mexico, including subsidiaries
of HSBC, Citigroup Inc. and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA,
“are turning to riskier customers for growth after focusing on
the smaller, wealthier parts of the population since 2003".
Competition in the Mexican subprime market “is heating up, now
that the government has authorized the local unit of Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. and other smaller retailers to enter the consumer
banking business", said the paper. Oh, my God.
The
Mo’Kelly
Report, called the Bush tour “a bad, traveling reality TV
show in which Dubya and “Democracy” are the co-stars". “The
Bush administration is pitching this new program and the world
simply isn’t buying or willing to tune in", the blogger wrote.
BC
Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco,
a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees
of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked
for a healthcare union. Click
here to contact Mr. Bloice. |