Asia Times Online World on Fire by Amy Chua Review by Sreeram Chaulia Can two seemingly unrelated issues like globalization and violent ethnonationalism actually have a priori linkages? Yale University professor Amy Chua's new book takes the globalization debate into uncharted territory via myriad comparative examples to show the explosive collision between free market democracy and ethnic hatred. Chua begins with the murder of her Chinese Filipina aunt in Manila, an expression of the extreme frustration and anger of the indigenous majority towards Chinese "outsiders" who dominate key sectors of the Philippines' increasingly globalized economy. Plutocrats of Chinese descent, whose fortunes have ballooned due to free market economic policies, appear "to the vast majority of Filipinos as exploiters, as foreign intruders, their wealth inexplicable, their superiority intolerable". (p 4) The same story is being replayed in many other parts of Southeast Asia. In Burma's new liberalized economy, Sino-Burmese minorities have been transformed into a garishly prosperous business community that monopolizes the gem, teak wood and light consumer industries. "Today, ordinary Burmans speak of 'the Chinese invasion' or 'recolonization by the Chinese'." Vietnam's post-1988 pro-market reforms have also marked the resurgence of Chinese commercial dominance at the expense of the impoverished locals. Here too, there is a bitter outcry against "the Chinese stranglehold". In Thailand, all but three of the most powerful business groups are owned by Thai Chinese. In Malaysia, Chinese minorities comprise a third of the population but account for 70 percent of the country's market capitalization. In Indonesia, which has witnessed bloody anti-Chinese riots, the 3 percent Chinese minority controls 70 percent of the private economy. Throughout the region, "there festers among the indigenous majorities deep anti-Chinese resentment, rooted not just in poverty but feelings of envy, insecurity and exploitation". (p 47) Moving to South America, Chua finds the same pattern of a "market-dominant minority" from outside grabbing the lion's portion of globalization's benefits and stoking ethnonationalist fires. Bolivia's Amerindian majority is largely excluded from the modern economy, while the white capitalists originating from Europe and North America own the most valuable natural resources and the most advanced economic sectors. "Global markets have intensified the economic dominance of Bolivia's white elite over the country's growth-stunted, impoverished indigenous majority." (p 56) In Peru, Guatemala and Ecuador too, Amerindians represent a mass underclass being bossed around by the light-skinned rich. All of Mexico's lucrative corporate sectors are concentrated in the exclusive hands of a small clubby white market-dominant minority. The latifundia feudal land ownership system, dominated by Spanish-blooded families, is booming further with each new round of pro-globalization reforms. Other outsider minorities making hay under the neo-liberal economic order in Latin America include Lebanese, Jewish and Palestinian businessmen, who corner enormous profits in Brazil, Panama, Argentina, Belize and Honduras. All over the region, traditionally soft in ethnic identity assertion, "distinctively ethnic resentment against market-dominant light-skinned elites is on the rise." (p 73) In post-Communist Russia, six out of the seven wealthiest and most powerful oligarchs, wielding mind-boggling political and economic leverage, are Jewish. Owing to the virulent history of Russian anti-Semitism, this racial profile of the nouveau riche has not gone unnoticed. How, it is being asked on the streets, did members of a minuscule "outsider" ethnic minority come to wield unimaginable might since 1991? Chua notes that political anti-Semitism is on the rise, as a majority of ordinary Russians believe "they have been impoverished at the expense of rich Jews." References to "Zioncrats" and "bloodsucking Yids" who hijacked privatization and stole the wealth of the Russian people are commonplace. In southern Africa, English-speaking whites, thanks to the gargantuan head start of colonialism, lord over lucrative industries like gold, platinum, diamond mining, finance, insurance and technology. Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa have market-dominant white minorities that are stretching this historical lead longer due to laissez-faire market conditions. Kenya has an inordinately prosperous, disproportionately skilled white minority that cavorts in colonial fashion in country clubs and golf courses, while the 31 million blacks survive on less than two dollars per day. Indigenous Kenyan market-dominant minorities, the Kikuyu, are seen by the toilers as accomplices of these white "rulers". Nigeria's Ibo community is another indigenous market-dominant minority that dominates key sectors and is enriching itself in the globalized economy due to its long experience of manipulating markets. The Bamileke of Cameroon and the Susu of Guinea are other indigenous minorities subject to widespread resentment by the masses. Besides whites, the other non-indigenous market dominant minorities in Africa are Indian and Lebanese merchants. Indian Kenyans, less than 2 percent of the population, "benefit extremely disproportionately from globalization and market liberalization because of their international connections" and access to capital. (p 113) Lebanese market dominance in Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Ghana and Liberia is astounding, encompassing fields like diamonds and gold, finance, retail, construction and real estate. Lebanese entrepreneurs, together with a handful of native politicians and foreign investors, are the principal beneficiaries of globalization in West Africa. Chua's second part of the thesis relates to raw majoritarian democracy which, when added to markets, cooks a recipe for upheaval and ethnic conflagration. "As markets enrich the market-dominant minority, democratization increases the political voice and power of the frustrated majority." (p 124) The violence directed at Zimbabwe's white farmers and their black farmhands is "an anarchy born of democracy", ie Robert Mugabe's vote hankering and reduction of democracy to bare minimum electoral connotation. Nationalization of "foreign-owned property" is the result of this sort of lopsided democracy that is being imposed on the third world. Confiscations and expropriations in developing countries have explicitly and exclusively targeted assets and industries of the hated market-dominant minorities, giving an outlet to the popular frustration and vengeance demanded by the majority population. Demagogues promising to restore the honor and possessions of the majority are supported with wild enthusiasm, be it in post-Suharto Indonesia, which embarked on an anti-Chinese business pogrom, or Putin's Russia, which is turning on Jewish media moguls. Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela by attacking "rotten white elites", and the mysterious right-wing coup against him in April 2002 failed because the new leadership excluded the Pardos majority from power entirely. To preempt confiscations, market-dominant minorities sometimes enter into symbiotic alliances with corrupt indigenous politicians, better known as crony capitalism. Sierra Leone under Siaka Stevens saw Lebanese magnate Jamil Mohammed become a shadow "co-president", with "global markets generally approving of these arrangements". (p 150) Kenya's Daniel Arap Moi concluded a network of deals with a coterie of Indian businessmen in 1978. Suharto's Chinese-friendly autocracy in Indonesia was similarly a backlash by market-dominant minorities after Sukarno's nationalizations. Marcos' crony capitalist empire with the Chinese business community in Philippines was a payback for Ramon Magsaysay's anti-Chinese drive of the fifties. Some market-dominant minorities do not rest at crony capitalism or rent seeking and seize power directly. Apartheid South Africa and the whole of Latin America bear testimony. The most horrific outcome of free market democracy in the face of a market-dominant minority is government-sponsored attempts to "cleanse" the outsiders. Non-Russian former Soviet Republics cleansed and drove out 2 million ethnic Russians after 1991. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus upped anti-Jewish violence and expelled nearly 1 million "shylocks" in 1999. Ethiopia deported 50,000 Eritrean-Ethiopians who used to dominate commerce in the last few years. An estimated 110,000 Chinese families fled Indonesia around the same period. Hutu Power advocates in Rwanda called for "majority rule" and "democratic revolution," only to mastermind a bloodcurdling genocide against Tutsi "invaders" in 1994. In the Balkans, Croat and Slovene minorities that were disproportionately prosperous vis-a-vis the more populous Serbs faced the deadly fate of mass expulsions and genocidal violence. Extending the theory of market-dominant minorities beyond the confines of the nation-state, Chua argues that in the Middle East as a region, "globalization has wildly disproportionately benefited an 'outsider'- Israeli Jews - fuelling ethnic resentment and hatred among a massive Arab population that considers itself the 'indigenous' true owner of the land". (p 211) Besides cultural and historical enmities, the Middle East is a conflict between 221 million, largely poor Arabs, against Israel's starkly prosperous 5.2 million Jews. Arab squalor and mass frustration runs headlong into Israel's highly educated, skilled and Westernized Jews. That is why "one often hears half-admiring, half-contemptuous grumblings about Jewish wealth, greed and moneymaking tendencies" among common Arabs. (p 222) Rapid democratization of the Arab states, being pushed by the US government as a cure-all, will exacerbate ethnonationalist hatred for the market-dominant Jews and fuel even greater bloodshed. Chua's piece de resistance is the idea that "America today has become the world's market-dominant minority." The principal beneficiary of globalization and spread of free markets, the United States, has attained heights of global economic power that are wildly disproportionate to its tiny numbers. "Our extraordinary market dominance, our global invincibility have earned the envy, fear and resentment of much of the rest of the world." (p 231) American products, companies, investors, entertainment, cuisine and culture are viewed as "outsider" threats to legitimate "indigenous" society all over the third world. Anti-Americanism is a form of "frustration heightened by access to images and information about how much better Americans live"/ (p 246) Anti-American investor confiscations and expulsions have occurred in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before the era of globalization, but countries daring to expropriate American property today risk serious consequences, a fact that heightens suppressed fury. The September 11, 2001 terror attacks, reminds Chua, prompted "momentary jubilation of millions of poor and exploited people around the world", not just in Muslim countries. It was a reflection of the crushing humiliation perceived to be inflicted by the US on the Third World. Chua concludes with recommendations to prevent ethnic hatred from devouring the globalizing South. Educational reform and equalization of opportunities for poor indigenous-blooded majorities are imperative. Strong redistributive measures - progressive taxation, social security, unemployment insurance, antitrust regulation, affirmative action, dispersed capital market ownership - need to be implemented in Asia, Africa and South America. The precedent of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's ethnic quotas for bumiputra Malays could be worth emulating. Market-dominant minorities themselves should eliminate corrupt and illicit business practices that enrage the majority community, and invest in the local economies in which they thrive. Corporate responsibility by Indian firms in East Africa and Roman Abramovich in Russia are current instances of softening the ethnic fault lines that have been opened by global markets. Washington "should not promote unrestrained, overnight majority rule" by shipping out ballot boxes for national elections in countries that have market-dominant minority problems. It must also improve its dismal foreign aid record (the US has the lowest aid budget among advanced economies, viz 0.1 percent of GDP). Chua fails to add that the vice-like grip of the United States on global financial institutions is a major source of anti-Americanism that also needs restructuring. For those countries that ill-fit her model, Chua has an escape clause disclaimer to the thesis that free market democracy, as is being vigorously exported by globalization advocates, aggravates ethnic imbalances and distrust in the developing world. "This book is not proposing a universal theory applicable to every developing country." (p 15) She cautions against misappropriating her thesis to cases that are exceptions and outliers. As a result, she leaves scant room for disagreement or criticism. Marxists will dislike this book since it complicates the simplistic class struggle blueprint by introducing the ethnicity card. Thomas Friedman and other globalization honchos will also dislike it for questioning their core tenets of "trickle down effect" and "lifting all boats". For those not married to ideology, Chua's sui generis theory will make a lot of sense. World on Fire: How exporting free market democracy breeds ethnic hatred and global instability by Amy Chua, Doubleday, New York, 2003. ISBN: 0-385-50302-4. Price: US$26. 340 Pages

The Miami Herald Posted on Fri, Jun. 06, 2003 BY MARIKA LYNCH mlynch@herald.com

The Republic of Katakana is in trouble: The economy is in the dumps, residents are becoming radical and the government has begun to crack down on its own people.

Meanwhile, the nation's neighbors fear Katakana's downward spiral could affect their stability.

The scenario has played out around the world. But Thursday, leaders from 14 Latin American, Caribbean and African nations took on the problems of the imaginary republic in an exercise on democracy building. They posed as the country's neighbors, and explored how international organizations could intervene to avoid a regional crisis.

The exercise was part of a two-day conference at the Hyatt Regency in Coral Gables held by the Community of Democracies, a 3-year-old global forum of nations committed to strengthening democracy. Participants also shared ideas on fighting corruption, holding elections and strengthening political parties.

''The concept is to take a region, the Western Hemisphere and Africa, and bring them together to share best practices in the furtherance of democracy,'' said Paula Dobriansky, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs and chairwoman of the event. ``When countries are going forward and trying to assist another in their region, they can only benefit from knowing what works.''

IN EL SALVADOR

President Francisco Flores of El Salvador addressed the conference and told of his country's path from civil war to becoming one of the few countries in Latin America to establish a positive economic growth trend.

''After so many years of violence, El Salvador became synonymous with strife,'' he said. ``The El Salvador of 2003 is a radically different country.''

The country's turnaround, he said, came about because of a strong constitution that respected the political beliefs of all parties, the privatization of state enterprises, and changes to the budget to include more social programs.

''El Salvador found the path to defeat poverty and that path is democracy,'' Flores said.

The leaders also contemplated the use of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, the backbone of the Organization of American States.

The charter states how countries can intervene when a neighboring nation has a constitutional crisis and sets out a list of steps, from sending a delegation to evaluate the situation to ultimately suspending the nation from the OAS.

EXECUTIVE POWER PLAY

Created in 2001, the document can help nations move forward when a president oversteps his power, said Humberto de la Calle, former vice president of Colombia and permanent representative to the OAS.

''The problem of yesteryear was the coup d'état, that was 10 or 15 years ago. Now the same executive power is the one that ruptures the constitution,'' de la Calle, a speaker at the conference, said in an interview.

The charter has been used twice: in Venezuela, where the OAS brokered a compromise between opposition leaders and President Hugo Chávez to hold a referendum on his rule; and in Haiti, where OAS mediators haven't been able to bring the government and critics to an agreement on new legislative elections.

The U.S.-sponsored conference includes Jamaica, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Cape Verde, Mali, Botswana, Senegal, Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique.

By Marcella Sanchez Subscribe to The Post Special to <a href=www.washingtonpost.com>washingtonpost.com Thursday, June 5, 2003; 10:00 PM

After winning an election in which the other candidate simply didn't show up, Nestor C. Kirchner wasted no time last week asserting his new powers as president of Argentina. Barely three days into his term, he forced the resignation of at least half of the military high command by naming loyal but low-ranking generals to head the armed forces.

It was a dramatic and unparalleled action that seemed likely to open old wounds in a country already in need of invasive surgery to repair massive economic and political ills. And it left many here scratching their heads. With an economy that contracted almost 11 percent last year, reining in the military isn't the highest priority, especially considering that the reputation of Argentina's military has been slowly recovering from the abuses and excesses of the past.

While the rationale for Kirchner's decree was unclear, Washington did not lack opinions about its possible consequences.

Human rights groups promptly welcomed it as an essential move to reaffirm military subordination to civilian authority. They hoped too that ultimately it would lead to the end of impunity for officers responsible for the atrocities of the "dirty war,: which led to the deaths or disappearance of nearly 9,000 Argentines during the 1970s and 1980s.

U.S. military officers and experts, on the other hand, feared it would reverse years of efforts to reform Argentina's armed forces. If those replaced were ousted because they were too close to Kirchner's opponents or because they were too interested in influencing judicial decisions against former military abusers, Kirchner has simply traded one kind of politicization for another. He would be sending military officers the message that cozying up to him will protect their jobs.

Both of those views, however, seem caught up in a distant and less relevant past. Kirchner, a little-known provincial governor from the south, was not seeking break from that past or even bring it back. His speeches last week suggest instead a plan to build a new military for the future. He seems to envision a military with civic roles in ways comparable to those of the U.S. National Guard or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Kirchner arguably faces the most daunting reconstruction task of any Latin American leader. He may be joining the ranks of cash-strapped counterparts who have found in the military the only cheap, quick and obedient institution at hand to help implement urgent development priorities. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez already has tried it. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva plans to try it, too.

While the Bush adminstration has remained mostly silent about Kirchner's action, U.S. officials have spoken out in favor of military involvement in non-military activities for more than a decade, particularly encouraging increased roles in fighting drug trafficking.

Even after launching its global war on terrorism, Washington has continued, and in some instances increased funding for, the U.S. Southern Command's participation in joint civic operations with Latin American counterparts to build schools and roads, and provide health care and other services. Locals often view such programs suspiciously, yet some Latin American governments may now integrate them into comprehensive development strategies.

This would reverse a trend of the past decade. The end of dictatorships and internal conflict in several Latin American countries in the 1980s and 1990s led democratic governments to marginalize and strip the ranks and budgets of their militaries. Add to that the current economic woes and present day military leaders would only be too glad to take new orders--even orders not exactly in line with their traditional missions--as a new meal ticket.

Such transitions into traditionally civilian government functions are not without risk. Those who applauded Kirchner's move as progressive, or criticized it for politicizing the armed forces, would probably agree that a plan to call up military support with no clear strategy to call it off would be troublesome. Soldiers trained to kill are not ideal conscripts for civic duties--duties that, by the way, make them more vulnerable to patronage and corruption.

What's more, drafting them for non-military functions could detract from their primary security mission. Some U.S. military analysts say that is already happening in Venezuela where Chavez, a former army colonel, has practically turned the military into an all-purpose institution at the service of his government, while leaving Venezuela's borders susceptible to incursions by Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries.

In a country with Argentina's history, any proposed change in the role of the military mandates serious public debate, especially at a time when economic woes are likely to make labor unions and private businesses wary of potential jobs and opportunities lost under such an arrangement.

Kirchner has quickly shown that as president, he indeed is commander in chief. But he'll need much more than loyal military leaders to turn his armed forces into an effective, legitimate and progressive tool for his government.

Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash(at symbol)washpost.com.

thetowntalk.com Posted on June 6, 2003

Students wanting to learn about a foreign culture this summer can take advantage of a camp approach to education.

The Spanish Summer Camp 2003 will meet in June for those students interested in learning about the Spanish culture and language. The camp will be held at Scott M. Brame Middle School.

"This is a unique program in that we will show the culture through the eyes of those," who are of Spanish descent said Sara O'Neal, a Spanish teacher at Tioga High School.

O'Neal, a native of Lima, Peru, has lived in central Louisiana for more than 20 years. Several Rapides Parish teachers with Spanish ancestry will also teach the camp, O'Neal said.

The two sessions, limited to students between the ages of 6 to 12, will be held June 9-13 and June 6-20.

In the first week, attendants will be introduced to the culture of several Spanish-speaking countries such as Peru, Columbia, Venezuela and Spain.

"We must emphasis Spain, (which) is the mother country," O'Neal said.

The second week, June 16-20, students will concentrate on Spain and study artifacts and the culture.

"This works well with the Heart of Spain on the way," she said.

Attendants have the option to attend half of a day at $150 per week or a full day at $200. Full time registration is due today.

The camp is opened to half-a-day attendants from 8:30 to noon. Full-day attendants will remain at the school until 2 p.m.

There is a $30 non-refundable registration fee.

For more information about the camp, call O'Neal at 449-8700 or visit the camp Web site.

Carita Jordan: 487-6329;

cjordan@thetowntalk.com

Friday, 6 June 2003, 12:37 pm Press Release: Council on Hemispheric Affairs

www.coha.org Council on Hemispheric Affairs Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western Hemisphere Memorandum to the Press 03.31 6 June 2003

COHA Research Memorandum:

The OAS Meets: A New Latin America Emerges?

• Fallout from the bitter debate over war in Iraq can be expected to play a dominating role at the summit and reshape major relationships among OAS members-if not in the meeting hall, then in the corridors.

• The Kirchner administration makes its first major foreign policy debut, and can be expected to signal whether it plans to follow a predominantly pro-Mercosur or pro-FTAA agenda.

-. The issue of Cuba returns to the agenda and is sure to further divide the assembly.

• Look at the role of Brazil, the region's new grand diva.

On June 8, foreign ministers of the thirty-five members of the Organization of American States will descend upon Santiago, Chile for the annual meeting of that body's General Assembly, a gathering at which delicate diplomacy aimed at patching up, or at least submerging, the disagreements that have divided the hemisphere over the past year can be expected to overshadow the official agenda item of "good governance." Just as the recent G8 summit in France was more a diplomatic pageant than a productive discussion about the state of the world economy, the significance of this OAS meeting will lie not in any concrete product or declaration expected to emerge, but rather in the web of evolving interhemispheric relations showcased there-relations that have been badly fractured of late by issues as diverse as the war on Iraq, the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas and the crackdown on dissidents in Cuba. Equally important, this meeting marks the OAS debut of the administrations of Presidents Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva of Brazil and Néstor Kirchner of Argentina. Thus it can be expected to help set the tone of relations between a growing political grouping of center-left South American leaders led by Lula, with a strong orientation towards multilateralism and progressive social policy, and the unilateralist, free-trading Bush administration, as represented in Santiago by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The OAS Post-Iraq: Tentative Rapprochement?

Clearly, the most sensitive issue being faced by the OAS member states is the same one that dominated the G-8 summit: the aftermath of the unilateral American invasion of Iraq, which was at the time staunchly opposed by many OAS members and universally rejected in public opinion polls throughout the region, including Canada. Diplomatically, U.S. policy was challenged in the UN Security Council by the two Latin American delegations there, Chile and Mexico. However, now that the Bush administration has been somewhat appeased by the sacking of Chile's UN ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdés, who vocally opposed the war, Santiago can expect far more cordiality upon the appearance of the somewhat tarnished Powell in Chile than President Chirac recently received from Bush when the two met in Evián.

For its part, the Lagos administration has made it extremely clear that it wishes to bury any trace of recent disagreements with Washington as soon as possible, almost groveling as it insisted repeatedly that Powell would be most welcome at the OAS gathering-in spite of his probable finagling with intelligence data to justify his charge at the UN that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the Chilean paper El Mercurio went so far as to declare that he would be the "star" of the event; other Chilean diplomatic sources cited in the same conservative paper indicated that Powell's visit to Santiago had been undertaken precisely in order to smooth things over (limar esperezas) following the Iraq fracas.

At the same time, it is highly doubtful that American relations with Mexico, the other Security Council dissident, will be mended quite as rapidly. In the case of Chile, there were economic incentives for the government to humble itself and make amends: namely, the Lagos administration's desire to see the US-Chile free trade agreement, which had already been concluded and initialed by President Bush, sent to Congress for its approval and ratification. In contrast, Mexico and the United States have engaged in a series of trade skirmishes lately over agricultural exports under NAFTA, disputes which have grown steadily more acrimonious and show no signs of being close to resolution. There is also a heavy load of lingering ill-will over the failure to conclude an immigration agreement that would regularize the status of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. and facilitate the issuing of tens of thousands of new visas under a revised "guest worker" program. In general, a malaise of resentment prevails among Mexican opinion makers over the Bush administration's complete (if benign) neglect of Mexican-American relations since September 11, and particularly since the UN votes on Iraq.

All of these unresolved issues make it unlikely that relations in Santiago between Powell and his Mexican counterpart, Foreign Minister Luiz Ernesto Derbez will be particularly warm. This more pessimistic view was underscored by remarks made in comments by Luigi Einaudi, former American diplomat and now assistant secretary-general of the OAS. He suggested that Latin American governments had underestimated the extent to which they had harmed their standing in Washington by opposing the war, and that in fact "it was not possible in Santiago or Mexico City to realize the degree of disappointment of President George Bush" at the perfidy of his hemispheric compatriots.

Argentina and Brazil: New Administrations Make a Hemispheric Debut

Not only will the atmosphere of this summit be one of heightened tensions as a result of the Iraq crisis, there is also a certain air of expectancy as Foreign Ministers Celso Amorim of Brazil and Rafael Bielsa of Argentina make their OAS debuts as the representatives of the newly elected administrations of Presidents da Silva and Kirchner, respectively. While Amorim can be expected to re-articulate the same regionalist and pro-Mercosur agenda that the Lula administration has aggressively promoted over the last six months, Bielsa will be under singular scrutiny; this is one of his first opportunities to articulate the new Argentine administration's foreign policy in a highly visible forum, with the two hemispheric heavyweights, Brazil and the United States, likely aggressively courting him in an effort to line up a valuable ally for their respective causes.

On the one hand, Brasília is hoping for the support of Buenos Aires in its project of regional integration, which entails strengthening and expanding Mercosur and postponing further FTAA negotiations until a united South American position can be reached that will call for U.S. concessions on crucial issues such as agricultural subsidies. Washington, on the other hand, would like to enlist Argentina as a FTAA supporter, a stance that would require Buenos Aires to deprioritize Mercosur, at least in the immediate future. Thus far, the Kirchner administration has made tantalizing promises to both sides. While campaigning, Kirchner declared Argentina's strategic alliance with Brazil to be his main foreign policy priority, and Bielsa has already met with his counterpart Amorim to discuss Mercosur, trade issues and the desired expansion of the UN Security Council, which might make another seat for Latin America available. A date for a meeting between Lula and Kirchner is to be finalized within the next fifteen days. At the same time, Foreign Minister Bielsa assured Powell in a personal conversation that "our work of subregional integration far from excludes continental integration, which we hope to construct on a realistic and harmonious footing . . .[taking] into account the diversity and so the needs of each country."

While until now the Kirchner administration has been able to please everyone, the upcoming summit may well mark the end of its honeymoon period of foreign policy neutrality. When Bielsa meets Powell in Santiago on June 8, and especially after the latter goes on to Buenos Aires to meet President Kirchner in person on June 10, the latter's administration will be forced to tilt its hand, either making commitments to Washington that Brasília will find extremely unpalatable or staking out a more reserved position vis-à-vis the U.S. and committing itself to a regionalist, pro-Brazil agenda. The choice will have momentous repercussions for both Argentina and Latin America as a whole.

Cuba: The Ripple Effects of Repression

Competing with these complex maneuverings will be the recent crackdown in Cuba, where more than seventy-five dissidents were arrested and imprisoned in March and April, and the failure of earlier attempts to craft any hemispheric initiative to condemn these events. Following the arrests, the ambassadors of Canada, Chile and Uruguay presented a declaration to the Permanent Council of the OAS (composed of the ambassadors of all the member states) that expressed "their deep concern for the grave deterioration of the human rights situation in Cuba . . . as evidenced by the arrest and severe sentences for more than seventy-five Cuban citizens who had participated in peaceful political activities." The declaration was supported by the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and most of Central America, but opposed by Brazil, Venezuela and the fifteen members of Caricom; Mexico and Guatemala expressed sympathy for the aims of the resolution but maintained that the Permanent Council was not an appropriate forum in which to address this question because Cuba had no opportunity to defend itself.

Ultimately, the declaration received the support of only sixteen OAS members, and its sponsors were forced to withdraw it on May 20. They declared their intention of submitting it as a pronouncement of the group to the Assembly, though it cannot be considered an official document. Despite the deadlock, further debate on the subject can certainly be expected, and however much Secretary Powell and the Bush administration may wish for the OAS to unite in denouncing recent events in Cuba-which in large measure, they had helped to provoke by instructingU.S. diplomatic personnel in Havana to supply and closely liaise with the dissidents-the adoption of a joint OAS position on the subject is highly unlikely. Brazil, Mexico (the only Latin American country to maintain continuous relations with Cuba) and especially Venezuela will not readily abandon their defense of Cuba in deference to Washington's wishes.

This new wave of diplomatic maneuvering over Cuba is another reminder of the persistent divisiveness of this issue in hemispheric relations. Recently, it has seemed possible that Castro's long isolation, vigilantly enforced from Washington, may be significantly easing up with the emergence of Chávez, Lula and even Kirchner (at whose inauguration Castro was enthusiastically cheered) as supporters of a policy of relaxation toward Havana; the dynamics of the debate over Cuba at the OAS meeting will be crucial in revealing the nature and strength of this possible nascent pro-Castro coalition.

Finally, yet another matter of great import as the OAS assembly unfolds will be the comparison of the Santiago meeting with that of the recently concluded Rio Group in Lima. More and more, Latin American pundits are looking upon the all-Latin Rio nations as forming the basis of a new regional grouping in which the U.S. and Canada will have only observer status, as is the case with the former metropole nations in the Organization of African Unity, and the OAS meeting will be closely looked to as a source of further evidence for or against this theory.

Momentous events over the past six months both inside and outside the hemisphere have engendered a situation in which relations among American states are both particularly tense and remarkably fluid. While recent debates over Iraq and Cuba have provided hints at the foreign policy positions of major Latin American players, much is still to be determined about the emerging contours of hemispheric relations. The upcoming OAS summit should be closely watched as positions are staked out and sides chosen in the explosive debates to come over democratization, multilateralism and trade. Indeed, there is a strong possibility that the OAS will be more fundamentally divided at this meeting than ever before, split between Washington's more compliant free trading clients and an emerging Latin American bloc willing and able to push a very different agenda.

This analysis was prepared by Jessica Leight, research associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Issued 6 June 2003

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being "one of the nation's most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers." For more information, please see our web page at www.coha.org; or contact our Washington offices by phone (202) 216-9261, fax (202) 223-6035, or email coha@coha.org.