Latin America remains pertinent to U.S. foreign policy, deputy says

thresher.rice.edu by David Berry Thresher Staff

Although the present focus of the United States' foreign policy lies in the Middle East, the United States should continue to build strong relations with Latin America, James Derham said Tuesday at a James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy roundtable luncheon.

Derham, a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said he wants to debunk three myths about American involvement in the region.

Contrary to popular opinion, Derham argued, democracy is not faltering in Latin America.

"Every country in the region has made a commitment to free elections," he said, pointing specifically to recent election successes in Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela.

In Mexico, the election of Vicente Fox in 2000 marked the end of a 70-year dominance by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, and Derham called it the first fair election in modern Mexican history. Although recent elections in Argentina and Venezuela have not necessarily yielded candidates preferred by the United States, they have affirmed the place of democracy, Derham said.

Second, recent economic freefall in Argentina is not indicative of the economic health of Latin America, Derham said. Free-market reforms have promoted growth elsewhere in Latin America, particularly in Chile and Mexico.

Blame for Argentina's depression should not lie with international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank but with the incomplete reforms.

"This is not something that works if you do it halfway," he said.

Finally, Derham said United States-Latin America relations are not in a state of neglect, as some in the media have recently argued. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have engendered a profound reorientation in the focus of United States-Latin America relations, he said, but he denied that this reorientation has led to diminished attention to problems in the region.

The United States and Mexico have their disagreements, Derham said. For example, Mexico refused to completely support U.S. efforts to pass a second resolution on Iraq, and the United States will continue to deny Fox's request for amnesty for illegal Mexican immigrants.

However, the possibility of future cooperation on border issues is strong. The United States-Mexico bilateral relationship is among the most important in the world, Derham said.

Although Luis Inacio Lula da Silva is hardly the man the United States would have chosen to lead Brazil, the peaceful, well-conducted elections of 2002 marked yet another affirmation of democracy in the region, Derham said. Lula is the candidate of the leftist Workers' Party, but Derham said he is not as antagonistic to free markets as his background might suggest.

"We try to look not at what he said last week, or even two days ago, but at what he is actually doing," Derham said.

Venezuela is a country that is currently highly politically polarized between supporters and enemies of President Hugo Chavez, he said.

"One of the reasons that Chavez came to power is because despite a fairly strong democratic tradition, there was a feeling that the parties were somehow corrupt," Derham said.

Chavez, elected in a 1998 landslide victory, is an avowed opponent of globalization and an admirer of Fidel Castro.

Persistent strikes among workers in Venezuela's nationalized oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A, have crippled the economy. Derham said a diversified economy is the only long-term solution.

Derham did not comment on rumors in the international media that the United States supports an April 12 coup to topple Chavez and privatize the oil industries.

Derham closed by taking several questions from the audience.

Christophe Venghiattis, a French rice farmer who owns land in Nicaragua, argued that the United States' insistence that Latin America eliminate tariffs is unfair, given U.S. maintenance of high agriculture tariffs.

Derham responded that if the United States dropped subsidies but Europe continued them, European farmers could undersell both American and Latin American agriculture.

"We have been ready to lift the tariffs, but Europe isn't," he said. "You have to understand that it is a world market."

Baker College junior Chris Coffman asked how Cuba fits into Derham's portrait of a hemisphere where democracy and free markets are predominant.

Normalization of relations with Cuba will not proceed until the Cuban government complies with some of the conditions laid out by President Bush in a May 2002 speech, including democratic and market reforms, Derham said.

Hanszen College senior Garrick Malone said he found Derham's talk informative and helpful.

"I liked that he would always use examples exploring specific countries, often ones like Brazil that I know little about," he said.

The event was co-sponsored by the Baker Institute Student Forum and the Baker Institute for Public Policy.