US must reverse neglect of Latin America

www.manilatimes.net Wednesday, March 5, 2003 By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, (IPS)—Increasing disillusionment in Latin America with democracy, market-centered economies and constructive ties to the United States should prompt Washington to pay much closer attention to the continent, says a new report by the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a Washington-based think tank.

Only on the trade front has the administration of President George W. Bush acted to promote stronger relations with Latin America, particularly since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, according to the 41-page report, ‘The Troubled Americas’, released Friday.

But in other areas, US policy has been characterized by ‘’a very high degree of neglect,’’ says Peter Hakim, the Dialoúgue’s president. ‘’It used to be said that the US only pays attention to Latin America when there’s a crisis, but now there’s a crisis in half a dozen countries, and we’re still seeing neglect.”

“We applaud the (President George W.) Bush administration’s leadership in advancing US-Latin American trade ties,” says the new report’s introduction by Hakim, US co-chair Peter Bell, and Latin American co-chair and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was also on hand for the report’s release.

“We express concern, however, that Washington is not as decisively engaged with other hemispheric challenges - at a time that America needs US cooperation and support to deal with a set of particularly difficult problems.”

Continued neglect of crises like those in Argentina, Venezuela, Haiti and most recently Bolivia, will inevitably undermine Washington’s trade agenda in the region, added Hakim.

For his part, Cardoso, who handed over power after eight years in office to his successor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, just last month, stressed that the entire hemisphere must address how consútraints on the budgets and abilities of Latin American governments to tackle serious problems in their countries is undermining or damaging new democraúcies throughout the region.

While democratic institutions in the continent are today ‘’much stronger than 10 or 20 years ago,’’ they are also being tested by their inability to better the lives of their people, he said. “As income statistics make clear, the majority of citizens (in Latin America) are no better off today than they were one or two decades back,’’ adds the report, the latest in a series of assessments published every two years by the Dialogue.

Cardoso also warned that the international situation, particularly the behavior of the United States, is likely to have a major impact on the health of democratic institutions and the rule of law in Latin America.

The 20-year-old Dialogue consists of 100 prominent figures in politics, government, academia, business, media, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) divided equally between the United States and Canada on one hand, and Latin America and the Caribbean on the other.

The latest report offers some bright news, noting overall progress in political and economic reform in the region over the past 20 years. Three ‘’powerful ideas’’, the report says, have gained widespread support over the period. These include the notion that democracy and elections are the only acceptable way to gain and exercise political power; that the region’s economies should be re-organized along market lines and opened to international trade and investment; and the view that Latin American nations needed to build constructive relationships with Washington in order to succeed economically.

“These ideas continue to hold sway in nearly every country of the region,’’ the report concluded, ‘’but their credibility has diminished because of Latin America’s economic and political shortfalls in recent years, coupled with a disappointing lack of commitment from Washington’’.

While scepticism about each of these notions has grown steadily - the Dialogue first began warning about the trend six years ago - ‘’no one has come up with better or more powerful alternatives to replace these ideas. The central challenge is still to make them work in practice’’.

The reports points to Mexico and Chile as bright spots for having avoided social and political unrest, while Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil have all become ‘’vibrant democracies’’ with strong parties and active civil societies.

In addition, Bush’s success in gaining fast-track trade negotiating authority from Congress has also given new impetus for rapidly growing ties between the United States and Latin America. ‘’The successful negotiation of a strong (Free Trade Area of the Americas) would be a giant step forward for inter-American relations,’’ the report says, noting however that a final FTAA agreement by the 2005 target date ‘’will not be easy’’.

But major challenges also loom. ‘’Argentina’s economic and political turmoil is a collective problem for every nation of the hemisphere,’’ it says, urging Washington ‘’not (to) wait on the sidelines for the new Argentina government to struggle on its own’’.

Ongoing political crises in Venezuela and Haiti, in which the Organization of American States (OAS) has tried to mediate, should also be considered ‘’shared problems for the entire hemisphere’’, while Colombia’s national security problems are ‘’far and away the most dangerous in the hemisphere’’, and President Alvaro Uribe’s military build-up not only may put the country’s ‘’economy in peril’’, but also raise ‘’the prospects for a wider and dirtier war’’ that may create more refugees and disruption and make peace negotiations more difficult.

Perhaps the key country, according to the report, will be Cardoso’s Brazil and the ability of Lula to transform his ‘’enormous political support and good will’’ to make good on his campaign promises to reactivate economic growth, attack poverty, hunger and race discrimination and push the social agenda faster and harder than his predecessors.

“If Lula succeeds, even modestly, not only would the prospects of economic recovery improve throughout Latin America, but the region’s otherwise dispirited politics would also receive a substantial boost” the report concludes.

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