That message has been received loud and clear in Latin America. Under George W. Bush, the long-neglected region was supposed to occupy a central place in U.S. foreign policy. In the early months of his presidency, Bush had hailed the dawn of a new “century of the Americas” that would spread the blessings of liberty and economic growth to all corners of the hemisphere. He pointedly broke with tradition and visited Mexico instead of Canada on his first trip abroad. But in the wake of 9-11, Latin America suddenly finds itself banished back to the wings of the world stage. “Nobody in Washington today is giving more than five minutes’ attention to Latin America,” says Arturo Sarukhan, chief of staff for policy planning at the Mexican Foreign Ministry. “There is a host of issues in the regional agenda which will obviously slow down.” Adam Isacson, a Latin America expert at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, agrees: “We’ve gone from page A1 to A30, if we’re thought of at all.”
Washington’s inattention could hardly come at a worst time. Crises are breaking out across Latin America. Gripped by depression, Argentina teetered on the verge of default on its $132 billion foreign debt at the end of the week. In Venezuela, coup rumors swirled around President Hugo Chavez ahead of a daylong business lockout called for Monday by the nation’s private sector. Next door, the much-touted war on drugs is bogging down in Colombia. The suspension of CIA surveillance flights over Colombia and Peru last spring has opened up the skies to drug traffickers. The assault on terrorism has absorbed some of the manpower and resources previously committed to counternarcotics operations, and according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, drug shipments into south Florida have been up by 25 percent since September.
In Peru, the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas are stepping up attacks after lying low in remote jungles and foothills for nine years. President Alejandro Toledo is sinking fast in the polls after barely 100 days in office. Even in Mexico, a bulwark of political stability for the past eight decades, many human-rights activists are fearing for their lives following the October assassination of lawyer Digna Ochoa, who specialized in cases involving atrocities committed by the Army.
Back in Washington, the lights are on but almost nobody is home. The Bush administration’s A-team for Latin America is riddled with vacancies, starting with the top post at State. The White House’s nominee to oversee hemispheric affairs, Otto Reich–remembered as Ronald Reagan’s spinmeister during the contra war–has been denied confirmation for months by angry Senate Democrats. The assistant secretary of Defense who directs military counternarcotics programs has yet to be named. The same goes for the head of the U.S. Southern Command, who oversees military operations in the Caribbean and most of Latin America.
In fairness, the hemisphere has usually been given short shrift in Washington. Latin America surged to the top of the agenda in times of a direct threat to U.S. interests or confrontation with foreign powers that coveted a foothold in its backyard. When Soviet political ambitions went global, the rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba ushered in the Kennedy administration’s Alliance for Progress, which offered economic development in order to check the spread of communism. The collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago eliminated any need to pay special attention to the region for national-security reasons, and Latin America again receded into the shadows of U.S. foreign policy.
That was supposed to change with Bush. The U.S. president set the tone at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April. “We have a great vision before us: a fully democratic hemisphere bound by good will and free trade,” he declared. “My country, more than ever, feels the ties of kinship, commerce and culture that unite us.” Bush flaunted his thickly accented Spanish and sprinkled his remarks with homespun proverbs like “El que tiene un buen vecino tiene un buen amigo” (“He who has a good neighbor has a good friend”). Just days before the terrorists carried out their murderous plot, Bush had welcomed Mexican President Vicente Fox to the White House and, in a memorable burst of hyperbole, reflecting his family’s generations-long ties to Mexico, proclaimed U.S. links to the country “our most important relationship.”
Those heady days now seem a distant memory. During the state visit, Fox spoke confidently about wrapping up a sweetheart immigration deal with Washington by the end of the year that would instantly legalize millions of undocumented Mexican workers already living in the United States. But that accord became yet another victim of the fallout from 9-11, and now optimists hope for a deal by the end of 2002. Mexico is playing up the security angle to make its case. “It’s better to have 3 million documented Mexicans in the United States than 3 million people who we don’t know where they live, what their names are, how they move around the country,” said Sarukhan of the Foreign Ministry.
Some Colombian officials worry about a slackening U.S. commitment to the drug war and, by extension, their country’s future. The Bush administration asked Congress earlier this year to approve $882 million in new money for the Andean Regional Initiative, the renamed anti-drug aid package that the Clinton administration unveiled in 2000 under the banner of Plan Colombia. By the time the U.S. Congress got through with the request, the figure had fallen to $625 million. Since the U.S. government began tightening up on homeland-security measures, more than 1,100 U.S. Customs and DEA agents have been diverted to duties as sky marshals and seaport security.
Increasingly it seems likely that the war on drugs will need to be repackaged as an integral element of the global assault on terrorism, a fact not missed by officials in Bogota. “The Colombians are trying to show the parallels between the Taliban and their own guerrilla movements,” says Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank. “The war on drugs will stay in place on auto-pilot, but I’m not sure the U.S. is prepared to step it up given its other priorities.”
But the eclipsing of Latin America could have wider ramifications for the region’s 525 million people. Aggravated effects of the worldwide economic downturn, for one. Despite ingrained anti-gringoism and resentment over heavy-handed U.S. intervention, Latin America is heavily dependent on American capital, markets and tourism to generate jobs and trade. If U.S. investment goes the way of U.S. policy focus, the economic decline already underway in countries like Venezuela and Peru will quicken. The resulting sense of anger and disillusionment could foster the rise of charismatic populists in the Hugo Chavez mold or stir up greater political upheaval. “If the U.S. does not help cure the economic ills in this region, there could be a problem of governability,” warns Chilean analyst Francisco Rojas.
Not surprisingly, the administration’s interim point man for Latin America shrugs off talk that Washington is turning its back on the neighborhood in any lasting sense. As acting assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Lino Gutierrez admits that “everything is in second place after 9-11.” But the Cuban-born career diplomat points to a number of policy initiatives that the administration is continuing to press. Prominent among them is the Andean Trade Preference Act that would lower tariff barriers for exports from Colombia and neighboring countries. With the U.S. House of Representatives’ approval last week of “fast track” trade-negotiating powers for Bush, the administration is one step closer to being freed up to craft and implement a Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005. Another piece of good news for the president: last week the key post of White House anti-drug czar, which had sat empty for most of the year, was filled when Bush nominee John Walters was finally approved by the Senate. “This president has the greatest interest in Latin America of any of the six presidents I’ve been associated with,” Gutierrez told NEWSWEEK last week.
Tell that to 36 million Argentines. The United States and the rest of the world have looked the other way as the country veers toward bankruptcy. A four-year-old economic slump has thrown hundreds of thousands out of work, and millions more have suffered major pay cuts. In October, Argentina surpassed Nigeria as the country with the highest risk rating for investors, based on a survey by the New York investment bank J.P. Morgan. Shares on the Buenos Aires stock exchange hit a 10-year low in late November. The avalanche of bad news continued last week as the International Monetary Fund refused to release a $1.3 billion loan scheduled under an existing accord because of Argentina’s failure to meet economic targets. That has left the government on the verge of debt default and, with it, outright economic collapse.
Argentina can’t blame its quandary on post-9-11 neglect on Washington’s part. At the root of its economic malaise is the failure of successive governments to curb chronic budget deficits–and decades of corruption and economic mismanagement have left President Fernando de la Rua and his aides with few sympathetic ears overseas. Bush is said to have ended a phone conversation with the Argentine president last summer with three words of advice: “Remember, deficit zero.”
Whatever happens in the coming months in Afghanistan and the Middle East, some fortunate countries will still enjoy a special status in the eyes of Washington. Mexico, of course–if for nothing more than its importance to U.S. border security. Then Chile, which is likely to become the second Latin country to nail down a free-trade agreement with the United States. Chilean and U.S. negotiators were meeting inside the Howard University Law School building in Washington on the morning of September 11–which happened to mark the 28th anniversary of the bloody, CIA-backed coup that toppled the late Salvador Allende. But officials of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office invited their Chilean counterparts back the very next day. “There has not been any tangible impact on the talks because of September 11,” says a Chilean Foreign Ministry official. “We are hopeful that things will continue to go well.”
The vast majority of Washington’s neighbors don’t share that bullish outlook. Their emotions since 9-11 have run the gamut from sympathy for the victims of the terrorist attacks to anger over the pummeling of yet another Third World country. But above all there is a creeping sense of neglect and irrelevance. And it isn’t just the United States that is turning away from Latin America. President Vladimir Putin, in a nod to his new friendship with the United States, angered Castro when he closed down Russia’s main listening post inside Cuba in mid-October–39 years to the month after the Cuban missile crisis. “As Henry Kissinger once said, ‘The urgent pre-empts the important’,” says Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue. “When a crisis really hits, Latin America doesn’t matter that much.” In other words, it may be months if not years before Colin Powell reschedules that aborted trip to Colombia.
