Pubdate: Sun, 26 Mar 2006
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: F - 2
Copyright: 2006 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Nick Miroff
Note: Nick Miroff is a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of 
Journalism. He has reported from Latin America for National Public 
Radio, Mother Jones and the Oakland Tribune.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Latin+America
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Evo+Morales
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bolivia
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/coca
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/bush.htm (Bush, George)

HOW PRESIDENT BUSH HAS UNIFIED LATIN AMERICA

Has Latin America ever had such a unifying figure?

At political rallies, his visage is held aloft as a beacon to 
regional independence and self-determination. He's helped forge new 
trade partnerships to spur economic growth and alleviate poverty. And 
his leadership has fanned a gale-force electoral trend that's 
sweeping the hemisphere to topple one pro-Washington government after the next.

Who is this grand inductor of Latin American leftism? Venezuelan 
fireball Hugo Chavez? Blue-collar Brazilian Lula Ignacio da Silva? 
Bolivia's coca-farmer president Evo Morales?

It's George W. Bush, the accidental revolutionary.

With the swaggering Texan in the White House, a leftward surge has 
united Latin America to a degree that T-shirt icon Che Guevara could 
only dream of.

When Che's ill-fated insurgency ended with his death in the jungles 
of Bolivia in 1967, his vision of a single, unified, socialist 
continent remained utterly unfulfilled. U.S.-backed military 
dictators would rule much of Latin America during the ensuing two 
decades, and many of Che's followers would be tortured and killed in 
efforts to overthrow them.

As democracy returned to the region at the end of the Cold War, most 
Latin American governments rushed to embrace the "Washington 
consensus" -- market-oriented liberalization policies that cut social 
spending and privatized national industries in order to pay down 
national debts. But the formula -- pushed on the region by successive 
U.S. presidents -- largely failed to deliver the goods, and left 
entire governments bankrupt and beholden to foreign lenders. For 
Latin America's angry impoverished masses, already-threadbare social 
safety nets unraveled further.

"The macroeconomic proposals of the Washington consensus have not 
been working," says Guillermo Delgado, lecturer in Latin American 
Studies at UC Santa Cruz. "That model was supposed to create 
prosperity, and after so many years, such prosperity has not been 
seen and class polarization has grown deeper."

Sensing opportunity, proponents of new social and political movements 
in the region began marshalling their forces. Then Bush came along, 
combining Yankee hubris with a Che-worthy radicalizing touch.

Bush has presided during one of the most significant political 
re-alignments in the history of the Western Hemisphere. By this 
summer, every major Latin American nation but Colombia is likely to 
be run by elected leaders with stronger backgrounds in Marx than free 
markets. If Cold War-era domino theory has been a bust elsewhere, 
it's working in Latin America.

Late last year, Bolivian voters overwhelmingly elected as president 
former coca-grower Evo Morales, founder of Bolivia's Movement Toward 
Socialism party, who fancies himself a nightmare for the Bush administration.

Then, in January, Chilean voters chose socialist candidate Michele 
Bachelet, a torture victim of the Pinochet regime, as the nation's 
first woman president. Leftists now rule as well in Venezuela, 
Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina, and are leading in election campaigns 
in Peru and in Mexico, the region's electoral grand prize. Even 
recycled Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega -- "a hoodlum," according to 
Roger Noriega, formerly the U.S.'s top Latin America official -- 
appears poised for a possible comeback when Nicaraguan voters go to 
the polls in November.

Although Latin America's national borders won't melt away anytime 
soon, Che's vision of pan-Latin cooperation has begun to materialize. 
Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina recently announced a $20 billion plan 
to build a transnational gas pipeline through the Amazon.

Chile has opened dialogue with landlocked Bolivia, easing a 
long-simmering feud over seaport access. Cuba, that tropical bete 
noir of the White House, still employs doctor diplomacy, sending 
physicians all over the region, only now it receives billions of 
dollars worth of Venezuelan oil in return. And Mercosur, a South 
American common market dominated by Brazil, is rivaling the faltering 
U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Mercosur member states blocked ratification of the Free Trade Area at 
the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Argentina. When Bush arrived to 
deliver a speech at the conference, he was greeted by mobs of angry 
street protesters who burned American flags, a Burger King outlet and 
unflattering effigies.

"Fascist Bush!" they chanted, "you are the terrorist!"

Bush's overwhelming unpopularity in Latin America is especially 
disappointing given that he put Latin American relations at the top 
of his foreign policy agenda after taking office. No other U.S. 
president had gone to Latin America for his first visit abroad, and 
even after Sept. 11, Bush maintained that the United States "has no 
more important relationship in the world than the one we have with 
Mexico." At every turn, he'd trot out his twangy Spanish in order to 
burnish his Latin cred.

Since then, Latin America has only drifted further south. Support for 
the U.S. war in Iraq is abysmally low. Only a handful of countries in 
the region backed the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, and all were 
minor players with the exception of Colombia, the fifth-largest 
recipient of U.S. foreign aid.

That Washington is willing to spend lavishly on drug eradication in 
the Andean region but little on development or public health has not 
earned Bush many friends. His administration is held in low esteem 
across every sector of Latin American society. In a recent Zogby 
poll, less than 20 percent of Latin American elites (typically the 
most politically conservative voters in the region) rated Bush 
favorably. Only 6 percent said his policies were better than those of 
his predecessors.

Some analysts attribute Latin America's shift to U.S. negligence, 
arguing that the Bush administration is so consumed with Iraq that it 
cannot wield effective diplomatic influence in the region.

"After 9/11, Washington effectively lost interest in Latin America," 
writes Peter Hakim, President of Inter-American Dialogue, in the 
journal Foreign Affairs. "Since then, the attention the United States 
has paid to the region has been sporadic and narrowly targeted at 
particularly troubling or urgent situations." This interpretation 
suggests Bush has been an inattentive steward, too busy to notice the 
mutiny beneath his nose. Worse yet, Hakim says the United States has 
neither the resources nor the will to alter course.

But Latin America's leftward shift stems from more than White House 
distraction. It's not that the United States is acting aloof from its 
neighbors; rather, we're the worst-behaved homeowner on the block. We 
fly the biggest flag, make the loudest demands, and on top of it all, 
we don't even like having guests over.

Sure, the United States has treated Latin America as its backyard for 
200 years - but now, some members of Bush's own party want to fence 
it off. House Republicans recently approved a plan to erect a 
2,000-mile barrier that would wall off Mexico and the rest of Latin 
America. The plan isn't expected to survive a Senate vote, but it 
sums up the current state of north-south relations. And it's been a 
political windfall for the presidential campaign of Mexico City Mayor 
Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leading candidate in the July 2 election.

For Lopez Obrador, the border fence proposal is proof that NAFTA is 
faltering and that outgoing President Vicente Fox was on the wrong 
end of the rope in his faux-ranchero friendship with Bush. If Lopez 
Obrador is elected in July, the last domino would fall on 
Washington's doorstep.

The Bush administration has been most frazzled by the growing 
regional influence of Venezuelan President Chavez, whom Defense 
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likened to Hitler.

Chavez has his own nickname for Bush ("Mr. Danger") and he's 
effectively shaped the American president into his political foil. As 
Bush pushes the region away, Chavez pulls. The Venezuelan leader has 
fashioned himself into a kind of Latin American Robin Hood, raking in 
tanker-loads of petrodollars in order to bankroll vast social 
programs and regional integration schemes. He's provided oil at 
subsidized rates to poor countries throughout Caribbean, even sending 
discounted winter heating oil to low-income residents in Boston and 
the Bronx -- an act of mockery as much as aid.

The Bush administration's enthusiasm over a 2002 coup attempt that 
briefly ousted Chavez has created skepticism of U.S. rhetoric about 
respect for democracy.

At the World Social Forum in Caracas in January, Chavez T-shirts were 
widespread, along with all the other standard-fare knickknacks of 
rebellion: Castro hats, Zapatista stickers, and anything red with Che 
on it. Bush apparel was in short supply.

Granted, he did show up on a few banners and posters that weren't 
destined for immolation, like one that read "Chavez yes, Bush no!" 
But 20 years from now, who knows? Latin America may be much better 
off then. And perhaps he'll finally get a "Gracias Bush," with his 
face on a silkscreen.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake