What’s Happening
In Latin America
Traditionally, Latin America has been an USA company town. The region was considered a source of raw materials, and a captive market.. The IMF and World Bank financed the deals, and the U.S. Marines enforced them. With Congress and the George W. Bush administration distracted by Iraq and the “War on Terror,”Venezuelan oil money providing alternative financing, and China providing an alternative market, this is changing. Nationalist and socialist political movements have revived, and one country after another is slipping the USA leash.
“Free trade”means, in effect, that US mega-corporations are free to force Latin America countries to trade per the corporations’ terms, if the countries want to sell their goods and services to the USA. “Freedom to compete on the basis of cheap labor.” Which means squelching labor unions, scraping environmental protection legislation, and abolishing social services, all to drive wages down to slave-labor levels. The elites in the foreign countries get a cut of the profits, the elites in the U.S. get rich, and the general US public gets cheaper imported goods, all at the expense of the foreign workers and their families.
“Across the continent, voters have elected left-leaning governments that are trimming back free-market policies, bolstering regional economic alliances and reawakening a concern for social justice.
“The dramatic shift leftward can be seen as an entirely predictable response to years of economic failure, political corruption and unpopular US policies, especially the neoliberal economic model so associated with American-style capitalist that has been dubbed the Washington Consensus.
Media Assault on Latin America, Jonathan Cook, The Nation, May 1, 2006
“The rise and maintenance of the United States as a world power has long been predicated on claiming Latin America as it’s own. On the eve of the cold war, for instance, even as Harry Truman was promoting the United Nations and pushing for open markets elsewhere, his envoys in Latin America were negotiating an alliance that gave preferential treatment to US corporations and allowed Washington to mobilize the region as a bloc in its’ struggle against the Soviet Union.”
Latin America’s New Consensus, Greg Grandin, The Nation, May 1, 2006
“Following Hugo Chavez’s 1998 landslide victory in Venezuela, one country after another has turned left. Today, roughly 300 million of Latin America’s 520 million citizens live under governments that either want to reform the Washington Consensus – an euphemism for the mix of punishing fiscal austerity, privatization and market liberalization that produced staggering levels of poverty and inequality over the past three decades – or abolish it altogether and create a new, more equitable global economy.
“Latin America’s new leftists have produced over the last couple of years their own consensus, a common project to use the centrifugal forces of globalization to loosen Washington’s unipolar grip. Brazil’s Lula has been central to this project, especially insofar as he has helped to awaken international financial institutions to the downside of free-market orthodoxy.
Latin America’s New Consensus, Greg Grandin, The Nation, May 1, 2006
Per poll of Lain American elites by Zogby International, Latin American elites have a significantly more negative view of the United States. “This is because many U.S.-supported (economic) policies in Latin America have not worked, and because the declassification of documents about the U.S. involvement with Latin American dictatorships in the ‘70s has hurt the U.S. image among those who care,” Lagos said.
Zogby poll coincides with Marta Lagos, head of the Latino-barometro polling firm: Latin Americans with highest levels of education tend to have the most negative views of the United States.
“The elites tend to be more to the left than the general population, which may explain why many people don’t feel well-represented by their leaders,” says Lagos. “There may be a discrepancy between what the elites think the people want and what the people actually want.”
“When a sizeable majority of Latin Americans across the social spectrum disagree with how the United States is handling world affairs, something bodes badly for U.S. ties with what President Bush calls ‘the neighborhood.’“
”And when, on top of that, the U.S. government reduces student and cultural exchanges, it makes it increasingly cumbersome for people in the region to get tourist visas, and it conducts humiliating body searches of Latin American dignitaries when they arrive at U.S. airports, it’s hard to think the U.S. image will improve anytime soon.
Andres Oppenheimer, The Miami Herald.
After World War II, “If moderate democrats or social democrats had to be overthrown in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile and replaced by violent, undemocratic probusiness regimes; if murderous and/or kleptocratic dictators and juntas had to be supported in Argentine, Brazil, Paraguay, Columbia, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Panama, ...; if, sadly, it took an appalling amount of oppression to keep the Free World free ..., well, history is cruel. It was Communism’s fault, ultimately, for threatening the ‘individualistic American way of life.’”
THE AMERICAN WAY OF STRATEGY: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life, Michael Lind.
Of very recent note, “The Inter-American Development Bank accepted a U.S.-promoted proposal to pardon $2.1 billion to $3.5 billion in debts owed by five poor Latin American nations, including Bolivia, a country that opposes U.S. policies.”
“The IDB is the biggest official lender in Latin America.”
“... it will help soften the Bush administration’s image in Latin America as a hard-edged promoter of open-market policies and free trade.”
Bank to excuse debt of 5 poor countries, Pablo Bachelet, MCT News Service
ARGENTINA
“It’s financial crisis led globalization’s managers to emphasize the importance not only of freeing markets but of strengthening institutions that could stabilize those markets.
BOLIVIA
Jan 22, 2006, Evo Morales sworn in as president of Bolivia. First indigenous majority (Indian) ruler of the country in 400 years. “From the beginning, a minuscule minority usurped the independence of the countries of the Americas, leaving out of the constitutions women, Indians, blacks, and the poor.” “In recent times, ,,, the country has experienced a period of popular insurrection.” Latest insurrection was to prevent the plundering of the country’s natural gas, as was done to it’s silver, saltpeter, and tin. “Prevented Bolivia’s gas from ending up in foreign hands, and in blocking the privatization of water in Cochabamba and La Paz. They toppled governments ruled from abroad, and said no to payroll taxes and other edicts issued by the International Monetary Fund.
The Upside-Down World, by Eduardo Galeano
BRAZIL
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Has opted to pursue reform through market-led growth.
CHILE
New, socialist, president, Michelle Bachelet. First woman to head that country.
“Bachelet is like Mandela,” says Hector Soro, editor of the influential Chilean magazine Capital. “Her family’s military history and tragic leftist past made her the only person who could reconcile the civilians and the military.”
“Unlike Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Lagos [predecessor of Bachelet] kept the economy open to the free market and muted any criticism of Washington. Bachelet has vowed to continue along Lagos’s path, though with more of an orientation toward women and the poor.
“Unwilling to take on Bush or those in Chile who have benefitted from the free market, she defends a light version of Bush’s Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative. But she blends laissez-faire with government intervention.
“‘We need to balance political stability, economic growth, and successful social policies,’ she said. ‘This also implies reducing inequality by advancing in our education, providing greater government assistance, and encouraging entrepreneurship,’ adding that the well-being of the people is a prerequisite to achieve greater development.’
From Torture Victim to President, Alfonso Daniels, The Progressive, March 2006
COLUMBIA
President Alvaro Uribe Velez. Far right, in a continent sliding to the left.
The Bush administration’s only true friend in Latin America. Popularity based on his limited rollback of the country’s leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).
Main opposition is a new yet robust democratic left party, the Polo Alternativa Democratico. Polo party program is a sensible mix of social democratic policies that aim to contain and reform Colombian capitalism’s worst features. The Polo wants better protection of civil rights, worker’s rights, and the environment; land reform and an end to privatization of state industries; tighter regulation of foreign capital and big business; and a less Washington-influenced foreign policy. And despite its urban origins, the Polo has strong support among peasants and Colombia’s well-organized indigenous movements.
Colombia’s Deep Divide, Christian Parenti, The Nation, June 12, 2006
Free-trade agreement currently pending with the USA, currently somewhat unlikely to be approved by the new Congress.
Free-trade opponents come to power, Andres Oppenheimer, The Miami Herald.
ECUADOR
Firmly in USA camp.
MEXICO
National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderon will be the next president, in a very close election, over Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) candidate Andres Manual Lopez Obrador. Calderon has announced plans to form a coalition-style government that includes the opposition. Left-leaning PRD is a force to be reckoned with, winning enough seats in the Mexican Congress to become the second-most powerful party. PRD’s gains came at the expense of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which controlled the presidency for much of the last century.
Mexican government is reliant on oil revenue, and on $20 billion in remittances from Mexicans working in the USA. Needs to tackle problems of corruption and price gouging, and to create as many high-paying jobs as possible.
“Since signing NAFTA, Mexico has been one of Washington’s few sure regional allies, countering Chavez’s oil diplomacy by spearheading its own effort to integrate Mesoamerican and Colombian energy production and consumption.
“Lopez Obrador invoked Mexico’s long tradition of petro-nationalism, pledging not to privatize the state-owned industry and to reduce foreign influence in its operations. He has also promised to renegotiate NAFTA – particularly a provision scheduled to go into effect in 2008 that completely opens the Mexican market to US corn.
The Nation, May 1, 2006
"And, like Florida, there was an incredibly high number of annulled votes. The IFE [Federal Electoral Institute] declared nearly one million votes null. That's more than three times the margin of victory, 243,934 votes. The IFE resisted a hand count of those null votes, just as Katherine Harris did." .This fuels suspicions of a 1988-style election-theft.
Mexico Divided. By Elizabeth DiNovella, The Progressive, September '06.
NICARAGUA
"Second only to Haiti as the poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean."
November 5th re-election of Daniel Ortega, former leftist Sandinista Party leader, despite threats of reprisals by U.S. officials. The heavy-handed U.S. threats to cut off aid, and block the remittances from immigrants living in the Unites States, failed to sway voters, and may have even backfired.
"With Ortega in power, Nicaragua joins the ranks of countries in Latin America who’s voters are using the power of democracy to show political leaders their discontent with their governments' corporate-friendly, free-trade policies."
: Bad news for Bush in Nicaragua, too. Nadir Martinez, Progressive Media Project, 11/10/06.
"The United States and his rivals worry the Sandinista revolutionary in him will resurface, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro welcome him to a club of leftist leaders fighting American dominance in the region.
"But Ortega, who was president in 1985-90, the height of the Contra insurgency, says he has traded war for peace, love, and consensus.
His victory speech "promoted socialist ideals such as free education and medical care, lambasted U.S. Republicans for the war in Iraq and thanked other leftist Latin American leaders for their support. But most of his speech was dedicated to praising democracy and reaching out to opponents.
Nicaragua's Ortega vows close U.S. ties. By Traci Carl, Associated Press Writer. 11/12/06.
PERU
“April 9th, Ollanta Humala, a nationalist former military officer backed by Chavez and Morales, came from behind to force a runoff.
Latin America’s New Consensus, Greg Grandin, The Nation, May 1, 2006
Free-trade agreement currently pending with the USA, currently somewhat unlikely to be approved by the new Congress.
Free-trade opponents come to power, Andres Oppenheimer, The Miami Herald.
VENEZUELA
“When Mercosur was founded in 1991, it was to be little more than a tool to groom individual countries for eventual absorption into the US market. But reformers in recent years have worked to transform it into a real alternative to Washington’s FTAA.”.
“Last December Venezuela scored another diplomatic coup, joining Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay as a full member in Mercosur. ... At the same meeting where it approved Venezuela’s petition for admission, Mercosur established a Parliament modeled on the European Union, agreeing to cooperate on a range of issues, including multilateral trade agreements with countries like China. Caracas has promised billions of dollars to develop northern South America’s transportation and commercial infrastructure and has even floated the idea of a “Bank of the South,” along with a common Latin America currency, which would provide an alternative to US-controlled financial institutions like the IMF and dollar-denominated financial and commodity transactions. Venezuela has already become an important regional creditor, purchasing more than $1 billion of Argentine debt last year, which allowed Buenos Aires to pay off its IMF tab in full.”
“President Chavez’s confrontational policies with international capitalism provides cover for his more circumspect counterparts, drawing Washington’s anger.” “Represents an alternative, if not to free trade, then to Washington’s stranglehold over the way free trade was proceeding in the Americas.”
Latin America’s New Consensus, Greg Grandin, The Nation, May 1, 2006
“Perhaps (Chavez’s) most consequential initiative upon taking office in early 1999 was to end Venezuela’s role as a rate-busting OPEC member and to work with Iran and other petroleum-exporting countries to enforce production quotas, which, well before Bush’s invasion of Iraq and the current troubles in the Middle East, began a steady rise in world oil prices. Last year, taking advantage of increased global demand, Chavez forced seventeen foreign companies to increase royalty payments and convert their operating contracts into joint ventures with PDVSA, which not only means that the state now owns at least 51 percent of all oil production but that the multinationals will be picking up the bill for modernizing the country’s drilling and refining capacities.. When ExxonMobil balked at Chavez’s New Year’s deadline to become PDVSA’s junior partner, Spain’s Repsol-YPF stepped in and bought out its holdings under Venezuela’s terms.
CHINA
There have been thousands of Chinese in Peru since the mid-19th century, imported as slave laborers. Their descendants are still there.
“Today, Chinese are again flowing to Latin America. This time, though, it isn’t as laborers. It’s as businessmen and government teams looking to acquire farms, forests and mines to fuel China’s growth.
“Fish meal, soybeans, oil and gas, iron ore, steel, timber and coffee from Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia and Columbia are all being pulled into China. To be sure, China, like America and Europe before it, is entitled to acquire resources in Latin America. It is paying market prices and fostering a growth spurt – albeit a resource-driven one – all across Latin America.
Unlike U.S. and European multinationals, China doesn’t operate under monitoring by environmentalists and media. So, it has few of the “legal, pubic opinion or peer-pressure constraints of Western firms.”
“Since 1999, the Latin America share of China’s total imports has more than doubled, according to Intelligence Research Ltd.”
Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times.
“The Chinese government has negotiated more than 400 investment and trade deals with Latin America over the past few years, investing more than $50 billion in the region. China is both Brazil and Argentina’s fourth-largest trading partner, providing $7 billion for port and railroad modernization and signing $20 billion worth of commercial agreements.
Latin America’s New Consensus, Greg Grandin, The Nation, May 1, 2006
“As its political and economic influence in the region wanes, Washington has given up trying to convince Latin America to join the “war on terror,” while its trade envoys are now reduced to signing bilateral deals with negligible economies like Paraguay and Ecuador to dilute opposition to the FTAA. The White House, under the sway of neocon ultras, has further backed itself into a corner by encouraging Chavez’s adversaries to go for broke. ... The Bush administration now promises to wage a battle for the “future of Latin America,” but with few options left – except, of course, the military one.
The Nation, May 1, 2006
“One of the Bush administration’s favorite convictions was that we would show ourselves so powerful in W’s endless wars that no country or grouping of countries would dare to stand or unite against us. This was, and is, particularly the idea of our dour Vice President Chaney. That the self-assumption of great power instead always ends in destruction of that power seems not to have occurred to him.
“But now, in addition to new groupings of Russia and the Central Asian states and the European Union, we find the distinct beginnings of a new leftist bloc forming in Latin America, until now one of the most divided and divisive regions on Earth. In fact, Chavez’s oil-rich Venezuela and Nestro Kirchner’s Argentina are aiming to establish what is in effect a new International Monetary Fund for Latin America, with a “bond of the south” of $2 billion from Venezuela to be used as a down payment to finance future infrastructure projects.
“It is the first step “in the construction of a bank, a financial space in the south that will permit us to generate lines of finance,” President Kirchner said only recently in Buenos Aires. His words followed a meeting in which Venezuela was accepted into the until-then distinctly inactive Vercosur trade bloc and customs union of the southern countries. Chavez had already purchased nearly $3 billion in Argentine bonds in January, allowing Kirchner to pay off and cut ties with the omnipotent IMF. Free of the americanos, at last!
“Cuba has also joined the standardization of trade among Mercosur’s five full members – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela – and associate members Chile and Bolivia. Mercosur is effectively a trade pact that now encompasses 270 million people and accounts for 75% of South America’s gross domestic product.
“Mercosur ... is a new character in the play, and it stands opposed to American free-trade deals with Colombia, Chile and Peru.
“The point is that nothing stands still. The war in Iraq influences even Latin America, ferociously feeding the traditional Latino anti-gringoism, reassuring them that American colonialism lives, and putting El Norte and its principles, which have always been the primary influence in Latin America, on trial.
Castro’s influence in region growing, Georgie Anne Geyer.
UNITED STATES
“With the [cold war] now over, should the United States stand down? Both neo-liberals and neoconservatives have answered no: We have to maintain global military primacy indefinitely. As a 1992 Defense Department plan put it, allies and rivals alike must be discouraged from ‘challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.’
THE AMERICAN WAY OF STRATEGY: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life, Michael Lind.
“Though garnished with neologistic flourishes intended to convey a sense of freshness or originality, the politicoeconomic concept to which the United States adheres today has not changed in a century: The familiar quest for an ‘open world,’ the overriding imperative of commercial integration, confidence that technology endows the United States with a privileged position in that order, and the expectation that American military might will preserve order and enforce the rules. These policies reflect a single-minded determination to extend and perpetuate American political, economic, and cultural hegemony – usually referred to as ‘leadership’ – on a global scale.”
American Empire (2002), Andrew Bacevich
