Conn Hallinan – February 20, 2011
For the past decade, American policy vis-à-vis Latin America
has been relatively low-key, partly because of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and partly because the region has seen an unprecedented growth in
economic power and political independence. But, with Republicans taking over
the House of Representatives, that is about to change, and, while the Southern
Cone no longer stands to attention when Washington snaps its fingers, an
aggressive and right wing Congress is capable of causing considerable mischief.
Rep. Lleana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl), a long-time hawk on Cuba
and leftist regimes in Venezuela and Bolivia, is the new chair of the powerful
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the rightist Rep. Connie Mack (D-Fl)
heads up the House subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs. Ros-Lethinen is
already preparing hearings aimed at Venezuela and Bolivia, and Mack will try to
put the former on the State Department’s list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
Ros-Lehtinen plans to target Venezuela’s supposed ties to
Middle East terrorist groups and Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and to push
for economic sanctions against Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and banks.
“It will be good for congressional subcommittees to start talking about
[President of Venezuela Hugo] Chavez, about [President of Bolivia Evo] Morales,
about issues that have not been talked about,” she told the Miami Herald.
The new chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and
Judiciary Committee have also signaled they intend to weigh in on establishing
a more hawkish line on Latin America.
Unfortunately, it is the Obama administration that created
an opening for the Republicans. While the White House came in pledging to
improve relations with Latin America, Washington has ended up supporting a coup
in Honduras, strengthening the U.S. military’s presence in the region, and
ignoring growing criticism of its failed war on drugs.
Recent disclosures by Wikileaks reveal the Obama
administration was well aware that the June 2009 Honduran coup against
President Manuel Zelaya was illegal; nonetheless, it intervened to help keep
the coup forces in power. Other cables demonstrate an on-going American
hostility to the Morales regime in Bolivia and Washington’s sympathy with
secessionist forces in that country’s rich eastern provinces.
Many Latin Americans initially had high hopes the Obama
administration would bring a new approach to its relations with the region, but
some say they have seen little difference from the Bush Administration. “The
truth is that nothing has changed and I view that with sadness,” says former
Brazilian president Luiz Lula da Silva. But things may go from bad to worse if
the White House is passive in the face of a sharp rightward turn by Congress.
The Latin America of 2011 is not the same place it was a
generation ago. Economic growth has outstripped the U.S. and Europe,
progressive and left governments have lifted 38 million people out of poverty,
cut extreme poverty by 70 percent, and increased literacy. The region has also
increased its south-south relations with countries like China, South Africa and
India. China is now Brazil’s number one trading partner. An economic
alliance—Mercosur—has knitted the region together economically, and
the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) finds itself eclipsed
by the newly formed Union of South American Nations.
But many countries in Latin America are still riven by
wealth disparities, ethnic divides, and powerful ties between local oligarchies
and the region’s curse: powerful and undemocratic police and militaries. One
such military pulled off the Honduran coup, and police came within a whisker of
overthrowing Ecuador’s progressive president, Rafael Correa, in 2010.
One 2007 Wikileaks cable titled “A Southern Cone perspective
on countering Chavez and reasserting U.S. leadership,” pointed out “Southern
Cone militaries remain key institutions in their respective countries and
important allies for the U.S.” The author of the cable, then ambassador to
Chile, Craig Kelly, is currently principle Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
Kelly strongly recommended increasing aid to Latin American militaries to help
them “modernize.”
In many cases, rightists in Latin America share an agenda
with right-wing forces in the U.S. For instance, Republicans played a key role
in supporting the Honduran coup and continue to strengthen those ties. In a
recent trip to Honduras, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca)—a senior member of
the House Foreign Affairs Committee—brought together U.S. business
leaders and Honduran officials to discuss American investment. Honduras was
suspended from the OAS, and only a handful of Latin American governments
recognize the new president, Porfirio Lobo.
It was the Obama Administration, however, who recognized the
government established by the coup, and remains silent in the face of what
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch calls widespread human rights
violations by the Lobos regime, including the unsolved murder of at least 18
opponents. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is lobbying hard to have
Honduras re-admitted to the OAS.
A quick survey of Republican targets suggests troubled
waters ahead.
Chavez has won two elections and is enormously popular. He
has cut poverty, tripled social spending, doubled university enrollment, and
extended health care to most of the poor. A U.S. engineered coup seems
unlikely. But a “supporter of terrorism” designation would cause considerable
difficulties with international financing and foreign investment. Sanctions on
oil and banking would also disrupt the Venezuelan economy, in the long run creating conditions
favorable to a possible coup.
While it is hard to imagine what else the U.S. could do to
Cuba, Congress may try to choke off investment in Cuba’s growing oil and gas
industries. Companies are already jumping through hoops to avoid getting around
the current embargo. The Spanish
oil company Repsol and Italy’s Eni SpA recently built an offshore oil rig in
China to dodge the blockade.
“It is ridiculous that Repsol, a Spanish oil company, is
paying an Italian firm to build an oil rig in China that will be used next year
to explore for oil 50 miles from Florida,” Sarah Stephens, director of the
Center for Democracy in the Americas told the Financial Times. If the
Republicans have their way, sanctions will be applied to those oil companies.
Ecuador’s Correa beat back a recent right-wing coup, largely
because of his 67 percent approval rating. He has doubled spending on health
care, increased social spending, and stiffed an illegitimate $3.2 billion
foreign debt. But he has a tense relationship with indigenous movements, which
accuse him of trying to marginalize them. While those groups did not support
the coup, neither did they rally to the government’s support. Those divisions
could be easily exploited to destabilize the government.
In the case of Bolivia, the Wikileak released cables,
according to Latin American journalist and author Benjamin Dangl, “lays bare an
embassy that is biased against Evo Morales’ government, underestimates the
sophistication of the governing party’s grassroots base, and is out of touch
with the political reality of the country.”
The cables indicate the U.S. is relying on information from extreme
right wing and violent secessionist groups in Eastern Bolivia, groups that
receive financing and training from the National Endowment for Democracy and
USAID. Both groups have close ties to American intelligence organizations.
Given Brazil’s strong opposition to any attempt to break up Bolivia, it is not
clear a succession movement would succeed. But would Brazil—or Argentina,
Uruguay or Paraguay—actually intervene?
Paraguay is also a country deeply divided between left and
right, with a progressive president who warned last year that a coup by the
country’s powerful military was a possibility.
The Obama administration’s acceptance of the Honduran coup
sent a chill throughout Latin America, and certainly emboldened those who see
tanks and caudillos as an answer to the region’s surge of progressive politics
and independent foreign policy. The recent effort by Turkey and Brazil to
broker a compromise with Iran over its nuclear program did not go down well in
Washington. Neither have efforts to chart an independent course on the Middle
East by nations in the region. Several countries have formally recognized a
Palestinian state, and Peru will host an Arab-Latin America summit Feb. 16.
Latin America is no longer an appendage to the colossus of
the north, but its growing independence is fragile, as the coups in Honduras
and Ecuador suggest. The chasm between rich and poor is being closed, but it is
still substantial. The economies in the region are growing at a respectable 6
percent, but, because they are relatively small, they can be more easily
derailed by internal and external crises. Even as its power wanes, the U.S. is
still the world’s largest economy with the world’s largest military. This, plus
anti-democratic forces in Latin America, is fertile ground for mischief,
particularly if there is not strong resistance on the U.S. home front.
Read Conn Hallinan’s writings at
dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com