Features » April 5, 2006

Political Upheaval (cont’d)

For example, Bolivia’s Morales has pledged to regain national control of partially privatized state enterprises, like the energy industry. Chile’s new president, Michelle Bachelet, campaigned on a platform of continuing her predecessor’s free market policies, but promising to increase social benefits in order to reduce the country’s gap between rich and poor. During her inaugural speech on March 12, Bachelet vowed to “reach the year 2010 with an extensive social welfare system.”

Both Venezuela’s Chávez and Uruguay’s Tabaré Vázquez are self-proclaimed socialists, but Chávez is a far more aggressive opponent of U.S. trade and investment policies, once calling the proposed FTAA “the cauldron of hell itself.” He has also plowed massive amounts of government money into health and education programs, part of what he calls “socialism for the 21st century.” On the other hand, Vásquez has thus far kept fairly intact the Washington-friendly economic policies he inherited, and recently signed a bilateral investment deal with the Bush administration. Unlike oil-rich Venezuela, Uruguay is constrained by a massive debt burden, equivalent to roughly 90 percent of its gross domestic product. Likewise, Bolivia is the second poorest country in South America, and part of the World Bank’s highly indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative to reduce external debt. Morales will likely face similar restraints in his choices for revenue allocation—whether to increase teachers’ salaries or make debt payments is not an uncommon choice for Latin American presidents.

The wave of the future

Nearly a dozen national elections are slated to take place this year in Latin America, and candidates of the left are leading contenders in many of them. Two elections in particular have important implications for the United States: Mexico and Brazil. Together, they are home to 60 percent of Latin America’s population and represent more than two-thirds of economic power in the region.

Mexico shares a 2,000-mile border with the United States and is the country’s largest trading partner in Latin America. This year’s presidential election, scheduled for July, is only the second since 2000, when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was voted out after 71 years of undefeated rule. The candidate of the left, Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has been the front-runner since the start of the official campaign season in January of this year and continues to lead in the polls.

According to David Brooks, U.S. bureau chief of the Mexican daily La Jornada, the election is particularly key for the United States since so many pressing issues on the U.S. domestic agenda, such as “agricultural trade, narco-trafficking, and energy policy, are really international issues, and have to do with Washington’s relationship with its southern neighbors, like Mexico.”

López Obrador has pledged to block attempts to open the oil and gas industry—which is state-owned—to private investment. This is a controversial issue for President Bush, whose pledge to shift the U.S. oil reliance away from the Middle East depends on Latin American exporters like Mexico remaining loyal to their number one client. Ensuring that American oil companies have access to Mexico’s huge reserves would make that job much easier.

It is also the first time in Mexican electoral history that citizens living outside the country will be able to vote from abroad. This adds a potential four million outside voters just this year, 85 percent of whom are living in the United States and have tremendous influence back home. Last year, Mexicans sent over $20 billion to their friends and families in Mexico.

“Depending on how you measure it, remittances are the second or third revenue stream for Mexico, after oil exports and tourism,” says Brooks. “Mexicans in the United States care about what happens at home.” This point has not been lost on Mexican political hopefuls, who have routinely campaigned in Chicago and other U.S. cities even before the large communities of Mexican immigrants there were allowed to vote.

When current Mexican President Vicente Fox came into office in 2001, he managed to get Bush to promise to overhaul the current immigration legislation, and to strike a deal with Mexico on special work programs and possible amnesty for undocumented immigrants. The Bush administration has failed to do either, which will likely have a high political cost for Fox’s party, the National Action Party (PAN), to the benefit of López Obrador.

In Brazil, Lula is seeking another term. Although he has been critically weakened by a series of corruption scandals in his Workers’ Party (PT), the latest opinion polls show him in the lead. This year, the PT’s main contender is the more conservative Social Democratic Party of Brazil (PSDB), which governed from 1994 to 2002.

Although Lula has not been personally implicated in the scandals, many feel he should have done more to fight corruption. There is also considerable disappointment that he has not gone further to follow the example of his neighbor in Argentina to challenge the IMF. Nevertheless, the former union leader’s victory in 2002 is still widely viewed as a decisive step in the direction of stronger democratic rule in Brazil.

“Whether or not Lula wins again is not what’s important,” says Atila Roque, a Brazilian citizen and executive director of ActionAid USA, an international development agency based in Washington D.C. “The point is that people are deciding now who best represents their interests, so if the left doesn’t perform they’ll be removed too. That’s incredible democratic progress.”

Neighborhood problem

Latin America’s rejection of Washington’s favored model of economic management has caused strained relations with the White House. Public opinion polls in the region consistently show people’s preference for a break with Washington. Many Latin Americans think that the United States is largely to blame for their countries’ increasing poverty and inequality.

Anti-American sentiment has also risen since the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the scandals of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Public sentiment holds that the United States is not following international norms and is not playing by the rules, as other countries are expected to. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, a series of world-wide public opinion surveys, “rising anti-Americanism is not confined to Western Europe and predominantly Muslim countries.” A recent Pew survey shows that while 52 percent of Brazilians expressed a favorable opinion of the United States in 2002, by 2003 that number had dropped to 34 percent. In the minds of many, the Iraq war has only confirmed the worst stereotypes about U.S. militarism, unilateralism and imperialism. A sense of mistrust toward American corporations doing business in Latin America is also prevalent.

“The U.S. government’s decision to attack Iraq has been a critical factor in the growing disdain for the U.S. in Latin America,” says Fabian Pacheco, an advisor to Abel Pacheco, the outgoing president of Costa Rica. “We’re seeing increasing popular pressure on the few governments who still support this war to distance themselves from the U.S.”

The Bush administration should be paying close attention to what is happening in Latin America, without repeating the mistakes of the past. It should define a clear policy for the region that is based on supporting democratic processes and institutions, and should seek to ensure that democratic governments like that of Evo Morales in Bolivia succeed. The United States should be more tolerant of those leaders who do not necessarily toe Washington’s line, and show that it is committed to democracy, regardless of what candidate the people choose. After all, economically successful neighbors make reliable trading partners, and politically stable governments make good global allies.

Still, it remains to be seen if the New Left in Latin American will be able to overcome the endemic problem of poverty by fashioning bold solutions in Bolivia and beyond.

Efforts such as Argentina’s attempts to work more closely with Brazil, Venezuela and others are hopeful signs. Last year, Kirchner paid off the last of its debt to the IMF, with the help of Venezuela. Other countries, such as Ecuador and Bolivia are also trying to break free from the shackles of the IMF, with help from their neighbors. It’s just a start, but this may give governments a little breathing room to deal with urgent issues of poverty and misery in their countries.

Roque of ActionAid explains that if the United States doesn’t allow the space for governments to experiment with alternatives, such as increasing social protections or promoting national industry, it will be preparing the ground for all kinds of dangerous repercussions. Any attempt by Washington to tie the hands of these new leaders when they make economic decisions they believe are in the best interests of their people will only increase public frustration, and that can lead to extreme populism, from the right or the left. Although not a bad thing per se, populism can be used to promote radical ideologies that claim to represent the majority of the population.

To Roque, expanding and consolidating a strong democracy is more critical than whoever resides in Latin America’s presidential palaces. “Democracy must go beyond elections of the president and the parliament,” he says. “Democracy is the freedom to make innovative economic decisions that will improve people’s lives.”

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• Reader Comments

  Rumsfeld on Chavez ----- “HITLER was elected, too.”

  “The Bush administration should be paying close attention to what is happening in Latin America, without repeating the mistakes of the past. It should define a clear policy for the region that is based on supporting democratic processes and institutions, and should seek to ensure that democratic governments like that of Evo Morales in Bolivia succeed. The United States should be more tolerant of those leaders who do not necessarily toe Washington’s line, and show that it is committed to democracy, regardless of what candidate the people choose. After all, economically successful neighbors make reliable trading partners, and politically stable governments make good global allies.

  A prime example of wishful thinking . Just like politely asking my aging Kitty to please, please, please not hunt and eat mice.

  The Bush admin, and friends, will continue to sow chaos and corruption at home and abroad until they are stopped.

  As we run up to next year’s Frogland Presidential elections one of our little tasks is to identify and expose the Bushistas here at home.
  They wanted to go along with the Invasion of Iraq, but have been keeping quiet , for obvious reasons.....

  I cheer every time one of our frog “utility “ corporations is kicked out in Latin America, and when Argentina escapes from the strangling hold of the IMF.

  Some good news is that similar actions are taken here. January 1st, 2005, the city of Cherbourg took back its water utility. Other towns faced years of legal wrangling, and won !

  Posted by frog on Apr 6, 2006 at 3:57 AM

  Most people in the US are completely unaware of how our tax dollars
  and savings account dollars are at work South of the Border.  The
  policies that are driven by economic interests in the US are not part
  of the political discourse, although they should be.

  At least the peoples of Latin and South America know which boot
  is kicking them, even if Americans are insulated and unaware.

  If we were more aware, we would be more interested in promoting
  a sustainable foreign policy that departs from the traditional elitist
  feudal oligarchy that big business invests in with our money.

  I bet not many people who read these articles are aware of a
  program practiced by the large multinational banks like Wells
  Fargo, usually referred to “loan syndication.”

  As many as 40 or 50 banks may participate in lending to a large
  project that combines the maximum allowable capitol from each
  local S&L;.  The amounts are in the hundreds of millions to
  billions and the payback period may exceed two hundred years.

  The banks have tended to favor government owned businesses
  such as copper mining in Chile, because they feel authoritarian
  governments are more reliable than democracies.  Elitists like
  elitists.

  The problem for many people in the southern hemisphere is
  that the economic interests at stake are ultimately secured by
  military force backed by US covert advisement and training
  if not actual boots on the ground.

  The knowledge gained in the process of learning how to
  repress dissent in Latin and South America is unfortunately
  likely to become the whirlwind we reap from the seed that
  we have sown.  Iraq is really an extension of this kind of
  foreign policy philosophy.  Before this dark trend ends, we
  may see this come home to roost in the US.

  This is why we need to become more aware and to keep
  this out in the sunlight of public dialogue.

  Posted by sustainablestuart on Apr 6, 2006 at 4:36 PM

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