OBAMA & LATIN AMERICA

After The Handshake

Latin America has welcomed the election of Barack Obama. But how far do the US president’s policies point to a real change in US/Latin American relations? And even if Obama personally wants such a change, does he have the power to deliver?

June 2nd 2009,
by Grace Livingstone
- Red Pepper (June/July 2009)

When Hugo Chávez thrust a book into the hands of a
quizzical Barack Obama at the Fifth Summit of the Americas
in mid-April, two things happened. The book, Open Veins of
Latin America, a classic for Latin America’s left, became
an instant best-seller on Amazon. More importantly,
commentators began to talk about a new era of US/Latin
American relations. Not only had Obama shaken the hand of
Venezuela’s left-wing president, a man US TV networks
insist on calling a dictator even though he is elected, but
Obama also spoke of ‘a new beginning with Cuba’, raising
hopes that the 50-year cold war between the US and the
Caribbean communist state might at last thaw.

Obama has set a new tone in the relationship between the US
and Latin America, a relationship that not only reached a
historic low under George Bush, but that for two centuries
has been marred by repeated US military intervention,
support for dictators (of the unelected, military variety),
death-squads and CIA destabilisation campaigns – which may
sound like the fodder of conspiracy-obsessed bloggers, but
is in fact verified by declassified US documents and
congressional reports.

Change: from rhetoric to reality

Latin American governments have cautiously welcomed Obama’s
election, hoping it will mark the end of the constant US
interference in their nations’ affairs and an end to the
blanket imposition of the free market dogma that has failed
so dramatically in the region. Obama won applause from
Latin American leaders at the recent summit when he pledged
to seek ‘an equal partnership’, adding that ‘there is no
senior partner and junior partner in our relations’.

A new tone was also evident in his approach to Mexico,
which is wracked by drugs-related violence. Both Obama and
Hillary Clinton have acknowledged that demand for drugs in
the west is fuelling the trade, a point frequently made by
Latin Americans who dislike the US’s high-handed and
frequently militarised approach to the ‘drugs war’. Obama
has also tentatively welcomed Cuba’s offer of talks and has
removed curbs on Cuban-Americans’ travel and remittances to
the island. This move actually has very little political
cost for Obama because the restrictions, which were
introduced by Bush, were unpopular even with right-wing
Cuban Americans. Their removal does not change the
substance of the trade embargo, which is still in place 49
years after it was imposed by the Eisenhower government.
Nevertheless, Obama’s actions have symbolic importance and
may lead to a fuller rapprochement with Cuban president
Raúl Castro, who is clearly making overtures towards the
White House.

This more nuanced approach is in marked contrast to the
Bush years, when relations with Latin America reached a
nadir. Latin America pulsed with revolt against free market
economics, and governments widely considered left-wing were
elected across the region – in Chile, Brazil, Argentina,
Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and
Nicaragua. Meanwhile, the White House was governed by
hard-line right-wing ideologues who not only continued to
promote the neoliberal economics that had so clearly failed
in Latin America, but after 9/11 also began to paint the
region as a haven for terrorists, drugs gangs and
criminals.

The Bush administration revived memories of the cold war
when it supported a short-lived coup against President
Chávez in 2002 and meddled in the elections of Nicaragua
and Bolivia, trying (unsuccessfully) to prevent left-wing
presidents taking power. Bush’s neocons also worked with
allies of the old military regime in Haiti to oust an
elected president and quietly, while all eyes were on the
Middle East, stepped up involvement in the
counter-insurgency war in Colombia.

It comes as no surprise then, that Latin Americans have
welcomed the election of Obama. But how far do Obama’s
policies so far and his rhetoric for the region point to a
real change in US/Latin America relations? And even if
Obama personally wanted such a change, does he really have
the power to deliver?

US foreign policy: who’s the boss?

Since 1823, when US president James Monroe warned European
powers to keep out of the hemisphere, the US has regarded
Latin America as its ‘sphere of influence’ and a source of
commodities, markets and cheap labour. Historically there
has been remarkable continuity in US policy towards the
region regardless of whether there have been Democrats or
Republicans in the White House. All US administrations have
favoured stable, pro-capitalist regimes – democracies if
possible, dictatorships if necessary.

The US also wants the use of military bases, airstrips,
ports and radar systems throughout the hemisphere, so that
it can maintain its status as a global superpower and
hegemony over its own ‘backyard’. This is particularly
important today when the US no longer has the Panama Canal
Zone (it left in 1999) and has to lease military bases from
friendly governments. The left-wing president of Ecuador,
Rafael Correa, for example, plans to expel the US from the
base in Manta, northern Ecuador, when the lease expires
this year. If Obama wants to change some of the US’s most
damaging policies in Latin America he will come up against
entrenched corporate interests, a powerful state machinery
and centuries of cultural assumptions.

Take the case of Colombia. 70 per cent of all US military
aid in Latin America is devoted to Colombia, which is home
to a still-significant left-wing guerrilla force, the FARC.
US forces are heavily involved in the counter-insurgency
war, providing air cover and supply lines, as well as
radar, satellite and other intelligence assistance. The
United States also continues to fund and promote the aerial
spraying of herbicides on farms growing coca, which is the
basis of cocaine after chemical processing. These
herbicides kill food crops as well as coca; they have
killed animals, caused human illnesses and may be doing
long term damage to the Colombian environment.

Obama’s Colombia policy may change in minor ways. Some
congressional Democrats have raised concerns about
herbicide use and Obama himself signed letters condemning
human rights abuses when he was a senator. Conditions may
be imposed on military aid. But the basic war thrust of the
policy is unlikely to change because it is being driven by
the Pentagon. The commander of the US southern command,
General Charles E Wilhelm, identified Colombia as the most
‘threatened nation’ in the region in 2000, because of the
strength of the FARC guerrillas. The US poured billions
into Plan Colombia, nominally a counter-drugs programme,
but one with a clear counter-insurgency aim. Now that the
FARC has been weakened, driven out of the cities and pushed
back into isolated rural backwaters, the Pentagon wants to
go on to ‘finish the job’. The US military establishment is
pushing the Colombian elite to hold out for total victory,
regardless of how elusive that may be and how much
bloodshed it causes.

All US presidents have traditionally deferred to the
military on issues of national security – and under George
Bush the Pentagon became even more influential, usurping
the role of the State Department in shaping foreign policy.
So far, Obama has said he will continue the war against the
FARC, but if he wanted to pursue a different course in
Colombia, and use the guerrillas’ weakness as an
opportunity to press for peace, he could feel the weight of
the US military and intelligence establishment bear down on
him.

Similarly, the Pentagon and intelligence community are
pushing for a hawkish policy towards Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela. Not only do they regard oil as an issue of
national security (Venezuela is the US’s fourth largest oil
supplier), they are alarmed by Chávez’s ‘destabilising’
influence both in the Americas and the wider third world –
in particular, his relationship with Iran and China. A
pamphlet published by the US Army War College, entitled
Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Bolivarian Socialism and
Asymmetric Warfare, warns that ‘Chávez and Venezuela are
developing the conceptual and physical capability to
challenge the status quo in Latin America and to generate a
“Super Insurgency” intended to bring about fundamental
political and economic change in the region’. It goes on to
caution that ‘inaction [against Chávez] could destroy the
democracy, free market economies, and prosperity that has
been achieved’. Obama may have shaken Chávez’s hand at the
recent summit, but in the short time he has been in office
he has also described him as a ‘demagogue’ and accused him
of ‘impeding progress in the region’ and ‘exporting
terrorist activities’. The policy of trying to isolate
Venezuela within the region and divide Chávez from the more
moderate left-wing administrations (Brazil, Chile, Uruguay,
Argentina) is likely to continue.

Free trade and the future

A key question is whether the US will continue to promote
free trade. US corporations were behind the aggressive push
for free trade in the Americas over the past decade because
they needed to compete with cheap Chinese imports. Free
trade allowed them to produce cheap goods in Mexican and
central American maquiladoras (assembly plants), which they
could then send back to the US duty free, allowing them to
compete with Asian imports in the US domestic market. A
related aggressive corporate search for new markets in
services – banking, telecoms, water, electricity – was
behind the wave of privatisations and deregulation in Latin
America in the 1990s.

The right of corporations to influence policy is accepted
unquestioningly by all US administrations. Business
representatives shape policy both as paid lobbyists and,
more effectively, as specialist advisers. Corporations have
played a direct role in designing the framework and rules
for free trade in the past two decades. Much of the
bargaining for World Trade Organisation (WTO) treaties, for
example, takes place in closed, private meetings, which are
by invitation only. Business groups are invited to informal
talks and take part as technical advisers. After the WTO
meeting in Seattle, the African delegation and a group of
Latin American and Caribbean countries issued a statement
complaining of ‘being marginalised and generally excluded
on issues of vital importance for our peoples and their
future’.

The largest free trade area in the Americas is covered by
NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which
comprises the US, Mexico and Canada. Introduced in 1994,
NAFTA has benefited large corporations and landowners in
the US and Mexico at the expense of smallholders, small
businesses and workers. Manufacturing wages have fallen on
both sides of the border and thousands have lost jobs and
land. During his election campaign, Obama promised to
renegotiate NAFTA, but this would bring him into conflict
with some of the largest corporations in the US, as well as
the pro-business conservative Mexican government, so it
remains to be seen whether he will keep his promise.

NAFTA illustrates that the economic models pursued by the
US affect all other areas of policy, including migration,
security and even drugs. NAFTA allows for free movement of
goods and capital, but it does not permit the free movement
of people. So when Mexican unemployed migrants cross the
border into the US, they are deported back, leaving some to
feel they have little choice but to take the dollars of the
drugs gangs. Although Obama’s more conciliatory tone in the
drugs debate is welcome, his administration will have to
face the complex reality that, in Mexico and Colombia,
drugs violence is rooted in socio-economic inequalities,
and economic policies that increase landlessness and
unemployment simply provide more manpower for the armed
groups.

Whatever Obama’s real intentions for Latin America, he will
be forced to confront the fact that the so-called ‘pink
tide’ of governments across the region are bullishly
espousing their independence and most economies have
diversified so that they are less dependent on the US. Most
of the region’s countries have rejected neoliberal dogma
and are trying alternative models. Although they will be
severely tested by the current economic crisis, the new
wave of progressive governments is demanding respect from
whoever is in the White House.


Grace Livingstone is the author of 'America’s Backyard: the United States and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror' (Zed Books, 2009).