Latin American Summit

April 27th 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Roger Chambers

Latin America and the United States have had an ambiguous, ambivalent, and often contentious relationship since the days of the Monroe Doctrine. This was certainly evident at the largely failed conference attended by most American states. It did not include Cuba, and Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa stayed away at the U.S. insistence of Cuba’s continued exclusion at this summit conference of Western hemisphere nations.

That the meeting was in Colombia was a boost for President Juan Manuel Santos. This is symbolic of Colombia’s perceived improved security, stability, and economic importance in the region. Santos told the BBC, “Who thought that an agreement would be reached here about the Falklands and Cuba?”

The President would not call the meeting a failure,even though the summit lacked a final summary statement or proclamation, which would be expected after such high profile meeting.

On the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War, Argentina is trying to reclaim this British colony that they call the Malvinas. It was in 1982 that Argentina and Britain went to war over these islands, and Argentina suffered a humiliating defeat.

Argentina claims the Malvinas belong to Argentina. Failing to gain regional support for their quest led to the early departure of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez prior to the closing ceremonies of the Cartagena Conference.

There were attempts for serious discussion on the failed War on Drugs. A recent Zogby poll reveals that 75% of Americans consider this policy a failure.

President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala was especially vocal about wanting to bring this controversial topic to the table in an interview shortly before the Cartagena Conference. Central America is experiencing great increases in violence related to the drug trade, a “war” that has killed 50,000 Mexicans in recent years, and spread to neighboring countries.

Any move to discuss the legalization of drugs and alternative approaches to what is clearly a failed policy is met with intense opposition from the United States. Canada joined the U.S. in stymieing any serious discussion of this issue.

And then there is Cuba. This has been a bone of contention between the U.S. and much of Latin America for several decades. One could easily argue that American policy on Cuba has been as dismal a failure as the War on Drugs. The U.S. State Department and conservative mainstream U.S. press depicts countries that are strong supporters of the present Cuban government, most notably Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia very negatively.

To many of these countries, Cuba is a leader, particularly in healthcare. Though a poor country, they have healthcare indices such as infant mortality and life expectancy that rival, if not exceed, those indices in the United States.

This has been duly noted by the World Health Organization as being a model of effective healthcare for developing nations. They have provided much healthcare assistance to many Latin American countries with teams of doctors doing humanitarian medical assistance.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela recently has gone to Cuba for treatment of his unspecified abdominal cancer. And Cuban pharmaceutical companies have been instrumental in providing vaccines for many Latin American countries, for such illnesses as Bacterial Meningitis.

For many years, the United States has consistently opposed Cuban participation in such international regional summits. This year, many nations have started to speak out on this, and Ecuador, as already noted, stayed away in protest of excluding Cuba. Other countries are threatening to boycott future summits, including the scheduled Summit of 2015 in Panama, if Cuba is not invited.

That the United States could continue such a failed policy has been routinely condemned by the United Nations. On a recent edition of the Ivory Tower Half-Hour (on PBS station WCNY-TV in Syracuse on Fridays at 8 P.M.), Tim Burns from Colgate University offered a simple explanation. It is about the Electoral College votes that the state of Florida provides in the Presidential election.

Florida is a key “swing state” that could go for the Democratic or Republican candidate. In Florida there is a sizeable population of Cuban Americans who are vehemently anti-Castro Cuba, many of them having come to the United States after the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

For any candidate to urge for normalization of US-Cuban relations would be political suicide for a Presidential candidate in this crucial swing state. It is rather disturbing that such a small number of an ethnic minority in one state could be so instrumental in the continuation of a failed policy for over half-a-century.

It is a sign of the times that most Americans that heard about this important summit, which exposed the poor relations between the U.S. and much of Latin America, involved primarily the story of Secret Service agents and military personnel, and their escapades with prostitutes in the city of Cartagena in the days leading up to the conference. But sex scandals are news, and tend to dominate substance to many domestic and international news stories the way the American media covers them.

Hispanics from many nations are the fastest growing minority in this country, and many of them have very close cultural, linguistic, and social ties with countries throughout the region. Latin America as a whole has great potential, and we are largely ignoring or treating with disdain many countries in this hemisphere, focusing instead on ties with Europe, or increasingly with Asia.

In the not too distant future, we may wake up and find that the neighboring countries in our hemisphere have moved on in many ways – socially, culturally, politically, economically – and have simply found the U.S. to be irrelevant. This is too bad, as there is a Latin American renaissance happening right in our backyard. Much of this percolates through to the diverse American-Hispanic community, but most Anglos have no idea this is happening.

Brazil, with close to 200 million people, an economic giant in the region, and the growing economies of Chile, Mexico, Colombia, are having a huge impact on the region. Many of these nations are finding that they do not need the paternalistic and condescending attitude of the United States and are learning to do things in their own way working with each other. Several of these countries already have China as their largest trading partner.

To retain any sort of credible positive influence in Latin America, the U.S. needs a more pragmatic and non-condescending approach to Brazil and our Hispanic Latin American neighbors. That the U.S. media focuses on the sex scandals rather than trying to put the relations between the U.S. and its Latin neighbors into a serious context perpetuates American ignorance of the importance of good relations with the Latin American, largely Hispanic world.

Roger Chambers speaks Spanish, and has traveled in Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain, and quite extensively in Mexico.

By Mark Ziobro