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Thursday, March 15, 2007

President's Trip Too Little, Too Late

By Joseph L. Scarpaci
American Geographical Society's Writers Circle
    Campaign rhetoric put forth by President George W. Bush in the fervor of the 2000 presidential campaign emphasized how Latin America would be a high priority under his administration.
    A few breezy phrases of Spanish and a symbolic meeting with President Vicente Fox of Mexico in his first months in office were quickly dashed after the September 11, 2001 bombings.
    Since then, Latin America has been on Washington's back burner. Is this understandable?
    President Bush's five-day tour through the region aims to remedy six and a half years of neglect. During that time, Latin America governments have veered to a populist-leftist course: Norberto Kirchner (Argentina), Tabaré Vázquez (Uruguay), twice-elected Lula de Silva (Brazil), Michelle Bachelet (Chile), and the widely controversial Hugo Chávez (Venezuela).
    Many simply remain leery of President Bush's newfound interest in the region.
    These democratically elected leaders, however, are not alone. The protesters haunting the president at every turn on his tour have history on their side.
    President John F. Kennedy's much heralded Alliance for Progress launched in 1961 aimed to do in Latin America and the Caribbean what the Marshall Plan accomplished in Europe after World War II. Nearly $10 billion in foreign aid pumped into the Americas failed to achieve that goal.
    Unlike Europe— well endowed with engineers, industrial infrastructure, universities, and a well-oiled public bureaucracy— the Alliance for Progress's "bricks and mortar" approach in building schools and clinics ignored the human capital and institutional capacity building required to "jump start" the region into economic development. And it did not help that the Alliance followed the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961.
    Like the "Castro factor" during JFK's tenure, President Bush must confront the "Chávez factor." Buoyed by a symbiotic relationship that includes thousands of Cuban technicians, doctors, and nurses laboring in Venezuela's poorest neighborhoods, and lots of subsidized oil for Cuban refineries, a new counter-hegemonic alliance has been formed. It is the perfect non-capitalist swap.
    Chávez's "Bolivarian Revolution" of wealth distribution to the downtrodden throughout Latin America may hold more appeal than promises of aid from Washington.
    Latin Americans remain skeptical of Washington's newfound interest in their region. They question the rhetoric about free markets and open elections; the former has widened the gap between the rich and the poor, while the latter has given them what they want: a new generation populist-leftist leaders.
    If President Clinton was America's first Black president, President Bush, with his Texas roots and affinity for all things Latino, could have been America's first Latino president. But it is simply too little, too late.
    Joseph L. Scarpaci is professor of Geography at Virginia Tech (scarp@vt.edu) and a member of the American Geographical Society's Writer's Circle. The opinion expressed is that of the author and not of the American Geographical Society.