Latin America Outlook, 2006
As the United States makes its way through the second term of one of our most conservative Presidents, Latin America takes a stroll to the left. The election of protest leader Evo Morales as Bolivia’s President on December 18th, 2005 and of Michelle Bachelet in Chile’s January elections consolidated a trend obvious since the election of Brazil’s Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva in 2002. Mutual discomfort between the Bush Administration and Latin American leaders was thrown into relief by the awkward Fourth Summit of the Americas meeting in November 2005 in Mar del Plata. Whether this awkwardness will degenerate into serious tension is the drama for 2006.
The Bush Administration’s determination that our nation does not have to abide by international human rights standards is harming the United States’ always precarious reputation in Latin America. One of the most underplayed stories of this past year is that a dozen Latin American countries risked loss of some U.S. military and economic assistance because they were unwilling to sign away their right to bring cases against U.S. citizens in the International Criminal Court.
Competing Visions
The sheer quantity of Latin American leftwing leaders and the United States’ preoccupation with Iraq, Afghanistan and other foreign policy challenges has, at least for the moment, forced the Bush Administration to accept certain hemispheric realities. U.S. concerns have narrowed to the fiery Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chávez, Bolivian coca grower Morales, and old standby enemy Fidel Castro—while Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, Brazil’s Lula and Chile’s Ricardo Lagos and now Michelle Bachelet, with their milder rhetoric and left-center positions, are accepted almost gratefully. Yet while leaders like Lula and Kirchner dial down the rhetoric, they have not backed down on their most keenly felt difference with the United States—their vision of trade.
The Bush Administration’s hopes for advancing a Free Trade Area of the Americas were dashed in the Mar del Plata summit, which dissolved without even issuing a common declaration. Five nations representing a large percentage of the hemisphere’s population —Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay—issued a separate declaration that challenged free trade orthodoxy, stating that “the necessary conditions are not yet in place for achieving a balanced and equitable free trade agreement… that takes into account the needs and sensitivities of all partners, as well as the differences in the levels of development and size of the economies.” Meanwhile, outside the summit walls, a rally addressed by Chávez championed Latin American regional solidarity and railed against economic policies that have not resulted in equitable development.
Stymied on the hemispheric agreement, the United States will focus this year on another agreement it sees as a building block, the Andean Free Trade Agreement. This regional agreement similar to NAFTA and CAFTA is much more likely to advance. Yet, like CAFTA, it will then face a feisty fight in the U.S. Congress, where the costs of these free trade agreements to U.S. workers are increasingly recognized.
The Populist Challenge
Venezuelan President Chávez does not shy away from rhetorically tackling his giant neighbor to the north head on. With his “Bolivarian” vision, he is seeking to inspire a region-wide Latin American solidarity and challenge U.S. power in the hemisphere. One the more positive manifestations of this is the launching of a new regionwide television station, Telesur.
The United States has put itself in a difficult position with Venezuela. Having provided at a minimum after-the-fact support for a failed coup attempt and then having backed a referendum which simply reaffirmed Chávez’s popularity, the United States does not have grounds to challenge the democratic legitimacy of the Chávez government. Yet a restrictive media law and increased concentration of power in presidential hands are serious concerns expressed by Venezuelan human rights groups and opposition parties.
Evo Morales’ election in Bolivia inspires high anxiety in U.S. policymakers. As the leader of Bolivia’s coca growers, he represents a direct challenge to U.S. counternarcotics policy in the region. Coca in Bolivia is not only the source for illegal, destructive cocaine but is used traditionally for chewing and tea, which has given the growers greater legitimacy than in other countries. U.S.-backed alternative development programs have not provided Bolivian peasants with adequate economic substitutes for profitable coca, and tension between coca growers and U.S.-funded military and police have resulted in human rights abuses. More broadly, however, Morales represents the concern by a majority of the Bolivian population that neoliberal economic policies have not resulted in improvements in daily life.
Despite the affirmation he received in being the first Bolivian president since 1982 to be elected with an outright majority vote, Morales has a difficult road ahead. Bolivian popular movements have proved themselves impatient and powerful, and have brought down several recent governments. The international community will demand that the country stay the course in counternarcotics, even if Morales has some space to modify the kind of counternarcotics policies Bolivia employs.
The U.S. challenge in facing this populist wave is simple: to take it calmly and accept the legitimacy of democratically elected governments. The administration must understand that these leaders have gained support because of deep-seated concerns about the failure of specific economic policies to deliver better livelihoods to historically impoverished as well as middle-class sectors of Latin America’s population. For the governments themselves, the challenge will be to go beyond rhetoric to deliver honest government and real improvements in people’s living standards. Whether the Bush Administration manages by intention or distraction in other foreign policy ills to have the wisdom to react calmly is this year’s $64,000 question.
Military vs. Economic Aid
Despite the obvious primacy of economic issues rather than military conflict in Latin America as a whole, the United States continues to provide nearly as much military as economic assistance to Latin America. This trend marks a departure from U.S. policy prior to 2000, when U.S. support for Plan Colombia boosted military aid significantly. Even at the height of the Cold War, economic aid far surpassed military assistance to the hemisphere.
One disturbing trend is the increase in Defense Department rather than State Department control over foreign military training programs, in Latin America and the rest of the globe. The Defense budget now funds 57% of all Latin Americans who receive U.S. training. While switching programs from State to Defense does not sound like an important move, in practice it lessens congressional and executive branch oversight and could weaken human rights restrictions. For more information about these trends, see Erasing the Lines, the new report LAWGEF published with the Center for International Policy and Washington Office on Latin America on military aid trends, at: http://www.lawg.org/docs/ErasingtheLines-Nov05Final.pdf , and check out the military aid database we maintain jointly at: http://ciponline.org/facts.
Stagnating development assistance to Latin America fails to meet the demand for U.S. support. Central American countries affected by Hurricane Stan, for example, received emergency assistance but no increase for reconstruction. In 2006, it will be important to encourage a more generous response to these natural disasters and the granting of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Guatemalans in the United States, and an extension of TPS for Salvadorans, so that family members in the United States can continue sending the estimated $4.5 billion annually in remittances home that will be essential for rebuilding. It will however be difficult to convince the Bush Administration to take this step, given increasing resistance to relaxing immigration rules.
Colombia: The United States Goes in Deeper
The United States continues to deepen its involvement in Colombia’s conflict. Colombia, with some $600 million per year in U.S. aid, is the world’s largest U.S. military-aid recipient outside of the Middle East. While Plan Colombia expired this year, the United States can be expected to supply the same 80% military package to the country for the next several years. No longer limited to focus on drugs, U.S. training and logistical support backed a major anti-insurgent offensive in Colombia known as “Plan Patriota.”
In 2006, however, the contradictions in U.S. policy towards Colombia are beginning to surface. The United States is backing and providing funding for a messy demobilization of the right-wing paramilitaries responsible for massive human rights abuses and drug trafficking. While the goal of demobilization is of course positive, the trade-off is little or no jail time for major human rights abusers and drug kingpins, and a postponement of the serious effort at truth, justice and reparations that a lasting peace will require. Even more urgently, there are strong doubts that the paramilitaries’ underlying financial, military and drug-trafficking structures are being dismantled.
Meanwhile, even the General Accounting Office has questioned U.S. gains in the drug war, which continue to shift coca production from place to place without yet demonstrating sustained impact on U.S. price, supply or overall problems of drug abuse.
Human rights abuses by the Colombian army are becoming more difficult to ignore. Some 12.5% of U.S. military aid through the foreign aid bill was frozen for seven months in 2005 because the State Department did not have adequate grounds to certify that Colombia met the human rights conditions in the law. At stake were cases alleging extrajudicial executions by the military, such as the killing of three trade unionists in Arauca province and the murder of two families in the “peace community” of San José de Apartadó. Human rights groups in the United States and Colombia aim in 2006 to make the State Department—and the Colombian government—take the conditions seriously.
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