[Shef2venez] How latin America turned to the left: independent

[Dan]

This in the Independent today:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=615703

Dan
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How Latin America turned to the left
Uruguay swears in its first left-wing President today, joined by the new 
wave of leaders in the region - and Fidel Castro. The event symbolises 
waning US influence, says Rupert Cornwell
01 March 2005

How Latin America turned to the left

Podium: Ali Rodríguez Araque - 'Don't be fooled by these slanders about 
Venezuela'

At presidential inaugurations, as at weddings, the guest list says 
everything. In Montevideo today, Tabare Vazquez will be sworn in as the 
first left-wing president in the 170-year history of Uruguay. That is 
noteworthy enough, but even more remarkable are the foreign dignitaries 
in attendance.

Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva, the centre-left President of Brazil will be 
there. So will Hugo Chavez, the fiery demagogue who leads Venezuela, and 
Argentina's Nestor Kirchner. Adding the revolutionary topping will be 
none other than Fidel Castro. No gathering could better symbolise the 
slow drift of Latin America out of the US orbit.

Until 31 October, Uruguay could be counted upon as one of Washington's 
staunchest friends in the hemisphere. But then Mr Vazquez, an oncologist 
and former mayor of Montevideo, broke the traditional two-party mold of 
Uruguayan politics by leading the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) leftist 
coalition to an overwhelming election victory.

Today Washington's unqualified, 100 per cent loyal allies to the south 
of its border with Mexico are no more than one or two - El Salvador and 
Honduras certainly, but who else? Even Chile defied the superpower by 
refusing to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a slight not yet entirely 
forgotten in Washington.

Instead, a de facto centre-left bloc is emerging across the continent. 
Its members vary greatly from Chile, the economic poster-boy, to 
Washington's bugbear Venezuela. One thing, however, they have in common. 
They may not be necessarily opposed to the US on every issue, but they 
are no longer beholden to it.

Their drift away is testament to an historic failure of American foreign 
policy. In recent years the US approach to Latin America has been 
hopelessly distorted by its fixation with one modest-sized island 90 
miles south of the Florida Keys. In economic and military terms Cuba is 
of little significance, but its symbolic importance has been vastly 
magnified by the attentions lavished upon it by Washington.

Isolation has been the watchword - first of President Castro, and now of 
another regional "bad boy" in the person of Mr Chavez. But the strategy 
has backfired utterly. American bullying has given the Cuban leader a 
nationalist support he might never have had otherwise, consolidating his 
position as the longest-serving government leader on the planet.

The US has bullied Mr Chavez too, clumsily backing a failed coup against 
him in 2002, and subsequently criticising him at every turn. Today, 
boosted by his state's surging oil wealth, Mr Chavez is more assertive 
than ever. "Washington is planning my death," he claims, using Mr 
Castro's tactics to mobilise supporters against an external foe.

Once upon a time, the US tried to understand Latin America. In the 
1930s, Franklin Roosevelt and his top Latin American adviser, Sumner 
Welles, realised that US military interventions in Cuba and elsewhere 
were counterproductive. Instead they devised the "Good Neighbour 
Policy". Two decades later, John Kennedy proclaimed the Alianza para el 
Progreso (the Alliance for Progress).

Since then, however, US diplomacy has been cack-handed in the extreme. 
Its illogical obsession with Cuba, its insistence on seeing the world 
through a single prism - first the struggle with communism, then the 
spread of free markets and free trade, now the "war on terror" - have 
blinded it to the sensitivities of the region. During the Cold War, 
Washington backed an array of unpleasant military dictators as bastions 
against Soviet power. Later, the US insistence on rigorous fiscal 
policies (which it conspicuously fails to impose on itself) is widely 
blamed for a string of financial crises, culminating in the 
near-collapse of Argentina's economy in 2002. "The US has suffered 
defeats on every front," says Larry Birns, director of the Council on 
Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "The fact is that Latin America is no 
longer 'hemisphere-bound', just a handful of countries in America's 
back-yard." Today President Castro is probably in a stronger position in 
the region than ever before. Both Brazil's Lula and Uruguay's Vazquez 
were elected on left-wing platforms, but are economic realists. Closer 
ties with Cuba allow them to burnish their left-wing credentials and 
prove their independence from the US, sweetening harsh economic medicine 
at home.

It is unlikely the US will regain the lost ground any time soon. Neither 
George Bush nor Condoleezza Rice have displayed any real feel for Latin 
America. Policymaking has been sub-contracted to neo-conservative 
ideologues, notably Roger Noriega, head of Western Hemisphere affairs at 
the State Department, and the former White House aide Otto Reich.

Mr Birns points to the growing links between Mercosur, the rickety 
four-nation trade bloc grouping Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, 
and the EU as a preferable alternative to the FTAA, the Free Trade Area 
of the Americas, that is promoted by the US. Tellingly, after his stop 
in Montevideo, Mr Chavez is off to India and the Middle East. Washington 
can but watch, and gnash its teeth in impotent fury.