Back-burner or Big Stick: The Demos and GOP on Relations with Latin America

Neither Democrats or Republicans have much worthwhile to say about Latin America. Both  party platforms depict the region as little more than a source of insecurity for the United States. Democrats offer vague promises to continue the war on drugs and organized crime while Republicans clamor for a return to a Reagan-era aggressive stance that treats the region as our private backyard.  Both reveal the condescension most Americans have long applied to the region, when they've bothered to think about it at all.

Here's what the Demos have to say:

In the Americas, we have deepened our economic and security ties with countries throughout the hemisphere, from Canada and Mexico to Brazil and Chile and El Salvador. We have strengthened cooperation with Mexico, Colombia, and throughout Central America to combat narco- traffickers and criminal gangs that threaten their citizens and ours. We will also work to disrupt organized crime networks seeking to use the Caribbean to smuggle drugs into our country. As we collectively confront these challenges, we will continue to support the region's security forces, border security, and police with the equipment, training, and technologies they need to keep their communities safe. We will improve coordination and share more information so that those who traffic in drugs and in human beings have fewer places to hide. And we will continue to put unprecedented pressure on cartel finances, including in the United States.

What's the implicit message of this plank? The whole region is a morass of criminality and violence, a conduit of threats to the United States.  Of course there has been a horrendous stream of violence flowing out of the drug trade, but it is hardly the case that Latin America is entirely awash in it. To reduce the region to this characterization is unjust, misleading, and distracts us from other important ways Latin American countries figure in US interests and opportunities, and the way the US figures into theirs.  There is a passing reference elsewhere in the section on foreign policy to increasing the number of free trade agreements in the region, along with improving commercial airline accords.  But, at least for this campaign, Democrats have nothing to say about strengthening geopolitical alliances, working together to resolve collective problems like global warming, assessing the growing global weight of Brazil (forging stronger ties with China, India, and Russia, in a loose economic association known as BRIC), nor considering the implications of the rise of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), an alternative to the Organization of American States that excludes the US, as well as Canada.

Is this all Latin America is?
Atrocities in Mexico's Drug War

Maybe Latin America is also this?
At a political rally in Guatemala City's Plaza Central, 2011
where we, surprisingly, dodged no bullets, nor stumbled over cadavers.

I realize these issues don't inspire a lot of interest in voters, most who are oblivious to Latin America, apart from those who can afford the tourist destinations.  Still, there could have been at least an echo of President Obama's speech at the OAS's 2009 Summit of the Americas:

All of us must now renew the common stake that we have in one another. I know that promises of partnership have gone unfulfilled in the past, and that trust has to be earned over time. While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership.

Instead, we get a caricature of US-Latin American relations. And if the numbers of words devoted to the region in comparison to those of others matters, clearly, Latin America is on the back-burner in the Democratic Party's mind.

The Republicans note this too, though in stronger terms: "The current Administration has turned its back on Latin America."  While overstated, it has a grain of truth.  Unfortunately, the Republicans turn this grain into statements revealing that the GOP has stepped into a time warp, trapping them in Cold War frame-of-mind, if not earlier, say, the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, by which the US government claimed the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries if it thought it in their best interest.

The Republicans started their section on "Strengthening Ties in the Americas" with this imbecilic line:

We will resist foreign influence in our hemisphere. We thereby seek not only to provide for our own security, but also to create a climate for democracy and self-determination throughout the Americas.

What is this "foreign influence?" Ever in need of enemies to fight and generate fear for their constituency, Republicans make the hysterical claim that "Venezuela has become a narco-terrorist state, turning it into an Iranian outpost in the Western hemisphere."  Even The National Interest, a journal featuring conservative scholars and pundits, thinks the threat of Chavez overblown (interestingly, the  libertarian think-tank, The Cato Institute, reposted this article). Who actually has the most "foreign influence" over Latin America?  The United States--by far the largest trade partner for most Latin American countries, the predominant source of arms imports, with a military presence in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and Colombia.  Maybe the Vatican places a very distant second given the prevalence of Catholicism in the region, and the always wildly popular visits by the pope.

Scary "foreign influence?"
Gringo Spring Breakers in Cancún.
See one of my favorite Onion videos here:
"Mexico Builds Wall to Keep Out US Assholes"

More scary "foreign influence?'
Pope Benedict's recent visit to Cuba.

And the "create a climate. . ." line?  As if there hasn't already been a surge of democratization since the early 1980s throughout the region, in spite of US support of authoritarian regimes through the 1960s and 1970s?  As if it was the sole responsibility of the US to create this climate--and had the capacity to create it? (Oh, what a climate we created in Afghanistan and Iraq)  The historical blindness and hubris this line requires are breathtaking.

At least the GOP has a few specific proposals, namely continue the US embargo on Cuba. In place since 1962, it has done just a terrific job over the last fifty years in hastening the end of the communist regime (NY Times).  Though imposed by Democratic administration, Republicans would have us lumber along with policy that has only caused the Castro government to hunker down. Similarly, George W. Bush's support of the military coup that briefly ousted Hugo Chavez back in 2002 only assured another anti-American regime in the region. Given the tone of this platform's foreign policy stance, a Romney administration will feature a return of Reagan-era cold warriors or their acolytes, carrying Teddy Roosevelt's "big stick,"and not even bothering to "walk softly."

It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that neither party platform in their statements about the "war on drugs" connects narco-trafficking to the huge maw of demand here in the United States (UN 2012 World Drug Report).  Nor do they recognize ways that US foreign policies might contribute to conditions encouraging migration.  For example, in the 1980s, US support of military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, and of anti-Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua (the "Contras"), produced a stream of refugees, many of whom ended up in the US, establishing a migration network that facilitated even more legal and illegal migration in the 1990s and 2000s (Migration Information, see also Migration Policy Institute 2011 Report).  Likewise, while NAFTA in the long run was supposed to contribute to economic growth in Mexico, and thus multiply economic opportunities. But in the short-run, it displaced small and medium agricultural producers who couldn't compete with US producers, thus creating a large swath of people the Mexican job market could not accommodate.  Hence one reason (not the only one, of course) for the spike in illegal migration to the US (Council on Hemispheric Affairs).

I can't expect party platforms to exhibit too much complexity, but I do wish that both Democrats and Republicans would work to cure the myopia that distorts our vision of US-Latin American relations.  Misconceived and unjustified characterizations of Latin America in both party platforms misinform voters, and contribute to unhelpful stereotypes of Latin Americans.  This makes it easier to cast all the blame for illicit drugs and illegal immigration on our neighbors to the south, which in turn makes it harder to have a thoughtful, useful debate about US-Latin American relations.  Silly me, though, for wanting something like that in a presidential campaign.

A parting comment.  I glanced at opinion polls in five Latin American countries about the 2008 presidential candidates, and then Obama's 2010 favorability ratings in five Latin American countries.  Some really interesting, and surprising variation. I would have thought Obama would have fared better in Venezuela than Colombia, and be more polarized in Colombia--but the opposite is true.  And given the high level of ambivalence in 2008, for whatever reason, Obama's popularity has climbed the most in Colombia.  But, as I suspected, Obama gets higher unfavorable ratings in Guatemala and Mexico, where news of the ramped up raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants from these countries has been widely reported.

Winner of US presidential elections that is more desirable for Latin America?
	Argentina	Brazil	Colombia	Guatemala	Mexico	Venezuela
Obama	49.0	53.1	32.1	26.6	36.7	37.6
McCain	4.6	13.0	8.5	13.5	13.7	11.8
Same	46.4	33.9	59.3	59.9	49.6	50.6
Opinion in favor of foreign leaders: Barack Obama, 2010
Very Favorable	12.5	19.6	21.2	13.0	10.6	13.5
Fairly Favorable	61.8	67.5	64.8	55.4	55.3	47.0
Fairly Unfavorable	19.2	9.7	9.4	22.2	18.5	21.6
Very Unfavorable	6.5	3.2	4.5	9.4	15.5	17.9

From LatinoBarametro