In the Streets of L.A.

In the New York Times today:

"Although hardly as pressing as the threat of nuclear proliferation, there is also a strong sense of exasperation among Latin American leaders with the United States. Just last week, those leaders agreed to form a new political group that, unlike the Organization of American States, includes Cuba and excludes the United States and Canada.

The new coalition is meant to rival the O.A.S., which some countries consider a tool of American dominance in the hemisphere.

Riordan Roett, a Latin America expert at Johns Hopkins University, said that the organization was only one more example of the diminished standing of the United States in Latin America. China, he said, has replaced the United States as the main trading partner of Brazil and Chile, both growing economies. And while the Obama administration’s leading Latin America appointments were delayed by Washington power struggles, Europe’s political influence has filled the void.

A visit from Mrs. Clinton, he said, is not likely to be enough to repair the damage.

“I don’t get the sense that there’s a game plan for Latin America,” Mr. Roett said. “And Latin Americans don’t get that sense either.”

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Where to start?

There are two ways to see this: we deal with Latin America pro-actively or we do damage control. The first one implies a position of strength, the later of weakness. It might be the case that only damage control mode will do by now.

When I was young and naive I thought that government was the institution capable of dealing with everything at the same time. That's why we had bureaucrats and experts. Acting in the Middle East didn't preclude having a cogent policy towards Africa or Latin America, for example. Ahhhh! Naive me!!! That seems not to be the case. Primarily, or so my theory goes, because everything important that we do demands the presence of our President. The Europeans weep if Obama does not flight to Madrid for a meeting, or if he is too busy to show up for the vote about what city will host the next Olympics, Gordon Brown kicks his secretaries because Obama didn't meet with him, the Indonesians remove a statue of Obama because he has still not visited the country, and so on.

When I write about this I write as a loyal American (of Latin American stock) that is primarily concerned about OUR interests; with a reality-based understanding that -by and large- our interests can be framed in a way that turns them into regional interests. And that the interests of the region can become -by and large- American interests. There will always be differences, of course, but the main body of our engagement in the region should be framed around our shared concerns. Differences can be negotiated or fought out within that context.

What is clear, though, is that ignoring the region is not paying out and will be catastrophic in the end. China and Europe are filling the political void left by the United States in Latin America. Which means, to give but one example, that it would be even more difficult to organize a regional bloc against Iran's nuclear ambitions. And those are a LOT of votes in the UN.

If we continue driving in this direction we will either 'loose' all of our standing in the region and allow China and Europe to take charge, or we will end up trying to get back in charge the Reagan way, through the funding of ill-faithed revolutions and civil wars and shit.

We have taken Latin America for granted. 75 thousand Peruvians died in a civil war, but we were still primarily obsessed with the Israelis and the Palestinians. Over thirteen thousand guerrilla fighters alone have been killed in Colombia's civil war since 2002, but we still have Amampour in Jerusalem and Tehran showing us how the world is going to end. Why? The Americas, are after all, our hemisphere.

It seems that the region is paying the price of not having its militants blowing up themselves in restaurants and bazaars!

The saddest thing is that there is a current of Latin American modernism and idealism, especially from the lefties in the region, that wants the Americans to be engaged. An ideal vision that the United States is the clumsy brother from the North, but a brother nonetheless; an ideology that is always striving to differentiate between the good and hardworking regular American people and their silly government and greedy corporations. Yet, nothing is being done to tap into this existing narrative that seeks friendship rather than confrontation.

This Pan-American idealism has been there since the times of Bolivar, and is all pervasive. Nothing we have done has changed it, not even our support of Pinochet, Trujillo and the Contras. That is, until now. That ideal vision of the true America is what drove Fidel to visit Harlem back in the early 60's, it is what made the founding figures of literary modernism in the region (Ruben Darío and Pablo Neruda, for example) to consider Walt Whitman and Thomas Paine main influences. It is what gave the confidence to José Martí and the Puerto Rican revolutionaries fighting against Spain to organize their independence movements from New York City.

But I guess that the US is betting that the indians down south will come into the fold when we need them for real. By then the region might be too busy in a collective Londonesque Grey Tea soirée or pigging out on Chinese noodles.

What a pity.

(my op-ed touching on some of these issues is here)