Uncle Sam Visits His Restive Neighbors

The fourth Summit of the Americas comes at a time when Latin America’s relations with the United States are not as good as they were, but not as bad as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez would like

MAR DEl PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) November 4, 2005 — The heads of government of the 34 countries in the Americas that claim to be democracies will gather on Friday November 4th in Mar del Plata, an Argentine resort. Two among them will dominate proceedings: George Bush and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. That is not because they are the wisest leaders present or because they are the richest, although the United States’ economy dwarfs all others in the region and Mr. Chávez commands windfall oil wealth. Mr. Bush and Mr. Chávez, who are expected to avoid each other in Mar del Plata, will steal the limelight mainly because they represent opposite poles of a strident hemispheric debate.

At the first Summit of the Americas, in Miami in 1994, all the region’s governments signed up to a common vision of democracy and free trade. That consensus was starting to fray by the third summit, in Quebec in 2001; now at Mar del Plata, the fourth, it has unraveled. The gathering’s worthy official theme is to promote employment. But how? The plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), originally due to come into effect this year, has stalled, as Mr. Bush admitted this week. He said that the Doha round of world trade talks should take precedence. In any event, Brazil is reluctant to endorse a new timetable for the FTAA.

Mr. Chávez, whose commitment to democracy is ambiguous, is peddling a “Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas”, named for South America’s independence hero. It consists mainly of offers of cheap oil and a rhetorical declaration against poverty. So far it has been endorsed only by Cuba’s Fidel Castro who, as a dictator, is excluded from the summit. But Mr. Chávez’s populist nationalism has an appeal in some Andean countries, where democracies are shaky and societies are riven by inequality. He plans to express his opposition to Mr. Bush at an “alternative summit” outside the police cordon in Mar del Plata.

Latin America is in an anti-yankee mood, if slightly less so than a couple of years ago. The Iraq war was unpopular in the region, and there is disillusion with free-market reforms that are seen as having been sponsored by the United States. Peter Hakim of Inter-American Dialogue, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says that relations between the United States and Latin America have reached their lowest point since the cold war.

Recently, the superpower has been paying more attention to its neighbors. So far this year both Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and her deputy, Robert Zoellick, have visited the region, and Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, has done so twice. Roger Noriega, widely seen as a Cuba-obsessed ideologue, was replaced as the State Department’s top man for Latin America by Thomas Shannon, a career diplomat. In the view of Mr. Hakim, Mr. Shannon has a “much better sense of what’s important to the region”. There is even a glimmer of civility between the United States and Cuba. Mr. Castro recently accepted an American offer to send three aid officials to assess hurricane damage—though that offer was withdrawn this week after the Cuban leader appeared to backtrack.

These gestures do not seem to have much substance behind them, in any case. In July, the United States Congress narrowly ratified a free-trade agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic. But talks on a similar accord with Colombia and Peru are moving slowly.

Mr. Chávez may feel he is winning friends faster. One of them, Evo Morales, a leader of the indigenous coca growers, could win Bolivia’s presidential election next month, and Mr. Chávez is trying to buy influence elsewhere. This year Venezuela has bought $950m of bonds from cash-strapped Argentina. It has also talked of buying an Argentine nuclear-power plant and Ecuadorean bonds.

Mr. Chávez hopes to form a “new axis” with Argentina and Brazil. Venezuela wants to become a full member of Mercosur, the trade group those countries lead, in December. That would be a coup for Mr. Chávez but a setback for Mercosur, which already has difficulty sticking to its rules.

Yet even though many governments are happy to take Venezuela’s cash, it is easy to exaggerate the country’s influence. While flirting with Mr. Chávez, Argentina seems determined to run a well-behaved summit that ends with some semblance of consensus. Néstor Kirchner, Argentina’s president, who would like a new financing agreement with the International Monetary Fund next year, has been careful not to pick fights with Mr. Bush.

To strengthen such moderation, Mr. Bush plans to stop in Brazil on his way home from the summit. He and Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are not soul mates. Mr. da Silva denounces the invasion of Iraq, yearns for a “new geography” that would dilute American power and has resisted the FTAA. Bilateral relations are merely “correct”, in the description of Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to the United States. Yet the Americans regard Brazil, South America’s biggest country by far, as a swing vote in a shaky region and have consistently praised its orthodox economic policies. Lula “occupies a unique position in the hemisphere”, said Mr. Bush.

And so the “working visit” is likely to be an amicable one. The United States has recently signaled new flexibility on issues important to Brazil, such as an offer to make substantial cuts in tariffs on farm trade. It is grateful that Brazil has led a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti, though it is not clear whether this will prove successful. A “strategic dialogue” is “developing gradually”, says a senior Brazilian diplomat. Irritants, such as a dispute over American cotton subsidies, are being kept under control.

The United States hopes that Brazil will help in reining in Mr. Chávez and stabilizing neighboring democracies. Brazilian diplomats stress that Lula has close ties to Bolivia’s Mr. Morales. Venezuela’s membership of Mercosur would come with a commitment to maintaining democracy. But the best antidote to chavismo would be progress against poverty and inequality. That will take time.