Wake up, Latin America, it’s time to start dreaming: Towards a new Latin America of the 21st century

There is no better example of the degree of anger the Bush administration generates around the world than this week’s shoe attack against the President of the United States at his last press conference in Baghdad. But if this zapatazo as the Latin American Press has referred to the incident, was a literal attack on the President, there are signs of many more metaphorical zapatazos to the US and its sense of might. This week, Latin America finally stood up to its neighbour with a single voice. It is now President Obama’s turn to outline the next US administration’s policy towards Latin America.


Kepa Artaraz
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1674/1/

It is not only Egyptian journalists that are angry with the world’s superpower. The entire world is angry with reputedly the worst American administration in living memory. The blunders have gone far and wide, from its Middle Eastern policy and the invasion of Iraq, the so called war on terror that was seen as justification for secret detention centres, human rights abuses, the use of torture as a legitimate questioning method, Guantanamo Bay and rendition fights, to the imposition of a economic regulatory light touch that has led to the biggest financial crisis since 1929.

Clearly the world has a lower opinion of the US now than it did in 2000, even after the biggest presidential election shambles in history that saw George W. Bush appointed as the new US president by his father’s friends. Neocons wanted to impose US might around the world – shock and awe was the name of their bombing campaign that began the invasion of Iraq – and yet, eight years later America appears weaker, not mightier, than ever.

A sign of that weakness is the superpower’s powerlessness to stop a new correlation of forces taking place in the world. The United States is, by far, the most powerful military force in the world, something that is not going to change any time soon. However, the geopolitics of capital point in the direction of China, the new creditor of the United States, currently holding the biggest reserves of US dollars in the world, and to other emerging nations such as India and Russia. Is the post-communist unipolar world led by the US about to change?

The answer is yes, and no. In a recent article Serge Halimi complains that the G20 is useless because its most recent meeting in November not only did not challenge the established international financial order but it supported it. So the new emerging powers of India, Brazil and Russia, led by China, did not overturn the sacred truths of the Washington Consensus but reinforced them, calling for more, not less, free trade, and an emergency agreement in the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation.

It would be foolish for the emerging economies to attempt to overturn the economic system that has seen them become global economic players in the last two decades. No, they will do anything to return to the situation we were in before the ugly sub-prime monster reared its head, in part because, as is the case with China, its economy is joined at the hip with that of the US. One produces what the other consumes so the current financial crisis affects everybody.

But on the other hand, it seems obvious that the global power centre of gravity is rapidly changing to the East on the one hand, and towards the South on the other. A case in point is Latin America, where a newly found assertiveness and unity of voice might well be the direct result of US weakness.

This week, a similar attempt on the dignity of the US as that perpetrated by the infamous shoe attack has taken place in the city of Bahia, Brazil, where, led by world statesman and President of Brazil Lula, a mega summit brought together the meetings of the organisation of Latin American and Caribbean countries, MERCOSUR and UNASUR. As president Correa from Ecuador argued, the gathering was symbolically important as it was the first time in history that all Latin American countries met by themselves in a meeting agreed by themselves without the presence of the US.

Three key resolutions at these various meetings can be seen to challenge US power in the region. The first is the decision to accept Cuba as member of the Rio group. Coming on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and after 46 years as a political pariah in the continent when, following US demands, Cuba was expelled from OAS in 1962, the tide is finally turning, thus beginning the political rehabilitation of the country at Latin American level.

It could have gone further as President Morales of Bolivia demanded that the US either accepts Cuba back to the OAS or leaves the organisation. Lula disassociated himself from that position arguing that the new president of the US needs time to outline his policies towards Latin America before Latin America either welcomes or condemns these views. He did, however, condemn the US embargo on Cuba and joined a chorus of support for the island and expectation that the new US administration will review this policy.

Secondly, the presidents of UNASUR officially received the report by the investigative commission they themselves set up in September to look into the murder of 20 peasants in the northern region of Pando, Bolivia. They unanimously confirmed that what took place in Pando was a massacre and a serious breach in human rights and were united in supporting the democratic process of change in Bolivia and in declaring impunity a thing of the past. The declaration is a clear affront to extreme right wing groups in Bolivia and to their supporters in the US who, through the expelled US ambassador in the country, were fomenting civil strife and violence in August and early September. The United States has been conspicuously quiet about these events.

Thirdly, the meeting in Bahia creates a Latin American Security Council and common defence programme. Does this mark the last rites for a US Monroe Doctrine that, since 1823, has given itself the right to intervene in any number of Latin American countries, both directly and indirectly, supporting every dictatorship as long as it defended American interests? Is this a salvo to the IV fleet re-established this year to patrol Caribbean and Latin American waters?

Clearly, the events this week in Bahia mark a new departure for a region that is proceeding towards an accelerated process of political, economic and military integration. In the process, Latin America also aims to be more independent from the US. And so the proposals first discussed barely a month ago at the ALBA meeting in Caracas of creating a single Latin American currency are reinforced by the creation of a development Banco del Sur that replaces dependency of countries in the region on the World Bank and the IMF.

Clearly there is a new correlation of forces in the world and some of the more assertive and self-assured – even hostile and rancorous – views expressed in Bahia are an indicator that the countries of Latin America are starting to question every bastion of US power, from its self-appointed role as the world’s policeman, to that of defender of the international financial institutions that countries like Ecuador claim have inflicted on them illegitimate, immoral and illegal debts.

They say that former Mexican President Porfirio Diaz once lamented that his country was ‘so far from God and so close to the United States’. This week, that distance to the United States seems to have increased just a little bit.