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Obama’s Latin American odyssey

In her introduction to the English edition of Eduardo Galeano’s classic, Open Veins of Latin America, well-known Chilean-American novelist Isabel Allende revealed that as she fled her country in 1973 following the bloody CIA-plotted military coup in Santiago against her famous Marxist uncle, President Salvador Allende, she couldn’t take much with her.

She took some clothes and family pictures, a small bag with dirt from her garden, and two books: an old edition of the Odes by Pablo Neruda and Galeano’s work. She said she did that because Galeano is an “invitation to explore beyond the appearance of things” — waking up consciousness, bringing people together, interpreting, explaining, denouncing, keeping record, and provoking changes. Allende said it was this “breath of hope” that drew her to Galeano.

Evidently, there was a lot on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s mind when he gifted Galeano’s book to his American counterpart Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas in the wind-swept seaside town of Port of Spain set against the deep blue Caribbean hills. Mr. Obama couldn’t have missed the point. The book retraced Latin America’s sorrows through five centuries of foreign exploitation. Latin Americans want an accounting.

Which, of course, wouldn’t have surprised Mr. Obama. His predecessor, George W. Bush, had driven Latin Americans far to the left. In 2005, in the Argentine beach resort of Mar del Plata, when the Americaas Summit was last held, thousands of protesters condemned Mr. Bush as an evangeliser for war. Maradona called him “human rubbish” and “a bit of an assassin.” A U.S. aircraft carrier was stationed just offshore — in case a hurried evacuation of the commander-in-chief became necessary.

Mr. Obama said he came to Port of Spain to “listen.” By the humility and cordial statesmanship with which he conducted himself, he quelled fears that differences of opinion between the U.S. and the Latin American nations might explode into a rancorous break-up of the summit. On the contrary, he probably ignited a Latin American love affair with him — a new pop star in a continent rich with poets and musicians, revolutionaries and soccer players. Yet he didn’t try to impress as the leader of the most powerful country nor did he claim he could offer a solution to all problems. We know by now the Obama trademark. America is exceptionally lucky to have him as the helmsman. As Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper wrote in another context recently: “Obama has reduced America’s exaggerated sense of self-importance while, at the same time, opening up the possibility for his country to attain a new greatness.”

Indeed, he gained at the summit what the U.S. needs most in the western hemisphere: credibility and the ability to win others’ faith. But as always, there are the unspoken subtexts. In recent years, anti-Americanism was the wonder drug of Latin America. Those collective and primal emotions are far from purged. The change of diplomatic atmosphere is the easy part. But Latin America expects that the U.S. must pay back its moral debt. Even the U.S.’ closest Latin American ally, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe agrees. He said “the whole world has financed the United States, and I believe that they have a reciprocal debt with the planet.”

However, debt repayment does not come easy for the U.S. America is a society that celebrates commerce and selfishness, with a hard egotistical core. Besides, even if it wants to, Mr. Obama faces huge distractions elsewhere: navigating the AfPak exit strategy, coping with the financial and economic crisis, managing camaraderie with inscrutable China, calming the Middle East, etc. Indeed, to borrow Gabriel Marquez’s metaphor, the U.S. has become an autumnal hegemon. It now confronts an uphill task in re-imposing its will in the region.

In the recent years, the U.S. and the rest of the hemisphere headed in almost diametrically opposite directions. A left turn that started with Mr. Chavez’s election in 1998 has become a veritable contagion. Last year, it was Paraguay’s turn to elect a liberation theologian as President. Last month, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the guerilla movement that Ronald Reagan desperately strove to decimate, was elected to power in El Salvador.

The Monroe Doctrine, which rationalised scores of U.S. military interventions and justified the drive to establish economic and political hegemony, is becoming the stuff of history. Apart from the protracted decline of American capitalism, powerful rivals have appeared in the western hemisphere. China is already the region’s second biggest trading partner after the U.S. It is coming with tens of billions of dollars of loans and investments for gaining access to commodities ranging from oil to soybeans to iron ore.

The New York Times cited a $10.2 billion deal between China and Argentina to swap each other’s currencies in order to avoid using dollars in their bilateral trade. It warned that such deals may “lead the way to China’s currency to eventually be used as an alternate reserve currency” and that China is using Latin American investments as “an alternative to investing in United States Treasury notes.”

The European Union is the region’s biggest investor already. Russia is emerging as a major arms supplier. Mr. Chavez visited Moscow thrice in the past two-year period. Russian strategic bombers appeared in Cuba. Russian aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines conducted naval exercises off Venezuela. Russia is now eyeing Brazil as a partner in its fifth-generation fighter programme.

The original purpose for which the forum of the Americas summit was conceived by the Clinton administration in 1994 — furtherance of the agenda of establishing a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas under Washington’s tutelage, leading to the removal of barriers to American capital investment, deregulation of financial markets and a sweeping privatisation programme covering public enterprises and utilities — is no longer realisable. Major South American powers have formed their own trading bloc, Mercosur, and have rejected the neo-liberalist economic strategy. They have instead come up with an alternate “Bolivarist” strategy of development with primacy on equity, justice and inter-dependence.

Thus, Latin American leaderships are today seeking more than a re-engagement with the U.S. They want to redefine the relationship — away from one based on security concerns and perceptions of a troubled region. As Brazil’s charismatic President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, put it recently, “We’re a democratic and peaceful continent, and the United States has to look at the region in a productive, developmental way.” The imperatives are clear. The Inter-American Development Bank has warned that if growth stagnates as a result of the world economic contagion, more than 15 million people a year would fall back into extreme poverty. That is catastrophic for a region that stood as the developing world’s greatest hope for democratic politics by fostering civil society initiatives, well-being, self-government and social justice in a globalised world and by crafting innovative solutions to poverty and exclusion.

But Washington’s locus standi to render economic advice or leadership is manifestly in doubt. In the Latin American perceptions, the global financial collapse is entirely to be attributed to the “irrational behaviour of people that are white” and “blue-eyed”, as Lula commented with biting sarcasm recently, while standing next to the blanching British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Unsurprisingly, the Port of Spain summit ended with no substantive initiatives to tackle the looming economic crisis. Mr. Obama simply pointed to measures announced at the G20 summit in London. He made no promises of U.S. aid.

Of course, Mr. Obama admitted to mistakes in the U.S. policy and pledged to work toward a fresh start. He found the right words. The challenge is to show the willingness to work fairly rather than arrogant paternalism. The litmus test will be the U.S.’ relations with Cuba. It is only through redefining the relationship with Cuba that the U.S. can hope to regain its political foothold in the region. The whole of Latin America is watching.

Mr. Obama is changing the U.S. policy on Cuba. On the eve of the summit, he announced a limited easing of economic sanctions, repealing all restrictions on travel and on remittances by the 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, though the economic blockade remains in place. A momentum is building up toward renewed ties. “The United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba,” Mr. Obama said at the summit. “I know there is a longer journey that must be travelled to overcome decades of mistrust, but there are critical steps we can take toward a new day.”

This is unmistakably a thaw. The Organisation of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza would not have spoken without a nod from Washington when he said the Foreign Minister-level meeting of the OAS next month in Honduras will debate Cuba’s readmission. If two-thirds of the delegates agree — which appears a certainty — the group will take the historic decision to annul the 1962 resolution that suspended Cuba because its “Marxist-Leninist” system was incompatible with OAS principles.

(The writer is a former diplomat.)

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