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LATIN AMERICA-SPAIN: The Rediscovery

Diego Cevallos*

MEXICO CITY, Oct 12 2004 (IPS) - Spain is celebrating Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas Tuesday with promises of stronger cooperation and business ties with the countries it once conquered.

In the meantime, the former Spanish colonies in Latin America are now aiming their anti-imperialist protests at Washington and the policies it is attempting to impose on the region, such as greater trade liberalisation and the neoliberal economic model.

A parade held in Madrid on this 512th anniversary of the explorer’s arrival in the "New World" featured the General San Martín Mounted Grenadiers Regiment of Argentina, a symbol of that country’s early 19th-century struggle for independence – from Spain itself.

"There has been a remarkable change in the positions and attitudes of the Spanish government under (José Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero, as compared to those of right-wing (José María) Aznar, when it comes to relations with Latin America," Armando Puente, the director of the San Martín Institute in Spain, told IPS.

Zapatero, the leader of the Spanish Socialist Party, succeeded Aznar as prime minister in April of this year.

Although the Spanish "conquest", between the years of 1492 and 1650, wiped out more than 70 percent of the estimated 70 million inhabitants living in Latin America and the Caribbean at the time of Columbus’ arrival, anti-Spanish sentiments are now rare in the region.

Instead, when voices are raised in protest, they are calling out against neoliberalism and the plan to create a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), promoted by the United States.

In Costa Rica, for example, numerous social organisations are joining together Tuesday in a march to oppose parliamentary ratification of the free trade agreement signed between the United States and five Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua), and to demand an end to the FTAA initiative.

Similar anti-FTAA demonstrations are also being held in Argentina, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

In Colombia, a group called the Democratic Coalition launched a national strike in opposition to negotiations for a Colombia-U.S. free trade agreement and to the tax reforms being pushed forward by the conservative administration of President Alvaro Uribe.

The anniversary of the arrival of the Spaniards was also marked by demands for justice for the 50 million indigenous people living in Latin America today. While still suffering poverty and marginalisation, these descendants of the peoples "conquered" five centuries ago are beginning to exert growing political influence in the region.

In the impoverished southern Mexican state of Chiapas, home to the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), indigenous groups are holding protest marches in several towns, while native leaders from around the continent are coming together in a conference at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the capital to reflect on the situation facing their people today.

Events like these are also taking place in Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru, the Latin American countries with the highest proportion of indigenous inhabitants.

Reflecting the position of a great many social organisations and some governments in Latin America, the Spanish prime minister decided that there would be no U.S. troops marching in the parade this Oct. 12 – which is also Spain’s national holiday – as had been customary since 2001.

In their place is the Argentine military regiment named after General José de San Martín. Along with Simón Bolivar, San Martín was one of the leading figures in the wars of independence that freed the countries of South America from Spanish colonial rule in the early 19th century.

Zapatero has declared that cooperation with Latin America is a priority for his government, and that he supports initiatives aimed at converting the region’s debts into funding for development projects. He has also announced his backing of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s proposal for the creation of a global alliance against poverty.

At the same time, there is growing evidence that Spain is involved in a "reconquest" of Latin America, which began in the early 1990s, although this time it is in the world of business and investment.

According to a report from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the largest transnational enterprise in the region, as measured by sales in 2002, is the Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, while the Spanish oil company Repsol-YPF is currently the largest transnational in the primary sector.

In 1998, for the first time in history, Spanish foreign direct investment in Latin America, totalling some 10.1 billion dollars, outstripped direct foreign investment from the United States, by a margin of 900 million dollars.

This trend continued in 1999, with 20.5 billion dollars in investment from Spain, which had taken over as the largest foreign investor in the region, and 20 billion from the United States, pushed to second place.

In more recent years, there has been an overall drop in foreign direct investment in Latin America, including Spain’s share. But Spanish companies continue to be the clear leaders among foreign corporations in Latin America in the fields of telecommunications, electric power, natural gas, oil and financial services.

According to Mexican sociologist Rafael Torres, Spain is no longer seen as the "bad guy" when Oct. 12 rolls around.

"Although the indigenous peoples and other poor sectors in the region are still suffering the consequences of the so-called conquest, Spain is no longer directly responsible for what is happening today in Latin America," Torres told IPS.

Moreover, terms like "conquest" and "discovery" are not used anymore in Spain to refer to Columbus’ arrival in the Americas. Instead, the event is described as the "meeting of two cultures", which is far less offensive to activists and indigenous peoples.

Torres noted that the "bad guys" in Latin America today are the prevailing model of globalisation, the structural adjustment policies imposed by the Washington-based multilateral financial entities, the opening of trade, and the economic pressures exerted by the U.S. government.

Roughly 223 million Latin Americans – over 43 percent of the population as a whole – live in poverty, and close to 105 million live in extreme poverty, according to ECLAC statistics. And the region’s 50 million indigenous people are among the poorest of the poor.

* Additional reporting by Tito Drago in Spain.