Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

U.S. ELECTION: Latin America Resigned to Four More Years of Bush

Diego Cevallos*

MEXICO CITY, Nov 3 2004 (IPS) - The hopes of millions of people in Latin America that George W. Bush would not be re-elected as president of the United States have fallen flat. But governments in the region that quietly or openly shared that desire are now trying to make the best of things.

While social activists lamented Bush’s triumph over Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, governments in the region that have opposed some of the U.S. president’s policies congratulated him on his re-election Wednesday, and some even found advantages of a Bush triumph for the region.

“It’s a terrible misfortune” for the world and for Latin America that Bush will remain in the White House, because he endangers the stability “of the entire planet,” the president of the Chilean Mineworkers’ Confederation, Moisés Labraña, one of Chile’s leading trade unionists, told IPS.

A similar view was expressed by Héctor de la Cueva, one of the leaders of the Hemispheric Social Alliance, which links activists throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

“This is truly a calamity, and I believe difficult times lie ahead, times of great polarisation for our region, where there is already strong, growing rejection of Bush,” the Mexican activist remarked to IPS.

According to surveys sponsored by the Chilean-based polling firm Latinobarómetro, since Bush took office in 2001, the proportion of Latin Americans holding a favourable view of the United States has fallen from 73 to 64 percent, with especially steep declines in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay.

And a poll on the U.S. presidential elections carried out by the University of Maryland and Globescan of Toronto reported that 42.5 percent of respondents in nine Latin American countries hoped that Kerry would win, while just 19 percent were in favour of re-election for Bush.

Bush “is imposing the politics of war on the world, as well as an economic model that brutally affects the interests of workers, which also affects our country in particular,” said Labraña.

One of the first Latin American leaders to congratulate Bush was Mexican President Vicente Fox, in a written message in which he urged the U.S. president to take up issues of bilateral interest again as soon as possible.

In other countries, the official reaction was slower in coming. However, in keeping with protocol, no government made any negative comment on the outcome of the election, which was reported Wednesday afternoon.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said the “good relations” between the two countries would continue regardless of who won the elections, despite Brazil’s deep discrepancies with Washington on trade questions and the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

“Our relations with the Bush administration are very good,” said Amorim.

Cristina Pecequilo, an expert in inter-American relations at the Ibero-American University Centre in Brazil, said the strengthening of the Republican majority in the U.S. Congress and the strong popular support for Bush in Tuesday’s elections “legitimise” U.S. policies that “worry the world.”

These policies may even become more hard-line now, she told IPS, since the U.S. president will be “freer, and less subject to pressure.”

In Latin America and the Caribbean, there is growing opposition by social organisations and several governments to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which was originally to go into effect in 2005.

But while the talks on the FTAA have come to a virtual standstill, South America, has been making progress towards intraregional integration, with a free trade agreement between the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and the Andean Community of Nations, comprised of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

That accord is seen as the forerunner to a “South American Union”, a strategic integration process led by Brazil with the aim of strengthening the region’s bargaining position in negotiations with the United States and the European Union.

The region has also overwhelmingly opposed the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. In none of the 19 Latin American countries where Latinobarómetro sponsored 19,605 surveys this year was majority support found for the war on Iraq.

The largest proportions of respondents in favour of the war were found in Panama and Honduras (29 and 26 percent, respectively), while in Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay less than five percent of those interviewed supported the invasion.

“Under Bush’s new government, we’re going to see a very strong polarisation in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the level of rejection of the United States will undoubtedly grow,” said the Hemispheric Social Alliance’s de la Cueva.

During Bush’s next four-year term, the U.S. government is likely to run into greater resistance to its foreign policy, especially in the South American countries that have shifted to the left, like Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and, in the near future, Uruguay, where the leftist Broad Front coalition’s candidate Tabaré Vázquez became president-elect on Sunday.

However, Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa, like his counterpart Amorim in Brazil, underlined his country’s good relations with the U.S. He also pointed to the progress made in trade between Latin America and the United States under Bush.

The Argentine consul in New York, Héctor Timerman, even said Bush’s free market policies were better for Argentina than Kerry’s potential “protectionism”.

But prior to Tuesday’s elections, the wife of Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, Senator Cristina Fernández, attended the Democratic Party convention where Kerry was proclaimed candidate.

A second term for Bush will not bring “changes in Washington’s behaviour towards the region, because Latin America does not exist in the U.S. political debate,” Uruguayan Senator Reinaldo Gargano, who is mentioned as the possible foreign minister of Uruguay’s future Broad Front government, told IPS.

“Actually I did not see that it occupied any space at all in the campaign” of either of the two candidates, he added.

“With Bush we are not going to achieve real openness of trade. His agreements always include protection for the products that are most sensitive for the United States,” he argued.

In Venezuela, left-leaning President Hugo Chávez has had constant verbal run-ins with the Bush administration, and Chávez had openly stated that he hoped Kerry would defeat “the Republican extreme right”.

But on Wednesday, Vice-President José Vicente Rangel said his country would like “normal” relations with the United States. “We do not see the United States as an enemy or adversary, but we will maintain our position against the war in Iraq,” he added.

Caracas and Washington are mainly concerned with preserving their trade ties, as Venezuela exports 1.5 million barrels a day of oil to the United States.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jesús Pérez said “we are willing to do all we can to improve our relations with the United States, but based on mutual respect rather than interference” in internal affairs.

Bush has recognised that Venezuelan voters democratically confirmed their support for Chávez in the Aug. 15 presidential recall referendum, in which 59 percent came out in his favour.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government issues frequent warnings of what it sees as the Chávez administration’s propensity to break the rules of democracy.

* With reporting from Mario Osava in Brazil, Gustavo González in Chile, Humberto Márquez in Venezuela and Raúl Pierri in Uruguay.