Bush record on Latin America is mixed
BY JORGE I. DOMINGUEZ
The Miami Herald
June 5, 2005 Sunday
'So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.''
Thus spoke President Bush during his second inaugural address. As we contemplate this president's second term, consider whether his first term's policies toward Latin America echo the elements of this extraordinary sentence. By affirming universalist principles, the president commits his administration to the support of democratic movements and institutions but in the process deliberately downplays the possible importance of context, subtleties or historical trajectories.
Beginning in the second term of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the United States developed an impressive policy in support of democracy in the Americas. This policy endured, notwithstanding changes of incumbent and political party in the White House.
Although democratic institutions were not defended with equal vigor, efficacy or success in every instance, the general direction of U.S. policy was clear and for the most part successful through three otherwise quite different U.S. presidents. The incumbent president's record with regard to the defense of democratic institutions in the Americas is mixed, however.
In April 2002, a coup attempt sought to overthrow Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. Some allege that the U.S. government supported the coup. The administration itself protests that it did not. Unfortunately, if one is to believe the administration, the inescapable conclusion is that the U.S. government at this time behaved with stunning ineptitude, incapable of communicating its pro-democracy views to just about anyone and unable to dispel widespread contrary impressions.
Almost two years later, the Bush administration took a leading role in deposing Haiti's constitutional President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was not a good president. But President Bush's father behaved quite differently when a military coup first overthrew Aristide: In 1991 the United States supported Haiti's constitutional government, even if headed by a bad president.
In early 2004, the U.S. government publicly and strongly pushed Aristide out, even though Haiti's government was facing an insurrection led by a diverse group of people, some of whom had been accused of serious crimes. Thus, U.S. actions abetted the rule of the mob to overthrow constitutional government.
The Bush administration not only failed to support constitutional presidents whom it detested but it also failed to support its best allies in the Americas. In 2001, Argentina headed toward a severe financial crisis. The Bush administration did little to help solve any of the problems that the Argentine government faced. The administration's first Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, went out of his way to undermine and ridicule the Argentine government's efforts, publicly according Argentina no credit for its remarkable economic performance in most of the 1990s. The fact that Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, the architect of Argentina's economic success in the early 1990s, was again attempting to rescue his country from financial meltdown seemed not to matter.
Nor was the Bush administration moved by claims that Argentina's democracy might not survive a crisis of the foreseeable magnitude. The construction of democracy in Argentina had been slow, painful and complex -- a great achievement of the 1980s and 1990s. The Bush administration did virtually nothing to defend Argentine democracy at this hour of peril. That Argentine democracy has survived is a credit to Argentines -- alone.
If you once make a mistake, try and try again to make it one more time -- that seemed to be the lesson drawn. In early 2003, Bolivia's President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada faced both a budget shortfall and a serious set of entangled social, economic and political problems. He asked the U.S. government for budget support; he received a laughably insignificant sum. Sanchez de Lozada warned the Bush administration that his government might fall if such aid were not forthcoming. His government did fall for various reasons, as riots and street protests compelled the president to resign. The lack of U.S. support was no help.
Yet Sanchez de Lozada was probably the Latin American president whose policies were closest to Washington's virtually across the board.
Less important but still characteristic of Bush administration policies has been the behavior of its embassies at key junctures.
* In the last Bolivian presidential election, the U.S. ambassador publicly denounced one of the presidential candidates, Evo Morales, leader of the coca growers. Morales' popularity surged, putting him within a whisker of winning the presidential election.
* In El Salvador in 2004, U.S. officials spoke out during the presidential campaign against the leading opposition party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The U.S.-preferred candidate won the election. This intervention in the campaign was, however, unnecessary, because the winning government party was perfectly capable of advancing its own interests. The intervention was probably adverse to democracy, however, by sending the signal that Washington was unwilling to let Salvadorans construct democracy on their own.
The Bush administration's record regarding democracy is not entirely negative, fortunately. The U.S. government played a constructive role during Brazil's 2002 presidential election, supporting an agreement between the International Monetary Fund and the Brazilian government and opposition. That agreement allowed the Brazilian left, for the first time ever, to win the presidency.
Similarly in 2004, the Bush administration adopted a hands-off policy in Uruguay's presidential elections, won also for the first time ever by the left. At times of crisis, the Bush administration supported the governments of Peru and Ecuador, and it has provided impressive support to the constitutional government of Colombia.
On balance, therefore, the record is mixed. The Bush administration seems as likely to foster as to retard democratic processes in the Americas. May the president take seriously his own words from his second inaugural address, and may his second term provide consistent support to democrats in Latin America, not excluding -- as in Argentina and Bolivia in the first term -- the best friends that the United States has had in the region.
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Jorge I. Dominguez is the director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. A longer version of this article appears in the Spring/Summer edition of ReVista, Harvard Review of Latin America. |
