While the US is busy fighting in Fallujah, China is knocking on the door of the US backyard<g>--Analysis: Latin Americans face new Bush
By Roland Flamini
UPI Chief International Correspondent
Published November 9, 2004
WASHINGTON -- President George Bush is confirmed in the White House for a second term, but in Latin America this week attention is fixed on another president -- Hu Jintao, the Chinese head of state who begins a 12-day visit to the Hemisphere on Thursday.
Hu is leading a 500-strong delegation, including 200 business executives, to Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Cuba.
Trade contacts between raw materials-hungry China and Latin America have grown steadily over the past couple of years, with the Chinese importing soybeans, iron ores and copper. In 2003, Brazil had a trade surplus of $3.7 billion with China, according to the Xinhua news agency. But China's interest in Latin America goes beyond Brazil. For example, a Latin American source said the Chinese are planning to invest $1.5 billion in Bolivia.
Both sides expect the visit to raise the level of trade cooperation even further through a series of bilateral agreements. This has some Latin American politicians looking nervously over their shoulder to see Washington's reaction. In Argentina, Jorge Arguello, chairman of the Parliamentary Foreign Policy Commission, denied criticism that a proposed new trade agreement with Beijing covering mining, communications, and oil production would - as the newspaper Clarin put it - "cause a short circuit with the United States." Another paper quoted the U.S. ambassador to Buenos Aires, Lino Gutierrez, as saying that Washington was not worried about Chinese penetration in Argentina.
To some extent, Beijing strengthened its ties with Latin America while Washington's attention was diverted elsewhere. Following his first election four years ago, George W. Bush promised to pay special attention to Hemispheric affairs. He got off to a promising start with bilateral talks were with Mexico's President Vicente Fox. His first international meeting was the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City early in 2001.
But 9/11 - the terrorist attack on New York and Washington in 2001 - shifted the Bush administration's focus first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. Latin America returned to its traditional place on the back burner of U.S. foreign policy. American neglect coincided with China's frenetic economic expansion and Beijing's search for new resources of raw materials and new trading partners. By 2003 China's imports from Latin American countries had increased by 79.1 percent, the highest rate of growth with any country (China's imports worldwide were up 40 percent).
Knowledgeable diplomatic sources in Washington said Monday they expected pending trade negotiations to make quick progress. Washington was said to be interested in extending CASTA, the Central American Trade Agreement, to include Colombia, Peru, and Panama, and to move ahead with the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The area, however, is hoping that the new Bush administration would also want to focus on some of the major pressing problems such as immigration, trade, and terrorism - the Latin American brand.
Latin American immigrants come from all over: there are 1 million Peruvians in New York State alone. But the main problem is the flood of humanity that crosses the border from Mexico. Vicente Fox wants to secure agreement on legalizing all of the 8 million Mexicans who live and work in the United States -- more than half of them illegally. Bush has blown hot and cold on the proposal, but Fox said last week that he hoped Bush's re-election could lead to a fresh start on the issue.
While the United States remains by far the biggest player in the Hemisphere, it also has a rival in the European Union, which now dispenses about $1 billion in grants throughout Central and South America. Differences in approach separate Washington and Brussels, with the EU developing an "integrationist" policy of creating group projects, and the United States preferring to deal with countries on a bi-lateral basis. One initiative reflecting the EU approach is the current development (with Spain taking the lead) of a major electrical power network that will eventually link several Central and South American countries.
The Bush administration will also have to come to terms with significant political changes since 2001. While Washington has been busy with Iraq, more Latin American countries have edged towards the left in recent elections. Bolivia and Uruguay have newly elected socialist presidents. Last week, voters chose 28 governors in Venezuela allied to the populist president Hugo Chavez, and in Chile more than 2,000 local officials mostly from the progressive governing coalition headed by President Ricardo Lagos.
On the face of it this makes things tougher with a staunch conservative in the White House. But observers say that the present crop of socialist leaders in Latin America are hardly the Marxist revolutionaries of the past. Relations between the Bush administration and Brazil's Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva are good, mainly because the longtime trade unionist now preaches strict economic discipline. "Washington was very scared of Lula at first, but now the Americans are happy with him," said one senior Latin American official in Washington.
Anti-Bush sentiment is as prevalent in the Hemisphere as it is in Europe. There was overwhelming popular opposition to the war in Iraq. The prominent Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes recently wrote, "What is alarming about the Bush administration is its formal denunciation of the basic rules of international intercourse. With us or against us, President Bush declares starkly and simplistically. ... Is it strange that many Latin Americans should see in these sentiments an aggressive denial of the only leverage we have in dealing with Washington: the rule of law, the balance obtained through diplomatic negotiation?"
But observers say most of the left-wing leaders are more pragmatic, and look at Brazil as the model of a healthy working relationship with the United States. Lula's decision to contribute troops to the peacekeeping force in Haiti along with Chile was a big step in the Bush administration's relations with Rio, and opens the way for greater U.S. reliance on the region itself to cope with regional issues.
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