Latin America: US relations (pub. March 23, 2007)

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A series of protests against US foreign policy erupted in several Latin American countries in March 2007, whilst Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías was touring Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Jamaica, and Haiti, (on March 9-13) and US President George W Bush was meeting the leaders of Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico (on March 8-14). The near-simultaneous tours were reportedly part of a "battle for the hearts and minds" of Latin America, an apparent reference to ongoing "rival" attempts by Venezuela and the USA to influence the future direction of policies in the region.

Immediate Context

"Anti-US" sentiment had been rising in Latin America since the Bush administration assumed power in the USA in 2001, partly because a significant proportion of Latin American citizens blamed previous US interventions in the region (see below) for many of its ongoing economic and social problems. The rise of "anti-US" sentiment had subsequently led to the election of several leftist leaders in Latin America (including those in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Uruguay ), some of whom were frequently and publicly critical of the Bush administration’s policies in the region and elsewhere in the world, most notably those in the Middle East and including the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In September 2006 Chávez described Bush as "the devil" and said that "US imperialism" threatened the "survival of the human species". In January Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, blamed "neo-liberal" economic policies (which were widely introduced in the region in the 1980s at the behest of the USA), for the poverty that affected the majority of the country’s population, adding that their implementation had led to the "looting" of Bolivia’s natural resources. During his inauguration speech in January 2007, Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, vowed to end "neo-liberal globalisation" because, he claimed, it turned "countries into markets, not nations". US concerns about leaders such as Chávez, Correa, and Morales, were further increased by their broad ideological links with Cuban President Fidel Castro, who was widely regarded as the USA’s principal political nemesis in the Americas.

Reaction and Outlook

The popularity of leaders such as Chávez also appeared to reflect a diminishing US influence in Latin America. On March 10, 2007, whilst Bush was in Uruguay for talks with Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez, he refrained from answering questions about Chávez’s growing regional influence and told reporters that he was in the region "to advance a positive, constructive diplomacy". Meanwhile, Chávez had attended a rally in Buenos Aires (the capital of Argentina) to deliver a speech to an estimated 20,000 Argentine citizens who strongly opposed the Bush administration. On March 11 Chávez was in Ciudad de Leon, Nicaragua’s second largest city, where he said that " ... new winds blowing in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba", allowed those countries to "form an axis of popular forces ... to defeat the [US] empire and its new offensive".

Historical Context

US relations with Latin America were less sour during (and immediately after) World War II, leading in July 1940 to the signing (in Cuba) by 21 countries in the region of a mutual defence pact as part of the Allied Powers. In February 1945 the USA participated in talks ("The Inter-American Conference on the Problems of War and Peace ") which led in March to the signing of an accord under which 19 countries in the Americas agreed to provide "reciprocal assistance" and act in "solidarity". The USA was one of 21 governments in the Americas which in 1948 signed an agreement to "fight against communism", whilst simultaneously ratifying the Charter of the Organization of American States. By the early 1950s, however, the USA was expressing concerns over the implementation of a series of leftist policies in Guatemala, leading in June 1954 to the overthrow of Arbenz Guzman, the country’s democratically elected president. Guzman’s overthrow had been reportedly orchestrated by the CIA and it precipitated a protracted period of US intervention (and allegations of US intervention) in Latin America, including in Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

US relations with Cuba soured after Castro assumed power in January 1959, leading to the US government ending its diplomatic relations with the island in 1961, whilst economic sanctions which were first imposed against Cuba in 1960 were still in force in 2007. In April 1962 the US government clandestinely supported an attempted military coup against Castro, but the small group of US-based Cuban exiles which led the military operation were defeated during the Bay of Pigs invasion after three days of fighting against Castro’s forces. In October Cuba was the focus of an epic international crisis (the "Cuban Missile Crisis"), in which the USA and the Soviet Union verged on the brink of a nuclear war after the installation in Cuba of a Soviet missile base. The CIA was also involved in the overthrow in September 1973 of Salvador Allende, who had been elected as president of Chile in 1970, by a military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, who then ruled the country as a dictator (1973-90). The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague ruled in June 1986 that the USA had illegally intervened in the internal affairs of Nicaragua by supporting a guerrilla war against the Nicaraguan government by right-wing Contra rebels. In Venezuela, Chávez claimed that the US government had supported a coup which temporarily removed him from power in April 2002 and he often claimed to be in possession of intelligence suggesting that the USA was planning a military invasion of his country to secure its vast oil reserves.

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