Latin America: Obama with no Drama

Many Latin Americans lament that President Obama did not make any grand announcements while on his tour.

Many Latin Americans complain that Obama’s trip to the region was overshadowed by the events in Libya and Japan, and that the visitor did not make any impressive declarations. They are mistaken. Relations between countries are the best when they are serious, far from headlines, and when they seem less urgent than issues that excite journalists. These are all signs of maturity and predictability. With the case of Latin America, this is also a symptom of how little the overt political and economic takeoff in the region (with some exceptions) is due to the policies of foreign powers. Progress has occurred outside of the radar of a world that has not put much interest in Latin America. There were rumors that Obama would launch a major hemispheric initiative, mimicking Harry Truman’s Point Four Program or John Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. Anything that would have looked like it would have been counterproductive, in the surreal case that the United States, overwhelmed by deficits and debt, would have come up with the money. It is already an ordeal for Washington to obtain the $1.5 billion destined each year for enforcement in the war against drugs, which according to the U.S. drug czar’s confession last year, “has not been successful.” In any case, foreign aid and international cooperation has had little to do with the entrepreneurial effusiveness behind the reduction of Latin American poverty by a third of the population in the last decade. Recent progress in the Western Hemisphere has not needed any paternalistic initiative.

The things that really matter are occurring on the social base and in the middle class. Latin Americans are trading like never before, something that U.S. exporters are well aware of, as their exports to that region are growing faster than U.S. trade with any other part of the world. And although the United States exports just under three times more to Latin America than to China, the real story is that globalization has vastly expanded the range of trading partners and sources of capital in Latin America. China is already the number one partner in Brazil and Chile, while Colombia, abandoning the hope that Washington ratifies the Free Trade Agreement signed between the two countries five years ago, has embraced China’s economy so hard that there are already plans in the making for an alternative rail to the Panama Canal (to the horror of Washington.) None of this means that Latin America can afford to ignore the United States like the United States has tended to ignore this region, except in matters of security. Therefore, Dilma Rousseff’s efforts in Brazil to reverse the childish anti-American foreign policy of her predecessor are welcome. While Lula da Silva has managed again to be stingy (he boycotted a lunch with Obama), Rousseff ordered her diplomats to vote against Iran at the Human Rights Council of the U.N. If Brazil really wants to have a permanent seat on the Security Council, this kind of responsible behavior will serve them better than wooing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and jesters of the like. It was also encouraging to see Salvadorian President Mauricio Funes send Hugo Chavez a clear message saying that there exists a new center-left in Central America in which developed liberal democracies are more attractive partners than the bloodless left-wing populist clique that he represents.

It was appropriate that Obama gave his speech to the region from Chile. Not only because Chile — politically and economically — is the country closest to development. Sebastian Piñera is also a good interpreter of current trends in Latin America and a good judge of the main actor’s instincts in the area. The relatively small weight of Chile for its size should not prevent the leaders in Washington from resorting to it when they need to better understand what is happening. The insistence that the United States ratify the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia and Panama should not fall on deaf ears. American presidents always pick a bad time to go to Latin America, when a dramatic event across the world steers its attention and that of the media elsewhere. Thus, they will only have time to address essential points during their visits and they will forego the temptation to speak of great things. The cemetery of the relations between the United States and Latin America is filled with great bones.