Repsol, Amistad and the American Friend

The United States’ lukewarm response to the Spanish-Argentine crisis, caused by Argentina’s expropriation of Repsol-YPF, has irritated Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo. This humble writer wasn’t at all surprised. And surely neither were the international analysts or the Spanish diplomatic corps, from whom one would imagine the minister ought to seek advice. Besides the fact that by around the middle of the 1980s, Spain began to contest the omnipresent U.S.’ status in the region as the favored trade and investment partner of many countries (such that the expropriation of Repsol provokes — and here I agree with you, Señor Minister — a hidden joy among the Yankees), our chief diplomat would do well to briefly revise the geopolitical doctrines in operation for many years (centuries!) in the region.

The honorable minister’s CV may contain undoubted experience in economic relations with Latin America, I’m certain, but of geopolitics… underwhelming, Señor José Manuel, underwhelming. And this is no good, because economy often has reasons not understood by geopolitics. It’s no surprise he doesn’t see this: nobody in his government does, beginning with its top man, Señor Rajoy. The Spanish People’s Party (PP) is as passionately as it is mistakenly given over to the first and so estranged from the second that it is destroying the Spanish economy and social cohesion in order to pay our loan sharks everything we owe them. And on the double, make no mistake. Questions of state, sovereignty, higher interest…. hah! It would seem that terminology is reserved for use by Argentines and other undesirables.

The PP expropriates without commiseration the work and wellbeing of the subjects of His Bourbon Highness and hands them over to that handful of congenial and influential financiers. And yet they wring their hands when a populist Argentine Barbie — brave yet, let’s face it, more than a little brazen — expropriates from our greedy multinational (but Spanish, oh so Spanish) petrol company its little southern subsidiary. Could it be that for the PP Spain begins and ends in those skyscrapers where our illustrious telecommunications, electricity, petrol, banking and construction empires can be found? Based on the visual evidence, I wouldn’t discount it.

What I wanted to tell him, to whisper in the minister’s ear, is that since 1823, even with adaptations and updates, the policy of the U.S. in the Pan-American region is summed up by the words “America for Americans.” It’s the so-called Monroe Doctrine, although its true father was President John Quincy Adams. Don’t you remember him, Señor Minister? Of course, man! He was played by Anthony Hopkins in the movie Amistad, about the capture of a Spanish slave ship in North American waters! If history must remind you: Some Spaniards, honored businessmen in the industry of pitiless exploitation of human beings, lose their cargo of slaves. The U.S. justice system not only fails to return the retained “merchandise” but frees the Africans (see, an expropriation like any other) with the message to Spain that it quit playing its dirty tricks in the gringos’ backyard.

And there it is, Señor Minister: Two centuries later the same doctrine is still ordering us about. This is freshman-level International Relations. Hell, I studied it in EGB,* when the Humanities were still taught in school as though they were something useful for future life. Should you have them lying about the house, undust those old text books and you will begin to understand our “American friend” a little better — and many other things besides…

*Translator’s Note: EGB (educación básica general) was a Spanish equivalent to high-school-level American education that has since been restructured.