Do We Matter to Washington?

Quite often, Latin American international relations officers wonder if we have validity on Washington’s foreign policy agenda.

Except for a few crises, like the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 or the one with Mexico in recent years, we are not at the center of U.S. interests.

Sometimes, certain situations involving revolutionary movements (or coups) happen that disrupt the region [Latin America] and put the most sensitive ones from Washington on alert.

In other words, we matter little because we are nations that do not contribute much to the interests of the American power, except Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and the rebellious and controversial Cuba that always has proposals that disturb the status quo of U.S. interests.

When looking at things from the viewpoint of the USA, Republicans are the ones who take us into account the least, since they prefer policies of strength and victories and interests mostly found with the other powers.

Usually, the American Democratic presidents are the ones who deal with their neighbors in Latin America the most.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt favored a good-neighbor policy, Jimmy Carter one of respect for human rights, and Bill Clinton one of free trade among the Americas.

Or are they maybe only trying to be nice or conciliatory, like when they come to Latin America and start to talk like Tarzan in the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs?

However, the new turns of the Department of State toward the region are surprising.

Why Do They Do It?

The recent shift of President Obama’s policy toward Cuba, his strategic alliance with Colombia, his meticulous communication with Mexico, and the troubling altercations with the Brazilian president, Rousseff, tell us that, finally, we matter to the American president, or at least a little more than we did to his predecessors!

President Barack Obama was quite busy before with his most vexing agenda. He had focused all his policies on the fight against terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, drug trafficking in the region, and the routine friction that normally occurs between Russia and China in different areas.

And Latin America? We had been left out. Nevertheless, with the attempt of his [Obama’s] administration to re-initiate diplomatic relations with Cuba, despite Republican congressmen having opposed nearly every initiative of the Democratic president during these two periods in the region [Latin America], there is already a new perspective.

The point is that after the progress with Cuba, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson announced that they will be asking Congress to approve a budget of $1.99 billion to help with “security and prosperity in Central America.”

However, after reading the document carefully, the concept of Central America includes Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico and Haiti. And the term prosperity is tied to the word security, which is the one that truly interests the White House (it is very like the diplomats to be elastic when it comes to definitions and grandiloquent when they are going to give something).

When seeing the large amount of silver, there is enthusiasm about tropical regions. However, that aid is marked. And the amounts become smaller when one adds administrative costs, salaries, and travel allowances of Department of State officers in charge of the liaison.

$119 million would go to Mexico to fight drug trafficking; $288.7 would go to Colombia for the same issue; $95.9 would go to Peru, the world’s largest producer of cocaine; $241.6 would go to Haiti; and $53.5 would be given to promote freedom of the press in Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

Does Washington already assume that Cuba returned to the fold to offer them lustrous package deals of cooperation with incautious strategies?

Of course, the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America will take this as an insult. The sad rhetoric will prevail.

If Obama fixes things with Cuba, there will be no more arguments to continue claiming that that is a pending obligation. Surely, the leaders of ALBA will dig up history with their dingy archaeologist chisels and hammers. Will they ever be able to adapt to Washington? Or will it be the new generations, especially the Cubans, already quite tired of so much propaganda and historical resentment, the ones who change their position?

In his last two years, President Obama decided to make his vision clearer with his little neighbors. The gesture with Cuba breaks any antecedent. Will Venezuela follow after? Or will Cuba set the precedent so that Venezuela adapts and gets along with the USA?

Or are these mathematical actions searching for other strategic allies from the South to create a wider Western front that faces the attacks from the enemies that arise from the agitated East?