Ambassador, Go Home!

Two weeks after the end of his Latin American tour, Barack Obama received news that his ambassador to Ecuador was a persona non grata. The new blow did not come alone. While Obama played football in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Pascual was presenting his resignation as ambassador to Mexico in response to President Calderón’s unusual and embarrassing public tantrum. And if to this pair of headless embassies we add the fact that the U.S. has had no ambassador in Bolivia and Venezuela for two and a half years, and that it has been decades since it had one in Cuba, the number of countries in Latin America without a U.S. ambassador is five.

Of course, each case is different. Ambassador Hodges was expelled in retaliation because WikiLeaks leaked confidential reports from the State Department that denounced the corruption of the then-commander of the National Police, Jaime Hurtado, and hinted that President Rafael Correa knew about his corruption. Correa, a defiant and emotional man, responded sharply to the leaks and even justified the expulsion, accusing the U.S. embassy of spying.

In return, the State Department expelled Ecuador’s ambassador to Washington, Luis Gallegos.

Unfortunately for Ecuador, the give and take has not stopped there. Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York, who has called Correa’s reaction “whimsical and impulsive,” has warned that the expulsion of Hodges “is disappointing and counterproductive, both for the U.S. -Ecuadorian relationship and for the Ecuadorian people … At a time when the Andean Trade Preferences (ATPDEA) have lapsed and there is still a chance that Congress could renew the preferences, President Correa has seriously undermined the possibility that these preferences will be reinstated in the foreseeable future. Correa’s irresponsible expulsion of Ambassador Hodges is both whimsical and impulsive, and comes at a great cost to his own people.”

In Mexico, Calderón, as Correa in Ecuador, reacted in a surprisingly visceral manner to the U.S. ambassador’s private reports to his superiors in Washington, which were also disclosed by WikiLeaks.

Undermining the presidential inauguration, Calderón said that Pascual was ignorant and accused him of misrepresenting the actual situation in Mexico by expressing doubt about the professional performance of the Mexican army in the so-called war against drugs. These same doubts have long formed part of the national public debate in that country. And although it is clear that the Obama administration will not react by expelling the Mexican ambassador to Washington, Calderon’s tantrum will cost him.

Mexican authorities seem to have trouble understanding that — despite the legitimate claims that the United States has failed to reduce the consumption of drugs, which, in their path through Mexico, spread death and chaos, and that the U.S. has been reluctant to stop the flow of U.S. weapons to the cartels — they are not entitled to unconditional financial assistance and cooperation in the fight against drugs. Those who cooperate with Mexico in the fight against drugs have every right to criticize the endemic problems of corruption and the inefficiency of police and justice institutions in Mexico.

The U.S. dilemma regarding the future of relations with Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador is more complicated. Peter Hakim of the Inter-American Dialogue thinks that even though the reactions of Chávez, Morales and Correa were unjustified and deserved a response, the U.S. needs to be more creative and insist on reintegration, beginning with Venezuela.

I don’t know if it is worth turning the other cheek or whether the U.S. should leave matters as they are and await a more propitious time to attempt full re-integration without having to receive more blows.