U.S. Now Lies Outside Pan-American Group

Latin American nations, large and small, no longer want their futures to be made in the United States.

That is the underlying message from the eight Latin American presidents who met last weekend in Acapulco, as it was the fundamental meaning of last August’s Central American peace agreement.

The very fact that eight Latin American presidents met for four days without even inviting the President of the United States, an unprecedented event, was noteworthy. The presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama--the four nations that in 1983 launched the Contadora initiative to seek a diplomatic settlement in Central America--were joined at Acapulco by the four presidents (from Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay) who in 1985 formed the support group to back Contadora’s efforts. Together, the eight presidents represent about 90% of Latin America’s population.

The presidents’ decision to meet in Acapulco capped two years of growing interchange among them. The Contadora nations have been plugging away in search of a peaceful solution in Central America. Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have taken major steps toward economic integration in their subregion. Argentina and Mexico have played important roles in the five-continent peace initiative to ban nuclear weapons. The democratic presidents of South America--especially from Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil--have been consulting each other--often informally, frequently by telephone--just as the Central American presidents have been doing in the wake of the Guatemala agreements.

In all of these forums Latin American leaders have been looking for ways to resolve their region’s problems without external guidance. Where possible, they have sought to present common proposals to the governments of the United States and the other industrial nations. The Acapulco summit meeting’s appeal for a new approach to Latin America’s prolonged debt crisis is the most significant move so far in this direction.

Three features of Latin America’s turn toward a more concerted approach deserve emphasis.

First, these efforts underline the fact that Latin America and the United States do not form a Pan-American community, with automatically shared interests; on the contrary, Latin American nations unite with other Third World countries more often against the United States than by following Washington’s lead. In the 1985 U.N. General Assembly, tiny Grenada was the only country in all of Latin America and the Caribbean that agreed with the United States on more than half the issues voted on. Apart from Cuba and Nicaragua, which were openly hostile to the United States, the three nations that disagreed most frequently with Washington--more than eight times out of 10--were Latin America’s largest: Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.

Second, Latin American unity has been motivated and reinforced in part by a shared feeling that Washington is not responsive enough to regional concerns. It is a sad fact that Latin America’s attractive new political leaders--moderate, pragmatic, reformist civilians--have found the United States to be more of an obstacle than an ally. Latin American leaders today are frustrated that they have to cope with a U.S. Administration that is more ideological and interventionist than any in memory.

The third point worth noting is that the new Latin American trend toward cooperation is taking place almost entirely outside the formal institutions of the inter-American system. The Organization of American States, which was once a proud entity, is not dealing in any important way with the hemisphere’s major issues. It is time either to address the weaknessesof the OAS, as the presidents meeting at Acapulco urged, or to abandon its pretense. What the United States has achieved during the 1980s in subservience from Grenada or Honduras has been lost, in short, in strains with the major countries of Latin America and in the virtual collapse of inter-American institutions. The United States simply cannot afford to “regain” Grenada, or even Nicaragua, while alienating the rest of the Americas.

Latin Americans want cooperation from the United States, not imposition. The eight presidents have issued an important challenge. It is up to Washington to respond.