Be Aware of Our Shadow on Latin America

Every four years, with ritual predictability, Latin Americanists earnestly call on the next U.S. administration to express and demonstrate more interest in countries of the Western Hemisphere. The truth is, however, that the United States does not care about Latin America, and is unlikely to do so.

I do not mean that there is no concern in this country with any aspect of Latin America. But few in the U.S. are moved by arguments regarding Latin America’s general significance. Some think about Cuba, others about Mexico, some about Peru, others about Haiti. Or they are concerned about specific issues and problems, not places. Exporters and investors care about particular sectors and markets. Environmentalists worry about rain forests and coastal waters. Human rights activists focus on places where rights are violated or threatened. Indeed, the very term “Latin America” probably obscures as much as it illuminates today.

We all know that Latin America and Caribbean countries vary enormously--as they have all along--in size, resource base, colonial heritage, ethnic composition and many other dimensions. But experts also recognize that the differences among Latin American and Caribbean countries have been growing in at least four other ways: the nature and degree of economic and demographic interdependence with the U.S.; the extent to which the countries have committed their economies to international competition; the relative strength and capacity for action of each state; and the comparative strength of other political institutions.

The regional distinctions among the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, in turn, affect how Latin Americans relate to the United States. People in many countries of South America are now more oriented toward each other and toward Europe and Asia than they are to the U.S., at least in terms of trade, investment and finance. People in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean are ever more focused on relations with the U.S. because of increasingly strong economic, demographic, cultural, social and political ties. And in the Andean countries--especially Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador--there are increasingly complex and sometimes confrontational relationships with the U.S.

The fabric of inter-American relations, moreover, has a lot less to do today with governments than it used to, and a lot more to do with private actors of various kinds. The key people in the investment-rating agencies have more influence on Latin America’s future than do the officials of the U.S. State Department. CNN, NBC and the Bloomberg wire are more important for Latin America than the U.S. Information Agency. AIG, the big insurance company, matters more than USAID, the U.S. development assistance agency. Microsoft is more relevant than the Marines. The governors of California, Texas and Florida are more important for Latin America today than are many federal officials.

Four corollaries of these observations are worth considering: First, the Bush administration should refrain from announcing a new Latin American policy and rushing to a Western Hemisphere summit to announce it. The summitry device has bloomed just when regionwide policies make less sense. Because of the growing differences among the Latin American and Caribbean countries, a summit for all the countries would be conducted at a meaningless level of exhortation or be largely confined to marginal issues.

Second, the next U.S. president should concentrate priority attention on Mexico, Central America and on the Caribbean--the border region of the United States. What happens there affects the U.S. enormously by presenting a series of challenging issues (like immigration, drug trafficking, environmental pollution and labor) that combine international and domestic aspects in ways that are hard for our policymaking process to tackle.

Third, the Bush administration should be more modest than recent U.S. governments about what it promises to achieve in the Americas. The past two U.S. administrations have promised free trade from Alaska to Patagonia but have been unable to deliver “fast track” negotiating authority. The Clinton administration has taken credit for “restoring democracy to Haiti” but without producing any lasting change. All recent administrations have pledged to bring change to Cuba while probably retarding that change through needlessly confrontational approaches. And they have crowed about the triumph of free markets and political democracy in the Americas even as disenchantment with neoliberal economics and democratic politics has been growing. We need to be more realistic about how Latin America is evolving and about both the extent and the limits of our influence.

Finally, the Bush administration should be aware of how much of the U.S. relationship with Latin America is inevitably determined by policies that are not designed with the region in mind. Probably the most important U.S. official for Latin Americans is the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, for U.S. interest rates are a crucial determinant of Latin America’s economic prospects. How the U.S. economy does, more generally, is the single biggest factor in shaping the economic performance of our closest neighbors. How American democracy deals with the challenges of participation, finance and accountability--and with Florida’s imbroglio and its aftermath--will ultimately have more influence on Latin America than democracy promotion programs.

The Colossus of the North is bound to cast a large shadow southward, no matter which direction our policymakers face. “Paying more attention” to Latin America is less useful as policy advice than being more aware of our own multiple impacts.