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Three months into 2002, the complacent decade of the 1990s seems far away. The international context is no longer one of “consensus,” Washington or otherwise, over economic policy or much else; no longer an era of prosperity and peace, but very much one of contention, war, and uncertainty. Not all is gloom and doom, to be sure. The bankers are again optimistic about Brazil; they, like the Brazilian president, now think “continuity” will prevail in October. But if all this seems premature, it is: a week in politics is enough to change everything. The blow to the presidential campaign of Roseana Sarney that resulted from the recent discovery of R$1.34 million in cash in her husband’s Empresa Lunus office is a reminder of this basic truth, and so too have been the changes since that fateful day in September 2001 when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell in New York City.
For Latin America as well as for the rest of the world, the events of 9/11, 2001, marked a defining moment. This is not so much because everyday life changed for peasants planting rice in the paddy fields of Bangladesh, or cariocas dodging dengue-bearing mosquitoes in Rio de Janeiro, or lumbermen downing potent shots of snaps in a bar in northern Sweden, but because the world changed suddenly and dramatically for the people (less than 5 percent of the world’s population) who commit each year some U$ 400 billion of their tax monies to sustain nearly 40 percent of the world’s military expenditures, consume almost 30 percent of its total oil production, and constitute 25 percent of the global economy.1 And that matters profoundly.
Most Americans until 9/11, 2001, had a benign view of themselves, were convinced that they did more good in the world than harm, and believed deeply they had a special dispensation from the Almighty to uphold a beacon of hope for a happier and more prosperous life for humankind. Twice in the course of the twentieth century, during two mighty armed conflicts and in the long course of the Cold War, it was fortunate for humanity that this vision prevailed. But 9/11 showed Americans that most of the rest of the world did not think like this, and actually saw them as enemies or arrogant or philistine or just stupid. Even some of those they thought of as their friends did not feel the pain; and among these numbered—surprisingly to most Americans—their Latin “neighbors” to the south.
Empathy is either there or it is not. And as far as Latin America was concerned, when empathy most mattered it was not there. The polling data throughout Latin America in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon is emphatic on the point.2 The causes for this disconnect may be historical or psychological, justified or unjustified, but causes are less significant than the consequences.
For the time being, this moment of disillusion and truth will affect U.S. policy towards the region and the manner, as well as the language, in which it is conducted. Indeed it has already done so and not necessarily for the better. There will be tough talk, hard decisions, and little tolerance for the traditional sophistry on the Latin American side or hollow expressions of sympathy on the American. And as trends seem to be indicating, this change will help Mexico secure its role as Washington’s preeminent Latin interlocutor and Brazil will be consigned to the margin, or worst, to a hostile isolation in the reconfigured set of U.S. priorities within the Western Hemisphere.
This new assertion of national interest by the United States is of course part of a much wider sea change. If the end of the Cold War stripped away the need for linguistic obfuscation about capitalism— producing the rapid substitution, for example, of the phrase “developing nations” by the concept of “emerging markets”--the events of 9/11 have stripped away the taboo about Empire. It is no longer superannuated Leninists who take the old theories of imperialism seriously; it is now the bright young sparks of the Wall Street Journal’s Op-Ed page, and the neo conservative ideologues of the Washington think tanks, and, more ominously, the civilian leadership cadres of the Pentagon who embrace the idea. “Yes,” they tell the old Leftists, “you are right,” and, as a result, they all argue loudly, it is time“to speak clearly and unapologetically about an American Empire; it is time for Americans to exercise fully the imperial power they possess, to embrace the imperial mission thrust upon them, and to impose if need be a Pax Americana by the overwhelming force of arms the United States now possesses.”
Latin America is not yet high on the agenda of the “new” imperialists, to be sure. For the moment the interventionist-minded are agitating for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the U.S. remains heavily engaged in Afghanistan. There is also no credible evidence, moreover, of al Qaeda cells in thenotorious and ungoverned triborder region between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina— despite theinitial worry after 9/11 that there might be. There are links between this region and another zone of unending crisis: the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Strong evidence of funding to Hamas and Hezbollah exists (one individual alone has raised and transferred at least $50 million over recent years). But even this is a relatively small-scale engagement comparatively speaking.
More significant are the hundreds of millions of dollars involved in the South Americancocaine trade and the triborder’s role as a major conduit for smuggled narcotics, arms, and narcodollars. Here the danger is less that of a terrorist threat against the United States than the challenge posed to governability throughout South America. The corrupting influence of vast sums of dirty money pose a major threat to local civil authority, judiciaries, and police forces— and, no less important, has a corrosive impact on the everyday quality of life as urban crime, random violence, and chronic personal insecurity increase exponentially. This clandestine web of criminal and drug trafficking ties Brazil inexorably to the one region in the Americas where armed conflict and U.S. involvement are both increasing: Colombia.
Those who think they can benefit from the renewed Manichean worldview in Washington— the substitution of the long familiar black-and-white view of the world where “friends” on the one side once faced “Communists” on the other, by the new configuration of “friends” on one side and “terrorists” on the other— are quick to adapt thenew formula. The outgoing Colombian government,already the recipient of $ 1.3 billion in aid from the United States (making it the third largest in the world after Israel and Egypt), and ever sensitive to the mood in Washington, exploited the new terminology immediately to reclassify the old Leftist guerrillas as post-modern terrorists— not too difficult a task since terror tactics have long been part of the Colombian guerrillas’ deadly repertory. But terrorhas also been part of the arsenal of the Rightist paramilitaries in Colombia, and of the government armed forces themselves. The war in Colombia is no simple two-sided conflict between “democracy” and radical wild men in the jungle. It is also regrettably a highly complex, viciously brutal, and multi-front civil war deeplyrooted in Colombian history with no easy solution in sight.
The Colombia war is also a conflict where the U.S. in effect funds both sides. The insatiable U.S.domestic appetite for illegal drugs provides vastly more dollars to sustain the armed insurgencies than appropriations the U.S. Congress can provide the Colombian armed forces to cover the costs of training, helicopters, and for the defoliation of the coca crops. According to statistics released on March 18 by attorney-general John Ashcroft, Americans spent U$62.9 billion in 2000 on drugs; over half of which ($U36.1 billion) on cocaine, about equal to the revenues that year of the media giant AOL/Timer Warner.3
The Americanization of the Colombian conflict, however, is a convenient diversion for Colombia’s immediate neighbors, despite the fact they have the potential to be most directly impacted and threatened by the collapse of the Colombia state and the intensification of violence. Here theprincipal ostrich is Brazil, who paradoxically seeks a leadership role in South America, but is absent from South America’s most potentially divisive and dangerous conflagration. But whether Brazilians like it or not, Colombia is an unwelcome engagement that will be forced on Brazil sooner of later. The grand jury indictments in the U.S. on March 18 of members of FARC and three Brazilian nationals, including the narco-trafficker Luis Fernando da Costa (aka Fernandinho Beira-Mar, the only trafficker on Ashcroft’s list actually in custody) for drug trafficking destined for the U.S., Suriname, Paraguay, Mexico, and Spain, in exchange for weapons, cash and equipment for the FARC, demonstrates how internationalized this crisis has already become. The indictments will complicate U.S.-Brazilian relations over the question of Beira-Mar’s extradition, which the U.S. will want and by constitutional mandate Brazil will oppose.
It might seem at first sight that perennial and essentially marginal issues will continue todominate the U.S. agenda in Latin America. Domestic politics will override ideology in Congress in both the Republican and Democratic parties. A conservative Republican administration has already caved in to protectionist lobby on steel; the approval of trade negotiating authority will be so circumscribed when it is eventually enacted, that it will make negotiations over free trade in the Hemisphere— and with Brazil in particular— exceedingly difficult. Yet among Democrats, protectionism is also strong. Liberal Democrats such as Senator Christopher Dodd, a major voice on Latin America policy, will support increased military aid to the Colombian government, not oppose it. The leading candidate for the third most important position on the Democratic side in the House of Representatives, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, is a vigorous spokesperson for the anti-Castro Cuban-Americans who comprise his electoral base.
The mid-level functionaries within the U.S. diplomatic establishment are all graduates of what might be called the “Jesse Helms School of Latin American Studies;” that is, theyare all figures in good standing with the Cuban-American lobby or former Senate aides on the Foreign Relations Committee to Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, thenow shortly to retire (but never to be underestimated) curmudgeon of the Senate and famous (or infamous depending on the political persuasion of theobserver) as “Senator No.”Senator Helms is the co-author of the legislation that consigns U.S.Cuban policy to a straightjacket, at least until Fidel departs from the scene. Otto Reich, after a year of opposition from Senate Democrats because of his role in the 1980s imbroglio in Central America, was appointed by President Bush during the congressional recess on January 11, 2002, as the “Acting” Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, joining the former Senate aideto Helms, Roger Noriega, who is now the U.S.Ambassador to the OAS and an influential figure behind the scenes on Latin American policy issues. Otto Reich, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and a long-term business lobbyist, did not so much as mention Brazil in his first address after his long delayed appointment.
But while this means any change in U.S. policy towards Cuba is unlikely, other big issues will be decided elsewhere. These include: the future of intervention by the IMF and other international financial agencies and the U.S. Treasury to shore up the failed economic systems (here the role of Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill will be critical, a matter of central concern to the future of Argentina); on trade the office of the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick will have the key strategic role (which involves decisions on FTAA); on energy the principal voice will be that of Vice President Dick Cheney (in this case the future of the Chavez regime in Venezuela will be an important question mark); and on immigration, the U.S. Congress will have a decisive say. In all these cases the outline of a new agenda is becoming clear:
1. No more bailouts: In December 2001 Argentina defaulted on U$ 132 billions, the greatest sovereign debt default in history and a sum sufficient to cover the cost of a decade of fighting the war in Afghanistan. It is clear that the epoch of mega bailouts is over; Secretary O’Neil has made this clear in a number of occasions. He is not, as he said bluntly, someone who will “consume the money of plumbers and carpentersin the U.S. who make U$ 50,000 a year and wonder what in the world we're doing with their money.” The U.S. Treasury will no longer roll over and put up the money as it has since the Mexican peso crisis in 1994, and the financial markets have got the message. Argentina has not therefore caused “contagion”--it has just imploded, awaiting its local Messiah to resurrect it once again from the ashes.
2. Trade: A contentious issue at the best of times, since trade links domestic and multinational concerns in complex ways, mobilizing rational and irrational forces magnifying local concerns over the interest of broadly conceived national policies. Yet more trade is essential to the future well being of the international system and especially to the United States. Latin America currently purchases 44 percent of total U.S. exports. U.S.-Mexico bilateral trade has surpassed trade with Japan, making Mexico the second largest U.S. export market (after Canada), accounting for 29 percent of U.S. export growth. Total trade with the region is now more than double total U.S. trade with the European Union. FTAA is a priority; but the U.S. is not waiting for the mega negotiations with what it sees as a potentially recalcitrant and obstructionist Brazil as co-chair; it appears to be moving around the margins to create an alternative route, promoting free trade agreements with Chile, Central America, and the Caribbean, and potentially with the Andean countries.
3. Energy: 33 per cent of the U.S. oil imports come from Latin America. Venezuela alone provides more than 14 percent of U.S. annual imports. The U.S. has until 9/11 taken a hands-off position towards Venezuela. President Hugo Chávez did not endear himself to Washington with his forays onto the international scene in Baghdad, Beijing, and Havana; but they were irrelevant while oil flowed. He would, it was argued, speak with one voice but act responsibly since his government’s future depends on petroleum-generated revenues. After 9/11, attitudes have hardened, and as domestic contestation in Venezuela grows, no one in Washington will be too unhappy if Mr. Chavez goes.
4. Immigration: 44 percent of all immigrants to the U.S. come form LatinAmerica. Mexico has made a reform of U.S. immigration laws a priority; and has achieved some success on this front. Immigration and the remittances of immigrants are further strengthening the ties that bind North America together. 600,000 Colombians have left their country in the past three years; 150,000 Venezuelans since Chavez became president; 500,000 left Ecuador; one in seven Haitians live abroad; one in six Salvadorians migrated to the United States; 7.5 million Mexicans live in the U.S.; and remittances to the Latin America and the Caribbean now total over U$15 billion a year.
5. New configuration: As a consequence of these developments, looking out from the “Homeland,” the U.S. is increasingly seeing a differentiated region to the south; in effect, a series of concentric circles of greater and lesser engagement and de facto integration. The inner circle is NAFTA. Beyond is what might be called the “greater NAFTA” (i.e. the Caribbean and Central America). Beyond that are the Andean countries (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and the special case of Chile). And over Mercosul there is more ambiguity, and over Brazil— with or without Mercosul— great uncertainty.
But the fundamental challenge will be over regional leadership, and the key contenders are Mexico and Brazil. In this respect the tale of two sociologists— Jorge Castañeda and Fernando Henrique Cardoso— is instructive. Both are cosmopolitan figures and both have been leading participants in the debates within First World academic circles. Both have traveled widely and taught or studied at leading universities in France and the United States. Both are prolific authors. Both are (or were)men of the Left. Each came into power on the back of Center-Right coalitions.
It is in this context that 9/11 becomes important. Castaneda instinctively “got it” and knew how to express his empathy for what America had suffered, even at the cost of hostility from his fellow countrymen. FHC did not. Perhaps the roots of their different response at the defining moment were generational. Castaneda’s education in the U.S. was that of an undergraduate at Princeton, whereas FHC came to the U.S. in the role of professor, already formed intellectually. It is true, of course, that Brazil led in evoking the Rio Treaty in solidarity with the U.S., a treaty which Mexico had only shortly before called redundant; but since 9/11 FHC has evidently read the polls on Brazilian public opinion, which is clearly reflected in his populist rhetoric in the twilight year of his presidency and his increasingly strident attacks on the very institutions that had kept his government in business during the financial crisis of 1998-99.
In contrast, Castaneda works the U.S. system and has wooed and won over Jesse Helms and George W. Bush. He wasted no time or sentiment in defusing a potential crisis by allowing Castro’s police to pick up the Cubans who sought asylum at the Mexican embassy in Havana and thought unwisely they would be sympathetically protected by the new and recently democratic Mexico. Castaneda persuaded Bush to come to the Monterrey UN conference to talk about economic aid and economic development and to up the ante with a major new commitment of resources. FHC, whoas Clóvis Rossi noted, has spent almost an entire year of his 8-year presidency outside Brazil, chose this time to stay home, ceding leadership to Mexico and annoying Mexico in the process.
There is, however, one consolation by way of compensation. Carlos Fuentes, that ever reliable voice of an old and irredentist Mexican nationalism, praised President Cardoso’s speech to the French National Assemby— notorious in Washington for its moral equivalency on terrorism— as the best speech a Latin American president had ever made anywhere. Fuentes will be a good candidate for the Ordem do Cruzeiro do Sul that did not go to Henry Kissinger. Perhaps Castañeda will send Fuentes as Mexican Ambassador to Brazil to encourage Brazil to remain what Mexico no longer is; while Mexico quietly and effectively solidifies and crafts its role as Washington’s preeminent Latin American partner, interlocutor, and interpreter.
1) See http://www.cdi.org/issues/wme/ (Center for Defense Information); http://www.eia.doe.gov/ (U.S. Energy Information Administration); and http://www.worldbank.org/data/ (World Bank).
2) Datafolha opinion polls, Folha de Sao Paulo, September 23, 2001; also see Gallup International polls (http://www.gallup-international.com/terrorismpoll_figures.htm).
3) Attorney General Transcript, News Conference, Monday, March 18, 2002, Department of Justice (http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2002/031802newsconferencefarc.htm)
