Commentary by Alexandre Marinis
Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The world should look forward to the next generation of Latin American leaders. They will be less hostile toward the West and less likely to destabilize their neighbors.
The region's current rulers formed their political views back in the 1960s and 1970s, when the U.S. was supporting military coups to prevent communism from spreading beyond Cuba.
The ill will generated by U.S. policy reverberates today among political leaders in Central and South America even though the Cold War ended 20 years ago and the U.S. is focused on the Middle East and Asia, letting the region more or less take care of itself.
Latin America's future leaders grew up watching the Berlin Wall collapse on TV and celebrating the North American Free Trade Agreement. They know a different U.S., one that no longer has to meddle in their region's internal affairs to make sure capitalism prevails over communism.
In his 1986 book, "The Cycles of American History," Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. -- a former aide to President John F. Kennedy who opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba -- said U.S. history moves in 30-year cycles between private interest and public purpose, free market and activist government, capitalism and democracy, Republicans and Democrats.
Today, as the global financial crisis swings the pendulum of history away from overly unregulated markets and into the arms of bigger government and Keynesian capitalism, Schlesinger's notion is worth revisiting from an international perspective.
Forming an Identity
One of his noteworthy insights is that generations are delineated by key historical events that take place while young adults acquire their political consciousness, or identity. These events, which shape hearts and minds, provide a common world view that people will share for life.
For leaders in Latin America, those key events included fighting oppressive military regimes propped up by an imperialist Uncle Sam. Clinging to the past, they stick to the only demand they can agree upon -- the end of Washington's embargo on Cuba -- while critical matters remain unattended.
They should worry, for instance, about the negative political and economic consequences of the neo-populist sentiment Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is cultivating throughout Central and South America.
Even respected moderates such as Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chile's Michelle Bachelet fail to criticize Chavez for stoking the flames of tension and discord in the region.
Chavez's Influence
Relying on petrodollars and a strong military, Chavez's self-proclaimed socialist revolution has influenced the recent coup in Honduras as well as the remilitarization of the region, including last year's near-war between Colombia and Ecuador. And thanks to Chavez, the hemisphere will suffer from the economic decline that usually follows the nationalization of seized private businesses, the overextension of presidential terms to limits enjoyed only by dictators, and the curtailing of press freedoms.
Chavez's leadership grows stronger due to the political vacuum left by Brazil, the region's biggest country. For all his passionate speechmaking, Brazil's Lula has not uttered one word about the growing evidence that Chavez supplied weapons to FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a terrorist group involved with drug lords.
Double Standard
Nor has Lula responded to the growing evidence that Chavez illegally financed political campaigns in Argentina, Ecuador and elsewhere. In 2002, documents from ABIN, Brazil's national intelligence agency, suggested that Lula's Workers' Party might have received $5 million from FARC. The allegations were never proved.
Last week, Lula said he was concerned about Colombia's plan to give the U.S. access to seven military bases for operations against illegal drug traffickers and FARC guerrillas. Lula seems to agree with Chavez, who sees the Colombia-U.S. agreement as an "aggression" that should be countered with the purchase of "several battalions" of Russian-made tanks.
Yet Lula didn't oppose a joint naval exercise held by Venezuela and Russia last year that involved 16 warships and 1,600 Russian sailors in the Caribbean. During the exercise, a destroyer became the first Russian warship to cross through the Panama Canal since World War II.
So Lula and other Latin American leaders appear to have a double standard when it comes to military action.
'Automatic Anti-Americanism'
And that's nothing compared to Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, who charged that U.S. intelligence agencies, acting without the approval of President Barack Obama, planned the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya from Honduras in late June. Ortega, of course, didn't just observe U.S. intervention as a young man in Latin America. He led the Sandinista government in battle against U.S-funded contra rebels in the 1980s.
"The continent must leave the automatic anti-Americanism behind, in my view a sign of immaturity," Colombian Defense Vice-Minister Sergio Jaramillo told O Estado de São Paulo, a Brazilian newspaper.
Jaramillo, at 42, sounds more reasonable than the most experienced Latin leaders. His worldview was formed while studying in Canada, England, France and Germany in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Cold War was already ending.
Schlesinger's theories deserve to be revisited. They explain what's happening in the world today and how Latin America will change for the better when future generations take charge.
(Alexandre Marinis, political economist and founding partner of Mosaico Economia Politica, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Alexandre Marinis in Sao Paulo at amarinis1@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 11, 2009 21:01 EDT
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