In early March, George Bush scuttled round Latin America, visiting Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay in a desperate effort to mend his political fences as the masses press their demands for a divorce from US imperialism. In response Venezuelan President Chavez took the opportunity to shadow Bush and expose his politics. ALVARO MICHAELS reports.
Hillary Clinton explained why Bush had to make the visit when she said recently: ‘Look at what’s happening in Latin America…where we are seeing anti-American regimes gain ground. We don’t engage with bad guys, so we don’t engage with, you know, Chavez and try to…see if there is any way to pull him back, or at least prevent others from following his lead.’ The US Government Accountability Office estimates that if Venezuela were to suddenly cease exporting oil to the US, the latter could experience a reduction of its gross national product of up to $23 billion.
At the 2005 Summit of the Americas, Chavez, along with Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, had crushed any US hopes of establishing a Free Trade Area of the Americas. Now, two years later, Chavez’s fierce criticism of Bush at a mass rally in Buenos Aires brought support from Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, and, unusually, from Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte. Each of these has their own agenda, but none can afford to reject the spirit of Chavez’s speeches. For Correa, Venezuela’s foreign policy is ‘wonderful’, and US foreign policy ‘terrible’. Duarte spoke of Washington’s ‘waging of wars’ and pointed out that the US government does not remove protectionist barriers in the developed world.
Guatemala will hold presidential elections this September; the radical contender being Rigoberta Menchu, a very popular indigenous leader and Nobel Peace Prize human rights winner in 1992. Her victory would mean much closer ties with Bolivia. Bush went to console the right wing there who are completely compromised by their past involvement in the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous peoples which cost the lives of 200,000 in the 1980s.
Venezuelan aid to Bolivia now rivals that of the US. The former’s low interest rate loans allow countries like Ecuador and Argentina to pay back their debt to the IMF and spend more on social services. In Ecuador, Venezuelan funds have allowed social spending, 38% of the 2007 budget, to finally catch up to match foreign debt payments. More importantly, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina recently announced the creation of the Banco del Sur, or Bank of the South. This will break the stranglehold of the IMF and the US.
Even Mexico’s President Calderon now intends to seek closer ties to Venezuela and criticised Bush’s immigration policies. Meanwhile Brazil gets most of its coal from reserves in Venezuela and nearly all of its natural gas from Bolivia, so Bush’s idea that the US purchase sugar cane-derived ethanol from Brazil is preposterous simply from the standpoint of capacity.
In Uruguay, President Tabaré Vazquez is more in line with Lula and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet than with Chavez. Although Uruguay is currently seeking a free trade agreement with the US, the visit was deeply unpopular with the masses, and criticised from within the ruling coalition. Marina Arismeni, Minister of Social Development, stated that ‘Mr Bush represents all that is most execrable, murderous and warmongering in the world’.
In Colombia, the government sinks deeper into its own mire, anxious not to lose its US subsidies – actually commission on surpluses made by US corporations there. 20,000 troops were mobilised to protect Bush as he and Uribe reassured each other before Bush rushed off to his next destination. In São Paulo, Montevideo, Bogota, Guatemala City and Merida, tens of thousands of protesters had marched against him; some demonstrations leaving many injured and hundreds detained. According to a poll in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela conducted at the end last year, 86 percent of those surveyed disapproved of the US’s role in Latin America and wanted to see a change in the country’s foreign policy.
FRFI 196 April / May 2007
