Bush tries new tack with Latin America
The president's five-country tour will focus less on trade and more on social issues.
from the March 8, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 2
Page 1 | 2
In conjunction with Bush's trip, the White House issued a fact sheet on "advancing the cause of social justice in the Western Hemisphere," which recognizes that "despite advances" toward freedom and stability in fiscal policies, "tens of millions" in the hemisphere "remain stuck in poverty."
The sheet lists new initiatives Bush will announce on his trip, from advancing healthcare training in Central America to extending more loans to small businesses. Bush also plans to send a Navy medical ship, the Comfort, to ports throughout the region this summer.
It is impossible to understand this shift in emphasis without taking into account the rise of Mr. Chávez as a regional voice for the poor and downtrodden, analysts say. "Chávez colors everything the US does and thinks about Latin America now," says Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "This is a response to what Chávez says about the US."
US officials deny that the trip includes any effort to beat Chávez at his own game. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said this week the trip has nothing to do with Chávez, but is more an effort to highlight a Bush priority that has been "obscured" and has "not been reported" because of the war on terror.
But public comments from administration officials suggest otherwise. Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, spoke of competing visions for the region in congressional testimony last week.
And in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this week, Bush concluded by referring to a statue near the White House of Simón Bolívar, the father of South American liberty who is the namesake of Chávez's anti-imperialist "Bolivarian revolution." Bush equated Bolívar to George Washington, saying, "It is our mission to complete the revolution they began on our two continents."
Such comments, as well as the trip's general theme, suggest a US president "playing catch-up" with the social priorities the Venezuelan leader has been able to tap into, says Russell Crandall, a Latin America expert and visiting fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington.
But Mr. Crandall says Bush's trip is also not likely to please Chávez, whom he says "would have preferred to see the democratic left countries telling Bush to get lost."
Noting that Bush will barely return to Washington before he greets Brazil's President Lula at Camp David at the end of the month, Mr. Hakim says the trip generally is "a statement on the left-right split in Latin America. It says we can get along just as well with a leftist president" who is upholding the hemisphere's democratic values.
As Mr. Hadley said this week of Bush's choice to visit Uruguay: "It is not a political complexion particularly like the current administration in Washington, but President Vásquez has led his country [in] making right choices."
1 | Page 2
 |
||
|
RSS feed
