editorial

Latin America and the Caribbean have hardly been mentioned in the US presidential race. Yes, each of the major candidates has a Spanish section on his website, Bush can say a few words in the language and Kerry’s wife can speak it with some fluency. Yes, both candidates say their policies in the Americas are for freedom, democracy and free trade.

Do not let this lead you to believe that there is no significant difference between George W. Bush’s and John F. Kerry’s approaches to our region.

During the campaign the philosophical and practical differences between the ways that the two men think have been expressed in other contexts, but those differences apply here as well.

Bush thumbs his nose at world opinion and blasts Kerry for the latter’s support of the International Criminal Court. The bottom line is that Bush opposes international law and has been moving inter-American relations back toward the era of US gunboat diplomacy.

He has done so by supporting the failed 2002 coup attempt against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, by US government funding for the groups that organized a subsequent oil strike and business lockout in that country, and by his refusal to accept the recent verdict of the Venezuelan people, who voted resoundingly to allow Chávez to serve out presidential term to which he was elected.

He has done so by removing Haiti’s constitutional president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, installing a pathetic puppet who couldn’t get elected dog catcher in a free election, then looking on with approval as that obnoxious regime has waged a reign of terror against Aristide supporters and demonstrated its incompetence in the face of the devastation of Hurricane Jeanne.

Bush’s moves against Venezuela have annoyed most Latin American governments. His moves against Haiti have offended most Caribbean governments. He has paid those objections no heed. Give him four more years in office and he will surely feel free to run roughshod over all principles of democracy, self-determination and international law, with grave results that would surely follow throughout the region.

The people to whom Bush listens when making his unilateral decisions about the region are an even greater cause for concern.

He’s been shifted over to the Middle East now --- where he’s up to no good --- but for much of this administration convicted liar Elliott Abrams was Bush’s “democracy advisor.” This neoconservative ideologue was one of the principal architects of the death squad terror that swept across Central America in the 1980s, and later, having been pardoned by George H. W. Bush, he set the tone for George W. Bush’s policies toward this region.

Then there is the hard-line Otto Reich, foremost among a whole crowd of right-wing Cuban exiles who have dominated US policy toward all of Latin America. Whether with respect to Venezuela or Brazil, or in relation to the attempted terrorist attack on Panama by Miami-based would-be bombers, the Bush administration’s policies and actions across a vast and diverse region are monotonously, inappropriately and insultingly posed by reference to Fidel Castro.

Then there is Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a man who pretends to be an incarnation of God, a man who paid George H. W. Bush a multi-million-dollar honorarium to be the guest speaker at the inauguration of his Latin American newspaper Tiempos del Mundo. As the publisher of the right-wing Washington Times, Reverend Moon did more than anyone else to spread the preposterous lie that the “Red Chinese” control the Panama Canal. That lie, you may recall, was enshrined in the 2000 Republican campaign platform, wherein George W. Bush vowed to resist the fictitious Chinese attempt to dominate our canal.

Would Kerry be the ideal alternative from the perspective of his neighbors to the south? Probably not. Like anyone who occupies the White House, he would represent US interests that sometimes conflict with those of the Latin American and Caribbean countries. He would probably feel constrained to continue failed old policies like the so-called “War on Drugs” and pursue the bipartisan folly known as Plan Colombia. A Kerry administration might or might not surmount the common American limitation of a State Department that only listens to members of this region’s tiny privileged elites.

However, we can reasonably expect that Kerry would refrain from inciting coups in this region, that there would be an element of social justice in his trade policies, that his advisors would be pragmatists rather than fanatics, and that an administration he heads would respect internatonal law.

It’s for the US electorate to decide, but clearly it would be in the best interests of the peoples of our region if the Americans make George W. Bush a one-term president.

A president’s hardest task is not to do what is right but to know what is right.

Lyndon B. Johnson

The Americans generally consider all those who defend themselves against their attacks to be aggressors.

Omar Torrijos

If there is something disagreeable going on, men are sure to get out of it.

Jane Austen

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