Mr Bush goes south

Mr Bush goes south
Por Rubens Vaz da Costa

IF YOU are George Bush, the prospect of spending a week in Latin America must be appealing just at the moment. How better to escape an unappreciative Congress and ungrateful Middle East? And if during the Latin American tour he starts on March 8th Mr Bush bumps into the odd demonstration, so what? That can happen anywhere nowadays.

Mr Bush cannot be completely relaxed in Latin America. The United States is locked in a regional battle for influence with Venezuela's oil-intoxicated autocrat, Hugo Chávez. Yet the worst thing for Mr Bush to do if he wants to win that battle is to talk too much about Venezuela on this trip: that would only puff Mr Chávez up further, and attract the usual Latin grumbles about yanqui bullying. So it is excellent that Mr Bush intends to spend most of his time in the region's three most populous countries, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

Mr Bush has serious business to do at each stop (see article). Brazil is one of many countries in Latin America that could supply the world with cheap ethanol if only the United States scrapped the tariffs and subsidies that protect its own less efficient maize and sugar farmers. Colombia needs continued American help against the cocaine gangs and the violence they spawn. In Mexico Mr Bush will have to talk about immigration. Tighter security has made it much harder for Mexican workers to cross illegally into the United States, but their labour is still needed and Mexico is still waiting for America to come up with a way to let more enter legally.


If he offered more help on these fronts, Mr Bush could give Latin Americans the sense of partnership with the United States that is missing at present. But to do so he will have to take some work home. For on immigration and trade it is now Congress rather than the White House that holds the key to progress. And although immigration reform still looks possible, the trade outlook is bleaker. The Democrats who control Congress may in the coming months approve free-trade deals with Peru and Panama, but look set to block one with Colombia because they are angry about revelations linking Álvaro Uribe's government to right-wing paramilitary groups. Mr Bush needs to persuade Congress that that would be a mistake. The revelations have come to the surface because of the growing vigour of democracy in the less violent Colombia Mr Uribe has delivered. He deserves continued support.


Respect sovereignty, but speak up for democracy too
As for Venezuela, Mr Chávez is no friend of the United States (he calls it simply "the empire") and seems to enjoy the company of other anti-American demagogues, from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to London's publicity-hungry mayor, Ken Livingstone. But if he poses a danger, it is to the rest of Latin America, where his simplistic ideas are sometimes popular, rather than to the United States, which even after the mid-term elections does not seem to be lusting for a "Bolivarian revolution". By the same token, it is the other governments of Latin America, rather than the United States, that are best placed to counter his influence.

They have no right to interfere with his programme of nationalisation, however wrongheaded it may be, or the rest of his economic policy: those things are the sovereign business of Venezuela. And it is a mere three months since Venezuelans gave Mr Chávez a strong mandate in a pretty fair election. Yet his neighbours should not allow the money and cheap oil Mr Chávez splashes around their region to stop them from speaking out when he appears to be hollowing out democracy in a part of the world where it is still fragile. Mr Chávez is promising to silence the main opposition television station. He has given himself powers to rule by decree for the next 18 months and proposes to scrap the term limits in the constitution so that he could stand for re-election indefinitely.

Brazil's Lula says that he quietly urges moderation on his Venezuelan counterpart, but there is no evidence that this is changing Mr Chávez's direction of travel. If he continues on the same path, Latin America's democrats will soon have to consider whether he belongs in their clubs. Mr Bush should meanwhile concentrate less on what he would like the rest of Latin America to do to Mr Chávez and more on what the United States can do for the rest of Latin America.


Stop helping Fidel
One of the biggest gestures Mr Bush could make would be to support moves to scrap the United States' unfair and counter-productive trade embargo against Cuba, a country that no longer poses any threat to the United States and whose people are now daring to contemplate what a post-Castro future might look like. Slamming the door on closer economic co-operation in the Americas, whether inspired by protectionism or ideology, is a gift to Mr Chávez and his supporters in other countries. If the United States wants a hemisphere led by pro-market democrats, it should give the region's people every help they need to work and trade their way to prosperity .