Don’t know much about (Latin American) geography…

4 February 2008

With an increasing number of presidential primaries occurring around the country in the very early part of 2008, those of us concerned with Latin America are forced into an earlier-than-ever examination of the candidates’ stances on foreign policy. Though we might have expected that Latin America would be overshadowed entirely by the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or emerge only in the context of immigration, hemispheric relations have come up surprisingly often in early campaigning. So what do the candidates talk about when they discuss Latin America? In a word, Chávez….

Of the candidates still in the running for the two corporatist parties (the only ones that count in the U.S.), all defined “Hugo Chavez” as eeeevil… and that’s about the extent of their knowledge of the region.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney — the son of a Latin American — at least has a “Latin American Policy Advisory Group. The Romney team…

… includes the likes of Ambassador Roger Noriega, a former aide to Jesse Helms who is accused of involvement in the ouster of Aristide and who publicly applauded the coup against Chávez; former representative Cass Ballanger and the American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Falcoff, both active Contra supporters and members of Reagan’s Commission on Central America, led by Henry Kissinger; and heavyweight lobbyists Al Cardenas, the former Chairman of Florida’s Republican Party, and Jorge L. Arrizurieta, a Bush “Pioneer” and top proponent of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

McCain [has] one Latin America–affiliated adviser. The Democrats? Not a single one between them.

That OTHER corporatist party is just plain clueless. Foreign Affairs magazine let the candidates present their foreign policy statements. Romney weighed in with a whole 23 words, despite those “advisors”.

[Barak] Obama devoted around 20 vague, bromidic words specifically to Latin America, while [Hillary] Clinton… managed to prepare an entire paragraph on hemispheric relations. Clinton’s contribution insists that “we have witnessed the rollback of democratic development and economic openness in parts of Latin America…”

I don’t think she was referring to the 2006 Presidential election in Mexico. I wouldn’t be surprised if any of these guys drew a blank when asked about NAFTA farm policy effects on Mexican immigration to the United States, or the reprecussions of replacing International Monetary Fund “loans” with Bank of the South financing, or anything else outside the usual “Hugo Chavez and Mexican drug dealers and that old geezer Fidel Castro are bad. And we support mom and apple pie, too.”

Besides my pessimism about the future of the United States (even, if by some miracle one of these candidates was able to sign some kind of rational public health plan, it’ll be years before I can see a dentist or doctor at a reasonable cost… and I can’t wait that long; the trillions pissed away in Iraq are still going to need to be paid for; and I don’t know how food is going to get to market at a reasonable price with the country’s complete dependence on diesel-powered trucks to deliver it, not to mention growing it), not one of the candidates has said diddly-squat about the “Clinton Doctrine” (so much for the idea that the Democratic Party is fundamentally different from the other one), which comes down to defining the U.S.’s right to intervene anywhere it wants to protect its access to resources and materiel… sort of Mussolini’s policy with a human face.

OK, so one of the four people standing made nice on immigration. C’mon, he, like Hillary Clinton was a Senator of the United States, and was quite willing to deny those of us citizens who live near the border our basic civil rights.

And, the Texas primary isn’t until March 4, by which time the candidates will probably have already been more or less selected by their corporate “donors”… not that there’s any guarantee a Texas ballot will be counted.

So, I didn’t feel too bad that I tossed my voter registration card, along with other old papers a few nights ago. I’m outta here in a couple of weeks, anyway.