U.S. competes with Cuba, Venezuela for influence in Latin America

By Pablo Bachelet

08/16/06 "MCT" -- -- WASHINGTON - The Bush administration uses stark terms to describe the influence of Cuba and Venezuela in the hemisphere.

Cuba and Venezuela, officials say, make up a perilous "axis" out to subvert democracies in Latin America, threaten U.S. interests in the hemisphere and provoke mischief in the United Nations and elsewhere.

Fueled by a sense of urgency because of Fidel Castro's failing health, Washington has announced a diplomatic offensive to isolate both the government of Cuba and what the administration says is its main bankroller - President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

''There should be full agreement that the only acceptable result of Fidel Castro's incapacitation, death, or ouster is for a genuine democratic transition to take place in Cuba,'' said a report last month by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, which made policy recommendations to bring democracy to Cuba.

Events in a post-Castro Cuba could become the United States' biggest foreign policy challenge in Latin America since the Central American wars of the 1980s, experts and diplomats say, testing the true extent of U.S. influence in a region that seems to be moving on a course that is independent of U.S. policies.

Many key players, like Brazil and Argentina, have been reluctant to negotiate a hemispheric free-trade pact promoted by Washington, oppose the U.S. embargo on Cuba and are silent during Chavez's frequent tirades against President Bush.

But administration officials argue that Washington is more in sync with the region than ever.

''I believe that this is a time when we have been as aligned with Latin America as we have ever been,'' said Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who is taking a more visible role in relations with the region and represented the United States at the inauguration last month of Peruvian President Alan Garcia, a populist-turned-moderate who strongly criticized Chavez as an ''oil imperialist'' during his presidential campaign.

"We see more democratically elected governments in Latin America than ever before," Gutierrez said in a recent interview with The Miami Herald. "There is a belief in free enterprise. They welcome investment. They recognize that they have to compete and look outward in a global economy.

"We may have differences in the tactics and that will always happen, that is the way things are in the democratic world, but fundamentally, I see a lot of alignment," he added.

The prevailing view until about one year ago was that most Latin Americans spurned Bush because of the Iraq invasion and a widespread view that his priorities lay elsewhere.

Even critics recognize that under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top Latin American diplomat, Thomas Shannon, relations have improved as the administration has adopted a friendlier tone and reached out to leftist governments in the region.

"It is true that that one can detect in Washington a change in tone to a certain extent," said Julia Sweig, a senior fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Friendly Fire, a book on the United States' reduced influence in the world.

But the Bush administration, she added, is still obsessed with the ''larger than life'' figure of Hugo Chavez. 'The day-to-day drudgery of managing Latin American affairs is still in the hands of people ... (who) see Chavez and Castro as the `Red Axis.' You still have this Cold War legacy of people."

Washington has criticized Chavez for embarking on an exaggerated arms purchasing spree, underwriting the Castro government with generous oil subsidies, failing to collaborate on drug trafficking and anti-terrorism issues, and actively subverting democracies in Latin America. U.S. officials say he is using his oil billions to curry favor with regional neighbors - for example, buying Argentine debt and promising oil on easy terms.

Chavez says the United States is out to foil his Bolivarian revolution in favor of the poor and overthrow him.

Until a few months ago, the region appeared to be swinging Chavez's way, as the majority of South America seemed to be governed by left-leaning leaders. Recently, the picture has turned out to be more complicated.

Of the eight presidential elections that have taken place in Latin America this year, only the victory of indigenous leader Evo Morales in Bolivia marked the assumption to power of a close Chavez ally, and even Morales has distanced himself from Venezuela's more strident anti-U.S. posture. Last month, Morales dispatched his vice president, Alvaro Garcia, to Washington to establish a dialogue on trade and drug-trafficking issues.

A pro-Chavez left-wing candidate lost in Peru, and a left-leaning candidate in Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, seems headed to defeat at the hands of pro-free-trade conservative Felipe Calderon. In Colombia, U.S. ally Alvaro Uribe easily won his unprecedented reelection bid.

After eight elections, ''the only real change was the one that took place in Bolivia,'' Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, recently told reporters. "The main trend is continuity, more than change."

''There have always been several lefts in Latin America,'' he added. "The main challenge on the continent is quality of government. Countries are growing, economies are growing. There is also a growing democracy. Now the problem is how can you deliver the benefits of democracy to the people."

U.S. policy toward Latin America hasn't changed radically over the past decade, Insulza said, but "for some reasons that are difficult to define, the degree of resentment has increased."

One way to improve the climate would be to extend trade preferences to Ecuador and Bolivia that expire at the end of the year, he said, ''just to show goodwill.'' The White House and Congress have balked at renewing those unilateral preferences, saying they want to replace them with free-trade agreements that also benefit U.S. producers.

U.S. officials say they have displayed plenty of goodwill toward Latin America. Under President Bush, economic assistance to the region has doubled to $1.6 billion a year. Bush has signed free-trade deals with nine Latin American nations, more than any predecessor.

More Latin American leaders have visited Bush at the White House than during any previous presidency, one senior State Department official noted. The administration helped obtain $14 billion worth of debt forgiveness for some of Latin America's poorest countries.

Michael Shifter, with the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, said there was a ''sense of relief'' in Washington because more friendly candidates won recent elections. But he added a note of caution.

''We shouldn't confuse some of these elections that have perhaps been to Washington's liking with greater influence in the region,'' he said.

The U.S. government extracted painful concessions from the countries it negotiated free-trade agreements with - Central America, Peru and Colombia - leaving ''a bad taste in the mouth,'' Shifter said.

Many countries also are irritated by U.S. anti-drug-trafficking policies that demand politically costly eradication programs in return for economic aid. The U.S. debate on immigration has angered many Mexicans, and Washington's record is especially poor in getting Latin Americans to condemn either Cuba or Venezuela.

The Organization of American States also has so far refused to implement mechanisms that would automatically punish countries that become authoritarian, which the administration wants to apply against Venezuela.

With the exception of Colombia, no South American nation has sided with U.S.-backed Guatemala in its race against Venezuela to win a nonpermanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Most of the 15-member Caribbean Community countries are expected to back Venezuela in October.

Eric Farnsworth, who runs the Washington office of the pro-free-trade Council of the Americas, agrees that the United States has lost some influence in the region, but says that is not necessarily cause for alarm.

''Does the U.S. get everything it wants in the hemisphere? No way,'' he said. "That's probably as much as anything a maturing of the hemisphere, that the future is in their own hands, and I think that's a good thing."

McClatchy correspondent Tyler Bridges contributed to this report.

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