Al-Ahram Weekly takes stock of the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico
Continental rift
The Summit of the Americas ended last week without any major progress being made towards bridging the growing gulf between the US and its neighbours to the south,
writes Jaideep Mukerji
When 34 leaders from across North and South America descended on Monterrey, Mexico last week to take part in the fourth Summit of the Americas, observers hoped it would be a lead to an improvement in the strained relations between the United States and Latin America. Instead, the two day gathering highlighted a growing rift between the two sides over a number of issues ranging from the war on terror to free trade.
Relations between the US and Latin America have suffered considerably as a result of the US's fixation on the war on terror; rather than being the centrepiece of US foreign policy as Bush had promised when he first came to office in 2000, Latin America has instead found itself largely ignored.
Peter Hakim, president of the Washington- based think tank the Inter-American Dialogue, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the summit represented a crucial moment in US-Latin American relations.
"There has been a serious deterioration in relations in the past few years," he explained. "Latin Americans came [to Monterrey] to see what Bush would be bringing to the summit; to see if Bush was preparing to re-engage the region or if Latin America was going to remain very much a second order of priority."
While Bush did show signs of re-engaging with Latin America, the issues which he chose to address did not go over well with most countries. For instance, Bush's championing of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was coolly received. The proposed agreement would create a hemispheric free trade zone extending from the Arctic circle to Patagonia and has been the main focus of US policy in the region for the past 10 years.
"Trade is the surest path to lasting prosperity," Bush told the gathered heads of state. "The best way to eradicate poverty is to encourage trade between nations," he said.
Heading into the summit, the US made clear that their main objective would be to jump-start flagging momentum for the FTAA, which is meeting increasingly stiff opposition from regional powers such as Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina.
In the end, however, the US only managed to secure a vague commitment to aim for completing the agreement by next year, and even that came with an objection from Venezuela citing "questions of principle and profound differences regarding the concept and philosophy of the proposed model".
Despite the weak endorsement and the Venezuelan objection, Hakim felt that the Nuevo Leone declaration was nonetheless good news for the FTAA.
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US President George W Bush walks past Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez following Bush's speech at the start of the Summit of the Americas
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"The fact is that all 34 countries except Venezuela agreed to proceed with negotiations on the FTAA according to the previously established deadline. It would have been better to put a definitive date in that declaration but anybody that follows this realises that the established deadline is the end of this year or early next year."
However, not everyone agrees with that assessment. Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project in Washington DC, told the Weekly that the Nuevo Leone commitment to honour the time frame was an indication that the FTAA is moribund.
"Just to say that they are going to negotiate something by a specific deadline isn't very meaningful, especially since it looks like [the final agreement] is going to be a lot weaker than the pro-FTAA camp wanted," she told the Weekly. Anderson also pointed out that the summit marked a distinct shift in the kinds of criticism being levelled at the FTAA.
"In the battles around the FTAA mostly what we were hearing was 'Latin American countries don't like US agricultural subsidies' or narrow criticisms like that," she said. "But in Monterrey Latin American leaders really attacked the whole model. It really brought out the extreme differences in perspectives between these countries and the US."
There were indeed signs at the summit of increasingly harsh opposition to the FTAA. Argentine President Nestor Kirchner said "signing an agreement is not an easy or direct road to prosperity. An agreement that does not deal with or resolve the great asymmetries that exist between countries will only worsen the imbalance in our economies. There is not a single Free Trade Agreement of the Americas that will suffice."
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva echoed Kirchner's thoughts during his speech, saying it was time "to change the economic model" championed by institutions like the International Monetary Fund.
Jose Julio Cisneros, dean of the Political Science Department at the Universidad de San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador, explained to the Weekly that part of the problem is the United States' narrow view of how free trade should work.
"From Bush's point of view, the main -- and only -- idea is to increase trade. Latin American countries on the other hand feel it is necessary to ensure trade is carried fairly and concurrently with efforts to reduce poverty and ensure a greater distribution of wealth," he told the Weekly.
Yet despite the opposition to the FTAA, the US is nonetheless achieving some measure of success with its free trade agenda through a "divide and conquer" strategy, signing bilateral trade deals with countries in the region. In addition to having recently signed one such bilateral agreement with Chile and another with four Central American countries, the US is also reportedly in negotiations with several other nations including Columbia, Peru and Ecuador.
The reason for this, explains Cisneros is that while many countries respect and share the views of countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, the prospect of bilateral trade agreements with the US place countries in a difficult situation.
"There is a sentiment among many countries that we cannot miss out on this opportunity because the alternative is to be left out in the cold. Many countries are being 'seduced' by the US's offers of bilateral trade agreements," he said.
Free trade aside, the US also made headway towards improving relations with a few of its neighbours. In his first meeting with Canada's new Prime Minister Paul Martin, President Bush announced that Canada would be allowed to place first-round bids on the next series of Iraqi reconstruction contracts. The two leaders also agreed to increase their cooperation in fighting mad cow disease and Martin left the meeting saying that there had been "very, very good vibes" between the two leaders.
Bush also succeeded in thawing US-Mexican relations with a plan to allow thousands of illegal Mexican migrant workers living in the US to receive three-year work permits before being forced to return to Mexico. Cross-border immigration is a contentious issue between the two neighbours and Bush's announcement was endorsed by Mexican President Vincente Fox who also accepted an invitation to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas later this year.
Still, despite progress in warming relations with Mexico and the US, many analysts feel the summit was an overall disappointment for the US and Latin America. Part of the problem, according to Hakim, was that the US simply failed to offer anything new to the Latin American countries.
"Ten years ago at the first summit the ideas expressed were fresh; they were new ideas and people thought they were going to solve a lot of problems. Ten years later they haven't solved these problems and there is a sense that there hasn't been anywhere near the progress that had been expected. People are worried if they are the right ideas or not," he said. "I think that the US really missed an opportunity for moving towards re-engaging the region."
