American National Security

24. Latin America

510 24 Latin America Geography makes Latin America the neighbor of the United States, and by 2006 Hispanic or Latino Americans were America’s largest single minority group at 14.8% of the U.S. population.1 Driven by the search for jobs, opportunity, and security , Hispanics are bringing their culture and a complex set of issues to urban and rural areas of the United States. Due to Latin America’s growing importance, the U.S. government has undertaken many initiatives in recent years to promote democracy, free trade, and security in the region. However, partially because the U.S. agenda has not always matched that of key countries in the region, progress has not been consistent. U.S. presidents emphasize free trade, counternarcotics initiatives, and ending illegal immigration; Latin leaders often have a different list of priorities. In addition to economic growth and development, key issues of Latino concern include U.S. immigration reform and continuing the flow of remittances from workers in the United States to relatives back home. To illustrate the scale of the remittances issue, the Inter-American Development Bank projected that 2006 remittances from the 12.6 million Latin Americans living in the United States would exceed $45 billion, dwarfing all sources of multilateral and bilateral aid flowing into these countries.2 Without remittances from their citizens working in the United States, many countries in the region would lose a vital source of hard currency. Long-standing political and economic challenges to U.S.–Latin American relations persist. The decades-old U.S. hope that competitive elections free from violence and corruption would produce a new generation of leaders committed to liberal democracy and free markets has yet to be fully realized. This is true despite the fact that by 1990 almost every country in Central and South America except Cuba had experienced a transition to democratic rule. Subsequent disappointments with liberal democracy and free market reforms led to what scholar Jorge G. Castanda labeled in 2006 “Latin America’s Left Turn.”3 The appeal of a leftist agenda is natural in countries that face the level of poverty that still plagues Latin America. Unfortunately, the leaders of this left turn in several important Latin American countries resemble the old-style caudillo (military-political authoritarian ruler) more than they resemble modern social democrats. One example of a leftist, populist leader with authoritarian tendencies is Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela who was first elected in 1998. The leader of a failed military coup in 1992, Chavez nevertheless achieved power six years later by advocating a “Bolivarian Revolution.” Named in honor of Venezuelan Simón Bolivar, a famous figure in the liberation of South America from colonial rule, key elements of this revolution included changing the composition of the dominant class in Venezuela, greater military involvement in the government, nationalization of industries, wealth redistribution, and a nationalist foreign policy that encourages solidarity among underdeveloped countries against the United States and the West.4 Chavez advocated this revolution as the answer to the region’s problems and sought to counter U.S. initiatives with his own programs. Although Chavez highlighted and prioritized several real problems, such as persistent poverty, critics pointed out the similarities between Chavez’s actions and those of failed former authoritarian leaders in the region: the transformation of the Venezuelan military into a praetorian guard, the concentration of power in the executive at the expense of other branches of government, the packing of electoral institutions with Chavez partisans, his division of Venezuelans into “patriots” and “traitors” (those who do not support him), the suppression of media critical of his government, and his open commitment to retaining power until 2030. In terms of economic policies, Chavez’s early efforts to improve income equality in Venezuela actually resulted in a shrinking of the national economy and an increase in poverty by 10 percentage points between 1999 and 2004.5 Some observers fear that Chavez could be an indicator of the potential for “another wave of the populist caudillismo that has done [Latin America] so much damage in the past.”6 Several Latin American countries remain vulnerable to such developments due to the mixed track record of liberal democrats who have attained political power as well as the failure of free market economic reforms to improve more rapidly the welfare of many of the poorest of the region’s citizens. In many ways, Latin America still appears to be shackled to its history.7 What Is...