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Gentle On Latin America

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By EDWARD SCHUMACHER-MATOS

Washington Post Writers Group

Published: March 7, 2009

WASHINGTON - "This time the revolution is for real," declared Fidel Castro after his troops marched into Havana on New Year's Day, but 50 years later about all that is left is a sclerotic regime and a ponderous movie about a T-shirt icon. At four hours, the Steven Soderbergh film "Che" is almost as long as a Fidel speech, and almost as exciting.

Eleven Latin American countries will be holding presidential elections this year and next, and what is striking is that while Fidel hangs on from a hospital bed and his aging brother Raul this week further militarized the government in a shakeup, the rest of the region has moved on and become so politically, almost boringly, moderate.

It has been about 30 years since Latin America, once synonymous with coups, has seen a successful one, and notwithstanding the histrionics of Fidel's Venezuelan acolyte, Hugo Chavez, regional polls consistently show that most Latin Americans define themselves as politically centrist, even in Venezuela. Chavez himself had an abysmal regional approval rating of only 26 percent last year in the Barometro Iberoamericano poll, surpassing only George W. Bush.

What that means as President Obama defines his Americas policy in preparation for a hemispheric summit next month in Trinidad and Tobago is that he should take a page from Che Guevara, a doctor, that Che himself cruelly forgot: First do no harm.

As Bill Clinton discovered, a president - and by extension, the United States - can win support in Latin America by doing little more than being collaborative, eloquent and showing that your heart is in the right place. The most divisive American policies of the past eight years had nothing to do with Latin America itself, but with American unilateralism in places such as Iraq and on global issues such as climate warming. Obama already is wildly popular in the region, despite Chavez trying to demonize him last week as another Bush in response to a U.S. report showing that Venezuela was a major transit point for illicit drugs.

To be sure, there are real issues, but Obama got off to a good start by meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon before the inauguration, underlining the importance of U.S.-Mexican relations. He then telephoned Presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Michelle Bachelet of Chile and Alvaro Uribe of Colombia his first week in office.

According to Robert King, a temporary Bush holdover on the National Security Council, Obama showed the humility that only a great power can by asking for advice on what not to do in the hemisphere. He also stressed that now is not the time for any of us to erect trade barriers, backing away from his campaign rhetoric.

Obama, King says, will expand on the Bush policies of providing drug-fighting and anti-poverty aid and building clean energy partnerships, and will seek to "enhance" labor and environmental standards under NAFTA, work with Colombia in addressing human rights issues as a way to approve the pending trade agreement there, and ask Congress to approve a Panama trade agreement.

Much more needs to be done on collaboration over migration and drug trafficking, and on ending the counterproductive Cuban trade embargo, but the selection of an assistant secretary of state to address those issues is dragging out, a victim of other priorities. The front-runner is rumored to be Georgetown professor Arturo Valenzuela.

The coming election cycle begins with El Salvador this month and will include major countries such as Brazil, Colombia and Chile. Analysts, academics and the media will try to ascribe right and left trends, but those labels are for the most part meaningless anachronisms from the Cold War. Except for Venezuela and Cuba, most Latin American nations have remarkably similar socioeconomic policies. As Harvard's Jorge Dominguez notes, the crucial electoral issue, in response to the recession, is whether to throw out the incumbents, whatever their leanings.

From 2002 to 2007, Latin America enjoyed what World Bank Vice President Pamela Cox calls a "golden age of growth" in which poverty dropped from 44 percent of the population to 33 percent. Due to high commodity prices and mostly sound economic policies, the region has fared better than the rest of the world, but the global recession has finally caught up.

Polls show that Latin Americans want strong, effective leadership - regardless of ideology - and in many countries may accept authoritarian rule if social conditions reverse too much. That is the trend to watch.

Edward Schumacher-Matos' columns are distributed by Washington Post Writers Group.

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