Washington's most throbbing Latin American headache takes the form of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Birns believes Chavez, a man who has publicly called President Bush a "dickhead"

Thumbing their nose at Uncle Sam
Irene Caselli
Thursday 12 May 2005

America may be flexing its military muscle in the Middle East, but in South America it is losing the diplomatic battle. Irene Caselli reports.
George W. Bush
Not smiling now: An anti-American alliance of Arab and South American states? Not exactly what George Bush wanted...

The United States is nursing a bruised ego. After decades of funding malleable regimes, fomenting right-wing coups and building economic hegemony in the Americas, Washington just found itself locked out of its own backyard.

This week saw leaders of the Latin American and Arab worlds meet in a historic summit in Brazil - and the US was denied even the courtesy of observer status. Washington is outraged, fearing that this was more than just a diplomatic slight: it sees it as the latest gesture of defiance from the two regions that bear the deepest grudge over recent US foreign policy.

The Summit of South American-Arab Countries, which concluded on Wednesday and was attended by Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, furthered Latin America's drive to strengthen relationships away from the United States. Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva led moves by South American states to cement alliances outside the US, which has traditionally held the South on a short leash economically.

The State Department dismissed suggestions that the US' continental dominance is under threat. "We hope our friends in the hemisphere do not fall back on the failed policies of the past," said a State Department official, who declined to be named. "We will work with any country, provided its leader is democratically elected," he said. " We urge them to crack down on corruption and promote free trade."

That exhortation seems to fall on deaf ears. Washington's grand plans for a Free Trade Area of the Americas have stalled after Latin American leaders objected to proposals restricting access to US markets and continued subsidies for US industry. The rhetoric of the Brazilian summit will do nothing to quell fears that the FTAA is dead in the water

Venezuela, which controls 40% of the US' oil imports, has moved closer to Cuba, the bête noire of US-Latin American relations, since Chavez was elected president in 1998. He survived a US-backed coup in 2002 and, with the example of his radically socialist "Bolivarian revolution", is giving the rest of the continent a lesson in bucking the north's neo-liberal agenda.

QUOTE
Washington's most throbbing Latin American headache takes the form of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Birns believes Chavez, a man who has publicly called President Bush a "dickhead"