Talking Points: U.S. Foreign Policy in Latin America

Latin American countries that have elected more populist and leftist leaders:

Venezuela (1998), Chile (2000 and 2006), Brazil (2002 and 2006), Argentina (2003), Uruguay (2004), Bolivia (2005), Peru (2006), Ecuador (2006), Nicaragua (2006)
Encompassing nearly two-thirds of the regional population.

Cross-Border Crisis, What Happened?:

On March 1, 2008, Colombia went across its border into Ecuador to attack a FARC camp and kill several people, including a rebel leader named Raul Reyes. Venezuela and Ecuador responded by sending troops to their borders with Colombia and Nicaragua severed diplomatic ties with Colombia. However, the situation was resolved peacefully and Colombia was condemned by other nations for crossing into Ecuador in this manner. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe recently said that four laptop computers recovered from the guerrilla base contain documents pointing to financial and military ties between FARC and the Ecuadorean and Venezuelan governments.

Recent Human Rights Abuses in Colombia:

While the Bush Administration underscores the U.S./Colombia alliance and pushes for a free trade agreement, many human rights concerns are being left out of the picture. How does our alliance with Colombia affect how Latin America views U.S. in the region? (by Lisa Haugaard

• Extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Colombian army are increasing.

• While over 31,000 paramilitary members demobilized, new, emerging groups, rearmed and undemobilized paramilitaries continue to use threats and violence to exercise power and take control of the drug trade.

• The Justice and Peace process, under which the worst paramilitary abusers were supposed to receive at least token sentences in exchange for revealing their crimes, is offering little in the way of justice.

• As it becomes clear that few paramilitaries will pay even reduced sentences for crimes, the full scope of paramilitary atrocities is starting to be revealed.

• The progress in investigating politicians’ ties to paramilitaries, driven by the Supreme Court rather than the executive, is a positive first step—but the armed forces’ role in aiding paramilitary violence has barely even been broached.

• More people were internally displaced by violence in 2007 than the year before, and the total number of people internally displaced in Colombia’s conflict now tops 4 million.

• The number of kidnappings is declining, although it is still a very serious problem, and kidnap victims suffer greatly in captivity.

• Guerrilla groups continued to kill, threaten and displace the civilian population.

• Violence against trade unionists continues at appalling levels. At least 11 union leaders were killed in the first two and a half months of 2008.

• Murders of trade unionists decreased in 2007 but other forms of violence against trade unionists, including disappearances, death threats and forced displacement, increased. The vast majority of cases of assassinations of trade unionists remain unsolved.

RECOMMENDED COURSES OF ACTION FOR NEW PRESIDENT: The Washington Office on Latin America outlines concrete actions that a new U.S. administration should take during its first 100 days in office in order to demonstrate its commitment to a new approach in Latin America

1. Schedule a presidential or high-level Administration trip to Latin America to articulate a new approach that treats Latin America as our partner in the hemisphere, and recognizes that poverty and inequality, crime and insecurity, and human rights and democracy are the major challenges in the hemisphere. The President or his/her designee should visit a number of countries in order to recognize the steps that governments in the hemisphere are taking to strengthen democratic governance and address poverty and inequality.
2. Commit the United States explicitly to supporting the U.N. Millennium Development Goals in Latin America and announce that new U.S. foreign aid programs to Latin America will be geared toward meeting those goals, particularly those related to the elimination of extreme poverty.
3. Call for a summit meeting with Mexico and Canada, our partners in North America, to lay the foundation for a new collaboration for North American development, including re-evaluating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
4. Work actively with Congress to achieve comprehensive immigration reform that will regularize the status of undocumented people of Latin American origin established in the United States.
5. Propose an inter-American summit meeting to reconsider drug strategies, placing emphasis on alternative livelihoods for small farmers, targeted enforcement against the most dangerous and violent criminals, programs to identify and prosecute money laundering, and programs to reduce demand.
6. Close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and either initiate legal proceedings against those held there or release them.
7. Call on Congress to lift the ban on travel to Cuba, a gesture that would benefit American citizens and businesses and signal a fresh approach to a long-standing irritant in U.S.-Latin American relations.

See Forging New Ties: A Fresh Approach to U.S. Policy in Latin America