A series of diplomatic rows exposing Latin American resentment of US foreign and domestic policies threatens to overshadow a major regional summit designed to promote cooperation.
The Summit of the Americas, which was to begin in the Mexican city of Monterrey yesterday, was called to discuss social development in a region with 220 million poor people.
PHOTO: AFP
But development has been conspicuously absent from the agenda in the lead-up to the two-day meeting, which has been marked by simmering tensions and open squabbles.
US president George W. Bush faces more than 30 other heads of state, many of whom oppose his policy towards Latin America.
One issue that could sour the gathering is the requirement that foreign visitors be fingerprinted and photographed at US airports. Some 27 states are exempt from the measures, but no Latin American country is among them.
Brazil is one of the most strident dissenters, and has retaliated by ordering the same measures to be applied to US visitors, causing nine-hour queues and official protests from the US. The tit-for-tat move has been hugely popular in Brazil, which is also the main thorn in US plans to negotiate a free trade deal extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
Brazilian president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva is scheduled to meet Bush on the sidelines of the summit. But he is not the only Latin American president under pressure to stand up to what many view as the US' bulldozer tactics.
Last week, Argentine president Nestor Kirchner said he would win the debate with Bush in their one-on-one meeting in Monterrey "by a knockout".
His comments came days after high-ranking US officials urged Argentina to speed up the fulfilment of debt-refinancing conditions in the wake of the country's economic crisis, and criticized the failure of its foreign minister to meet dissidents on a recent trip to Cuba.
The chief minister of the Argentine cabinet, Alberto Fernandez, called the comments "impertinent."
In the absence of Fidel Castro, who was not invited because Cuba is not a member of the Organization of American States, the most vehement anti-US voice is likely to be Venezuela.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez last week called the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "a real illiterate" after she condemned his closeness to Castro and reluctance to call a leadership referendum.
The left-wing former paratrooper promised to speak his mind.
"The time of cowardly governments on this continent subordinate to the dictates of Washington is coming to an end," he said.
Bush should find some solace, however, in the summit's host, Mexican president Vicente Fox. Fox has welcomed the US leader's proposal to provide millions of illegal immigrants, most of them Mexicans, with temporary work visas.
But even this prize is qualified by the fact that it faces some opposition in the US Congress, and falls far short of the amnesty Fox had sought. It is more of a unilateral bone-throwing exercise than a victory for diplomacy.
Mexico's former ambassador to the UN, Alfonso Aguilar Zinser, said the plan was a sign that the US treated Latin America as its "backyard."
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