If US President George W. Bush is expecting some respite from his troubles at home during a four-day visit to Argentina and Brazil that begins today, he is in for a very rude awakening.
Polls show Bush to be the most unpopular US president ever among Latin Americans, and thousands of demonstrators, led by the soccer idol Diego Maradona, are flocking to the Argentine beach resort of Mar del Plata to protest his presence at a summit meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders. The greeting from his fellow heads of state, who have been complaining of his administration's neglect of the region for five years, does not promise to be especially warm, either.
"He doesn't have any money to offer, so the president doesn't really have any cards to play," said Riordan Roett, director of the Latin American studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "Nobody among the crop of fiscally conservative but socially progressive presidents that we now have around the region is going to go to his defense."
PHOTO: AFP
The theme of what is formally known as the Fourth Summit of the Americas is "Creating Jobs to Fight Poverty and Strengthen Democratic Governance." But the feeling among many Latin Americans is that the US is coming with little to offer other than the usual nostrums about free trade, open markets, privatization and fiscal austerity, the same recipe of reforms that has vastly increased social inequality throughout Latin America over the past decade.
"We've almost all of us been down that road, and it didn't work," said a diplomat from one South American country, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to offend the Bush administration. "The United States continues to see things one way, but most of the rest of the hemisphere has moved on and is heading in another direction."
Even in the area of free trade, which Washington continues to offer as the solution to the region's problems, progress has slowed to a crawl. Washington recently struck such an agreement with Central American nations, but the deadline this year for a much broader hemispheric accord, set at the first summit meeting in Miami in 1994, has come and gone.
Moreover, while Latin America had one of its better economic performances last year, much of that growth came from booming sales of raw materials to China.
"The pace of free trade negotiations has slowed down," but not "the commitment to some kind of broader hemispheric agreement," Thomas Shannon, the US assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, said on Tuesday in a telephone interview from Washington.
"We don't see any dramatic stepping away" from the notion that "democracy and free markets really do deliver the goods," he added.
Latin American diplomats, however, say that negotiations over a joint text to be issued at the end of the three-day meeting have been fraught with disagreement. The Bush administration and Canada have been pushing for a resounding endorsement of the free-trade message. But Latin America, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez particularly scathing in his condemnations has been resisting.
also see story:
No escape for unpopular Bush
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
RSS