MY AMERICA, SU AMERICA (2001)

A few days ago, during the Hispanic Heritage celebration, President Bush, with a funny smile and a wink to the Spanish-speaking audience, converted the well-known Mexican saying Mi casa, su casa, into Mi Casa Blanca, su Casa Blanca. The Latinos living in the United States maybe didn’t need this assessment, since they perceive themselves as Americans in their own right in spite of their Hispanic heritage. But maybe in the times of the Free Trade Area for the Americas, probably the most important international issue for the United States after the war against terrorism, the large continental majority could be a better audience for the kind and generous invitation of the President of the United States.

Latin Americans beyond Mexico, successful partner in the NAFTA, wonder if the coming free trade area will make of them welcome guests of the economy of the most powerful country in the Continent and on the planet. At the same time, President Bush and the present administration haven’t yet made a clear assessment on the levels of protection the US will eliminate in order to allow a real free trade with the less favored countries, which – like the USA itself—desperately need new markets.

Fidel Castro, who has very clear thinking about what a real friendly association with the United States would mean for the Latin American countries -- no longer doubting about the benefits of capitalism — has recently expressed that the Free Trade Area means nothing but a disguised annexation. For Castro, Latin America has no other choice since the external debt of almost every country is impossible to be paid. No longer an exporter of socialism, angry with his exclusion from the project, the Cuban leader spreads the negative idea that there are only two possible options --- annexation or bankruptcy ---, an idea that will make its way into the Latin American public consciousness unless discussed.

The binary thought that opposes imperialism against socialism is an easy path for skeptical Latin American minds, by whom the Free Trade Area is quickly explained as a threat of annexation by the United States of all the countries below the Rio Grande. The idea that a fair capitalism can spread in the same countries where all the economic theories seem to always have failed to eradicate poverty still needs powerful thinkers and speakers. In the United States, worker unions believe that any agreement with poorer countries will encourage American companies to produce in those countries with lower wages. At the same time, the poorer countries worry that their production will not be accepted in the United States.

Both parties seem to need to be addressed with a project that encourages both the United States export of infrastructure services – such as roads, water supply, communications, building, railways — as well as the export of Latin American industry. Both parties should be encouraged to merge companies from one side and the other, ,making of continental capitalism a new flag. It wouldn’t harm if the United States would be the first to resign the old thinking, inviting Cuba to join the project, maybe trading the blockade for the start of free elections. Exports to Asia, Africa and Europe under the Continental brand – a large and all-inclusive American brand—would exponentially increase the wealth of the USA as well as the rest of the countries.

The experience of NAFTA is the perfect example of what happens when trust and a common commercial purpose lead the association between a rich economy and a less developed one. Cultural and military associations will follow in the steps of the trade agreements and finally a political association –not too different from the European Union — will give a convenient frame to a union among equals. A continental federal system will be understood as the opposite of imperialistic expansion, and a union in freedom will be the ultimate response to those who could still blindly talk of annexation.
Defying those who don’t believe in the good will of the United States, and making of the Free Trade Area of the Americas the most generous project of capitalism for the creation of wealth and well-being, President Bush could soon say: My America, su América. He would make clear, once and for all, that America is the common continent, a unity from the start, and that intelligent people should not make a confusion between leadership and imperialism.