LATIN AMERICA'S UNREQUITED LOVE

I can remember American presidents from the second half of the 20th century only if I link them to Argentine facts. Like many Latin Americans, I tend to like them or not depending on how friendly they were to us. Like everywhere in the world, “us” doesn’t always mean a heterogeneous group of national fellows but rather a group of like minded politicized people. We seldom judge then the United States presidents with regular standards and our options are often incomprehensible to American pundits and politicians. Along with our political ideas, we have our emotional issues and also our sometimes absurd history. Our feelings are usually ignored by common American citizens since Latin America is not something that weighs in their hearts as the United States weighs in ours. Our relationship is uneven.

In the middle of a new American presidential race, we are not sure about who will finally win and less about what the new president will mean to us. At this point, we couldn’t say a Democrat will be better than a Republican or the reverse. In Argentina, we have seen all colors and shades. Carter was wonderful to some of us, because he stood for human rights while the military were still in power, and awful to others, because he was seen as someone validating the defeated guerrilla. For a long time, Reagan was God because he acted like a true man of the people –we saw him as a Peronist- and then Satan because he helped Thatcher during the Malvinas-Falkland war. Bush was seen as an elegant conservative who finally accepted that Peronism could be democratic and even promote capitalism and freedom. While some hated him for being the rich Americans and corporations’ representative, others seized the day and helped to restore the damaged friendship with the U.S., creating new links and also making of Argentina an extra-Nato ally. Clinton was a friend to almost everyone along those same lines, confirming that after Reagan it became harder to stick to the usual distinction that Peronists fit with Democrats while anti-Peronist match better Republicans: in the new century affinity seemed more centered on the recognition or denial of global modernity.
Bush the Second was hailed with great expectations, for he was seen as the one who would unite the Americas in a Continental Union, such as the European Union, going beyond the Free Trade Area for the Americas, that first project installed by his father and followed by Clinton,. After 9/11, President Bush had other worries than Latin America. During the financial crisis of December 2001, he didn’t help Argentina in the right direction, in spite of being the Latin American country most steadily engaged into modern capitalism. It took him too long to react to the new Latin American crisis and to promote again with the required energy a continental trade union: in the meantime Argentina as well as many other disappointed Latin American countries had switched to leftist governments. The Latin American left doesn’t automatically means, as some could think, open minded people in charge, caring for the poor. It is usually represented by anti-progressive populist governors, not prone to democracy or to any kind of capitalism that could create the so needed wealth, and who always perceive government and state as a source for their centralized power. For them, federalism is only a word in the Constitution and they haven’t yet discovered its meaning, less its practice.

Obama or McCain? I like Obama because he still has to face the race issue -an endless struggle against prejudice that someone has to win one day- and also because he sincerely cares for those who have less. I like Mc Cain because he is a military like Perón, with a clear sense of national priorities and a great courage to address them. As a modernist, I like Obama because he seems aware that help for the poor and minorities has nowadays to come from something different than centralized welfare and I like McCain because of the same. As a Latin American, I like Obama because Latin American people of equally mixed races will change some of their feelings towards the United States only by looking themselves in him, but I prefer McCain because he understands better the need and benefits of a trade union in the Americas.

Times have changed and minds seem to be finally catching up. Some old passions, like the Latin American anti-Americanism revivified during the Bush era, will maybe fade after November if the new president renews our so challenged friendship. He is welcome to come down South to learn and teach us, once again, how freedom can be the true basis of a society; also, how prosperity can be reached. If he does well, he will have the right to claim that after him there were not so many Latinos knocking at the border trying to get into the U.S. or getting in illegally. He would have applied the basic rule for a U.S. and Latin America successful relationship: to export the American dream. When this dream becomes available across the Continent, every one will stay happily at home.

Democrat or Republican, we will judge the new president according to how well he realizes that when we hate Americans we are just telling them that we love them. Admiration and envy have been intertwined in our souls for two centuries, but as equally Americans in the same continental land, as children of the same independency wars and as partners of the same Constitution, we know at the bottom of our hearts that we are doomed to be together.

Will the American people, after elections and with their new president, reconsider their feelings and reciprocate ours? Not only tango needs two. Foreign policy does as well.