CONTINENTAL EYES

We all see with the eyes of a nation: for most of us, the nation where we were born and which speaks the language we speak and that we learned from our parents. What happens if we are introduced into the challenge of a new multinational superstructure? Will our eyes change? How much are we expected to change? These questions, which have been often debated in the United States as a country with a large and diverse immigration, become again pertinent these days. The project of a continental union revivified by the attempts of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, requires from the United States a strong political and cultural response. Chavez promotes a dangerous Latin American alliance against the United States and to successfully counteract this project of aggression with a project of union, the United States needs to see Latin America not only with its American eyes but with its continental eyes.

Both North Americans and South Americans are challenged to travel the space which goes from their nations, language, and culture to the common continental space with, at least, two main languages and cultures at stake. This political journey was not invented by Chavez. Three very different American presidents, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, with different degrees of enthusiasm, stated in the recent past that Latin America and the United States were finally compatible and potential partners. They launched the ambitious Free Trade Area for the Americas, a program which has been quietly making its way defying the unfriendly environment of leftist Latin American governments and the US priorities after 9/11.

Beyond the traditional Latin American complaint about North American capitalism and its attributed imperialistic intentions, the lack of a clear program for economic growth appears to be the main problem which divides the United States from Latin America. What we, Americans and Latin Americans, face now is the challenge to finding a common ground that allows us to have hopes in the future and dream with what the Europeans already have: a continental union. Our American Union, which now would follow the model of the European Union, has been however the early dream of North American patriots as James Monroe and of South American patriots as the Argentine José de San Martín and the Venezuelan Simón Bolivar. Imagined during the days in which American countries were still reaching their independence and building their identities, the American union was never concreted. The fact that most of the colonies were gaining their independence from the losing and decadent Spanish Empire and that the United States was emerging as the brightest child of the dominant British Empire created a lasting cultural web of resentment and hatred. The common American-ness was crushed against the differences in language, culture and religion opposing Anglos and Hispanics. This opposition configures a category which continues to nurture speeches on both sides. Samuel Huntington is as scared of what Hispanics may do to the United States if let as Hugo Chavez and his followers from the supposed imperialistic United States threat.

American presidential candidates in their current campaign to reach the White House seldom talk about Latin America. When they do, it’s always about immigration issues: how to better protect the borders to prevent illegal Latin American immigration and how to deal with legal and illegal Latinos in the United States. They are not still thinking, and less talking, about what could actually stop immigration, which is bringing the U.S. organization and services to Latin America. The Free Trade Area has been widely resisted as the NAFTA was because it is wrongly depicted as an export of jobs, when it should be considered as an export of know how and services. A continental commercial union wouldn’t promote a loss of jobs in the United States because an ambitious and realistic American Union is not about exporting factories to Latin American countries but about to helping them in their development, selling knowledge. The United States can export and sell its know how, its engineers’ and technicians work and its financial and organizational services to communities which lack of everything, from water to highways, from credit banks to efficient federal organizations. Latin American countries in return can help to create a bigger common market for both United States and American products and thus enlarge commerce with the rest of the world. The Americas, duly organized, have the potential to become the biggest common market in the world.

This project of union can be seen as Chavez fears, as a form of imperialism, or as what it really is, the most progressive immediate idea to boost both the United States and Latin American economies. Those who already have in place their continental eyes can see in this possible union the continental essay of global rules for growth and wealth.