TU QUOQUE, BRAZIL?

This week, President Lula has welcome and honored the Iranian President Ahmadinejad. No one expected it, and few dare to guess what is beneath the fanfare around this man, who has already visited Venezuela, engaged in military and nuclear power talks with Chavez, the man who wouldn’t mind a South American war with the United States, if that allows him to remain in power. Is Brazil stabbing the U.S., looking for the South American Imperial throne? Or, rather, are we in a different play, in which there are more things in heaven and earth, and also in the Americas, than are dreamt of in any political philosophy?

A few months ago, President Lula and Brazil could be quoted as the best example of diplomacy in South America. Neighbors of Venezuela and also friends of Chavez, Brazil and its president made a point to underline their unaltered friendship with the U.S. When the American military bases in Colombia were discussed, Brazil showed a vague concern but felt somehow relieved that Chavez found an enemy with enough power to maybe dissuade him on his war games. A slight switch was later observed in Honduras, when Brazil hosted within its embassy the former Honduran President Zelaya, as if intending to play a bigger role than the United States and its ambassadors and mediators. The move looked suspicious to some but still was labeled by the most relevant political pundits as a mere blunder of the oldest and most efficient chancellery in South America. The cheerful meeting with the happy Ahmadinejad has put now Lula under a different light: his large, sincere smile could hide a bluff or a sense of genuine victory. Brazil won the Olympic Games over the U.S.; why wouldn’t it win the lead of foreign policy in the Americas? Over Chavez, in the first place, and over the U.S. were it possible. Evo Morales in Bolivia joined, receiving in joy the Iranian president. If this is a version of mice playing while the cat is away, we wonder where the cat is, and when will he be back. As of now, President Obama has expressed to Brazil some concern, as if he didn’t believe all this is actually happening, or as if he knew more –he should- and had everything under control. Mysteries under the rug begin to pile up.

What is Ahmadinejad doing in the Americas? Who brought him and who the Middle East wars to these shores? None other than Iran itself. It carved its way into the Americas with patience, since 1992 and 1994, when they bombed the Israeli Embassy and later the Jewish organization AMIA in Buenos Aires, at a time when the United States and Argentina were the closest friends in the world, and Argentina the best performing capitalist country in South America. Struggling for positions in the backyard to better assail the house. Then, we had 9/11, still Muslim terror under a different disguise. All seems then to be about an attack on the Empire of freedom and wealth and its allies in the Americas, which are more than one. In that case, a strong emperor will do better than a weak one, left to the saddest of farewells, a stab from a loved one.

VENEZUELA’ S WALL

At this point, we wonder if the United States decision of letting down the Free Trade Agreement for the Americas as a top foreign policy has been wise. Emboldened, Hugo Chávez created his own continental fantasy, the ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, and, angry with the U.S. military bases in Colombia, persists with his speeches on an imminent war to defeat the U.S. In his fight against what he continues to see as an imperialistic power, he has even found friends in the United States, who, as enemies of any type of military power the U.S. may exert, are ready to support his views. Chavez, his friends and even some officials in the United States administration firmly believe that the U.S. is to be blamed for all what is wrong in the Americas and the world, and are not ready to accept the good that the U.S. has done to the world, yet the good that it still can do. The idea of war blinds one side and the other, and war is the core of speeches that should rather address a new rationale on progress, economy and state administration. An imaginary wall is parting right now countries and people in the Americas, and creating a divide between those who believe in freedom, free markets and genuine democracy, and those who cannot believe in these values as the only possible road to progress.

The liberal point of view is not new to Americans and Chávez’s left-populist point of view has been largely sustained for half a century by Fidel Castro and others. We were all used to deal with this subtle cultural wall that parted the political continent in two since communism ceased to be a threat, twenty years ago. It seems that now we need to get trained to accept that the cultural wall can become, at any moment, a military wall that parts the continent in more than different types of economies or political administrations. Venezuela’s leader is working very hard to build that ideological wall with weapons that could set the Americas on actual fire if things get out of control, as the Honduran case has shown in a modest scale. To make sure, his ideas are understood, Chávez didn't hesitate to partner Iran’s President Ahmadinejad as the necessary nuclear scarecrow.

While Chávez speaks, the U.S. should think and act, in ways Chávez couldn’t contest and with tactics he couldn’t match. The ALBA actually means nothing but a stratagem for Chavez to gain power. People who have listened to him or even used his oil money, such as the Kirchners in Argentina or Evo Morales in Bolivia, are paying very expensive political bills, since they couldn’t benefit their people with any substantial progress, less to create more wealth. The ALCA (the Spanish for FTAA) was instead a solid proposal of partnership, not with the poor or the rich for a day, like Venezuela, but with the wealthiest country in the world, owner of the best technique to create wealth. Venezuela’s wall, like the communist wall in Berlin, is the wall of unacknowledged impotence to create wealth in freedom and to rule a country in an open and participative democracy. However, the United States refusal to use that fantastic weapon of the FTAA to win hearts and minds in the Americas represents another type of blindness, that which prefers not to get involved in what is seen sometimes as a sticky friendship, if friendship and trust in the idea of a common future don’t prevail.

Venezuela’s wall was born from the United States mind, which has so often denied the idea of unity in the Americas, fearing the Hispanic majority. It will fall not when armies are deployed, but when the idea of the wall itself becomes nonsense. It will fall when the people of the Americas don’t see themselves abandoned but included in a project that involves all the countries, including Cuba and Venezuela, whose people wouldn’t accept any kind of aggressiveness, confronted with a better and possible dream of progress and prosperity. Berliners got the message, but there was a message for in the European community and the tenacity of the United States to sustain a continuous technological progress. Latin Americans, even if deaf to Chávez ‘s rants and raves, are not hearing any one else speaking to them.

THE CENTURY OF THE AMERICAS

The 20th century was the century of the United States of America as the emerging and, by the end of it, sole superpower on Earth. At the beginning of the 21st century, the idea that the new century would belong again to the uncontested power just because of its merits, lasted only a couple of years. Since 9/11 and all its consequences, which include two not yet won wars, the United States had to fight again not only for its supremacy, which would only be of American people’s concern, but to keep its role model for wealth and progress; also for what the United States means as an example and inspiration to the rest of the world.

This fight is not a minor subject for Latin America, which has always been strained between capitalism and socialism and hasn’t made completely up its mind yet about which of them is more convenient to grow and to spread social justice. Sharing the same continent, most of Latin Americans cannot yet see the United States' failure as affecting their own interests and often rather rejoice on it, wrongly thinking that the difficulties of the main actor in the continent will bring them new opportunities or represent the announced death of capitalism. There is not a clear consciousness, neither in the United States nor in Latin America, that the century of America can only be continued by the century of the Americas. The pending commercial, political and military union is the only one that can give to both the United States and Latin America the necessary volume and strength to grow.

What happens in the States, doesn’t stay in the States. It spreads all over the world, but with a greater weight, on neighbors used to a strong and well defined leadership. When the United States speaks, there is an effect. When it remains silent, its attitude is equally noticed. Liking words more than actions, Latin Americans still weight their fate according to what is proposed as a plan, a blue print to meet success, and nothing seems more tempting to many of them than leaders who dare to defy the United States. The macho style enjoys this type of verbal war explaining the short road to heaven and Chavez represents the perfect example of a “courageous” leader to follow, as Fidel Castro did in the past. When the United States chooses to avoid confrontation –like these days à propos of Chavez’s nuclear deals with Iran – or confuses which is the right thing to do –and in Honduras supports Zelaya and not the Supreme Court -- Latin Americans don’t understand. Those who are against the United States, no matter what the United States does, continue to mistrust, and those who want closer ties and shared plans, feel abandoned. Enemies or friends, they want to be confirmed in their roles. When Chavez in his anti-imperialistic brutality is so clear, they would like to see the same transparency in the United States’ strategy and speech. The lack of a visible appointed official in the American government who can explain the American point of view only worsens the current situation, characterized by a certain hope on President Obama, which is contradicted by his actions.

In the United States as well as in Argentina, to mention only both extremes of the Americas, people live gloomy days, full of uncertainties at a time in which the world is changing faster than it can be thought. There are fears that globalization will take this time its toll on the United States. Considering that there is no possible globalization without a strong leadership of the stellar country, the role model for that world process, all the stakes should be on reinforcing its power and not in minimizing it. Latin America has to play its role in this process, understanding that a strong United States will make a stronger and safer continent and will increase the chances of the whole continent, if united. The United States needs to play its complementary role in the continent, making a clear commercial, political, and military proposal, attentive to the fact that Latin Americans like to be considered and that, for them, there is no stronger cultural mark of interest than being addressed in words that express thoughts of appreciation and plans. Latin Americans understand political silence as a lack of interest and as spurning.

It could be that the Obama administration gets too busy with Europe and the Middle East and that Latin America represents, indeed, an uninteresting region to waste time in it, and that it is actually spurned because the interest lies somewhere else. Then, still, and since the 20th century America cannot be continued but by a larger one, other Americans in the United States should reconsider the two centuries old Pan-Americanism as an option, and prepare the ground for a near future. The Republican Party and think tanks devoted to the permanent reshaping of the nation, could substitute the administration in the dialogue and project for the Americas. Latin America, which only needs to grow, a positive reflection in the mirror of the powerful and a chance to play its part, will respond if positively addressed.

In the meanwhile, instead of sensible words pointing out to a common future, we will continue to hear the speech of hatred and disunion by the Chavez, Kirchners, and Zelayas of Latin America. How Latin Americans who really are friends of the United States can talk in its favor, expecting to be given credit, when the one who is supposed to be the example to follow and the chosen friend, turns its back on them and remains silent?

CONTINENTAL FELLOWS

In 2006, Oliver Stone directed a moving homage to the 9/11 New York heroes in the film World Trade Center. A few days ago, he was sitting at the Venetia Movie Festival by President Chavez of Venezuela, who has just signed agreements with Russia, Syria and Iran, purchasing weapons and tanks to support him in his mythical war against the United States “imperialism.” Indeed, the world has changed; and so have the Americas, but changes aren’t over yet. Those who cannot think fast and accurately on continental issues risk staying behind and with the wrong friends.

Stone presented his film South of the Border, where he interviews South American presidents. In the cast, Stone credited all those who share Chavez’s views on the continent and who are against or reluctant to an association with the United States. These presidents, as well as part of the American and Latin American intelligentsia seem to be behind facts, at a time when President Obama is adding a military diplomacy to the global trade agreements, and while he strives to keep Colombia military strong against Chavez, he also cancels the plan for an antiballistic missile system in Eastern Europe to assure the closer cooperation of Russia against Iran. The United States is now going globally global: besides financial and trade issues, military issues are exposed and require world leaders’ commitment to solve them. Some of the Latin American leaders seem aware of this fact. Others, like Argentina, are kidnapping their people’s will, without truly understanding or explaining what the global stakes are at this moment.

The 9/11 attacks modified the previous optimistic view that changes in the world, after the fall of the Soviet Union, could actually happen just through trade and soft diplomacy. We woke up from those Fukuyama dreams of the end of history and blind faith in the new world order, by the new axis of evil, terrorists of several Muslim organizations. Soon, two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq postponed the former progress in trade, and took a military slant that the world soon credited to President Bush and the United States conservative and imperialistic strategy. No one was ready to commit to a global change in rules; less to enforce it with military power, but the United States and a few more countries which shared the effort and losses.

In Latin America, those were the days also in which the dream of the Free Trade Area ended and was seen as a failure from the United States by its traditional enemies in Latin America, who soon took advantage of the situation, building their own association of Latin American countries against the United States. Pursuant to this situation, all the reforms toward modernity and global trade gained in countries like Argentina, were discredited in the public opinion and politicians and intellectual who supported a close friendship with the United States and the enforcement of global rules, were displaced from power and media.

Stone’s views on Latin America are very close to those exhibited by the anti American intelligentsia in these countries. In the same way they don’t serve well the United States’ interest, even from a Liberal point of view, they don’t serve either the best interest of Latin American countries. Instead, they seem to feel very comfortable with each other: Stone and Chavez can be seen in the pictures smiling to the cameras, wearing the same red tie of the Venezuela revolution, as the continental fellows they look glad to be. The problem is that the continental brotherhood seems limited to those sharing the ultra liberal and usually festive and irresponsible points of view of the continental left. Whereas we see many intellectuals and media, promoting delinquent terrorist behavior by the name of outdated economy and military theories and also spreading as much hatred as possible against the United States’ power, we don’t see equivalent voices in the Americas and in the United States promoting common interests in finances, trade and the military.

From the past, we keep habits that have not been conveniently revised at this time in which a strong defense partnership is required to face common threats, not only in the finances and the prospects of growth, but specifically in the military. Some countries like Venezuela, Brazil and Chile are updating their weapons and a country, Venezuela, powerful in oil dollars and by the way of weapons, is introducing Russia and Iran into the continent, as if we could soon be back to the old Cuban days of the Soviet missile deployment against the United States. Are the people in the Americas fully aware about these military movements that could involve them in a war?

The left in the United States always had a fling for Latin America, its exotism and esthetically attractive poverty, its sexy leaders like Fidel Castro and now Hugo Chavez, but the right in the United States never had too much of an interest in countries perceived as from a different culture, race, and historic background, that could even be a threat if allowed to grow. The left in Latin American countries hated its own right, as should be, but this right was never embraced as an equal partner by the United States. Since conservative governments had been very rarely incarnated in democratic elected officials and, more often than not, in military dictators, the usual relationship had been bribery and some degree of corruption to keep at least Latin American countries at bay. The right in Latin American countries has often been in the past very much pro-U.S but not always pro its own people at the same time. All these traits have left marks, wounds, and above all, patterns that need to be removed to build a renewed relationship, more in tune with current continental challenges.

War times require reliable friends and trust. A renewed continental fellowship based on the recognition of common interests in financial, commercial and safety strategies. The public opinion in the United States as well as in Latin American countries needs to learn how to see the world as a whole and the continent as a part of that whole. The world is on the mend, the continent should be, too.

COLONIAL WARS: A SEQUEL

Two months ago, former President Kirchner and his wife, current president, were beaten at an election seen as a plebiscite on their policies. Seventy percent of Argentine voted against them, supporting other parties, including a dissident fraction of Kirchner’s Peronist party. Today, as if such an astonishing defeat had been erased from public memory, both Kirchner are in full possession of power. No one will stop them in Congress, since elections were advanced several months from the original date of October, and the new elected representatives have to wait until December to take their seats. This intermezzo works like a magic key and extends to all spheres of government: every Kirchner’s policies can still be voted or applied, even if a huge majority of Argentines is against them. Some of these policies have an incidence on the local economy poor performance but some others have a great relevance beyond Argentine borders, such as the policy toward military alliances in the Americas. What Argentina does or does not in regards of the United States bases in Colombia, matters.

Today, in Bariloche, during the new summit of Unasur, the Union of South American Nations, wife Kirchner, in her hostess role, always enjoying the light of international cameras, and engrossed with the recent victories at Congress, explained her point of view on the Americas. For her, the United States is an imperialistic military extra-continental power which aspires to control Colombia as a colony, in the same way Great Britain exerted its extra-continental power over the Falklands-Malvinas Islands and fought a war to keep the colonial status. President Chavez of Venezuela, instead would be the new champion of freedom and independence, and the Kirchners, his proud friends in the liberation task. The ideological trick always works well for many Argentines still hurt by the lost war in the islands, but it seems a rather poor comment for a president who, as a head of state, should know better who is who in this world. Pundits and onlookers usually laugh at her, because of her absurd school teacher style, her obvious ignorance of Argentina best interests in the continent, and, above all, because of her submission, shared by her husband, to Venezuelan President Chavez, a sub product of Fidel Castro’s speech and bad reads on Perón, a leader also misunderstood by the Kirchners, who haven’t got yet that the fifty years old peronist theory of Continentalism, never denied geography. The Argentina President’s reference to the United States as an extra continental force makes us wonder if she has ever seen a map, or if she has been the innocent victim of some not innocent foreign intelligence briefs that convinced her that South America belongs politically to a different continent from North America.

Traditionally, there have been three different projects on the union of the Americas. The first one, which goes back in history to President Monroe with scales in Presidents Sarmiento, Perón, Kennedy, and both Bush, looks for a Pan-American union in which all the countries from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego would be equal partners. It was always based on the common identity of American countries which won their independence from European countries, and which built their political identities with alike Constitutions, based on freedom and democracy. The second project, which surfaced mostly during the Twentieth Century as a reaction, often a communist reaction manipulated from the former Soviet Union, exhibits Latin Americans closely united by language and religion against Anglo-Americans; it aims to a cultural war that would defeat the United States from within, with Latinos taking power over Anglos; this project expresses a fantasy dear to Hispanics still in pain from the wars between Great Britain and Spain, and also represents the greatest nightmare of Anglo’s demographists. The third project is a split disguised as a union and was originated in the true master imperialistic minds of some British nineteen century officers, which imagined South America as a different continent from North and Central America, the brightest idea ever thought to control the increasing hemispherical power of the United States. When an Argentine president refuses to be part of a Pan-American project that includes the United States, sabotages Colombia’s President Uribe’s effort to include the United States and obeys Chavez’s wishes of a powerful South America in war with the United States, she is rather functional to old colonial British desires for the region. She is also, very, very far from Argentina’s best interest: the support and friendship of the United States to counterbalance the otherwise too powerful Southern giant of Brazil. Sometimes, United States presidents have fallen into the same trap, rushed by more urgent wars in other places in the planet, or simply misled by some not too independent local agents about politics in a region that, only in the past decades, has gained the full geopolitical attention it deserves from the first country in the world and the continent.

In Argentina, there is a saying that the best never reach power precisely because they are good and decent, and politics in the region request lies and deceit. The Kirchners are masters of this art of lies, leading Argentines into the uncertain path of war, the clumsy apology of enemies taken as friends, and the aggressive speeches against who should be instead the main ally. There is not yet a strong leader who personifies the opposite position and who can be clearly perceived on the side of truth and best Argentine interests. In the coming weeks, continental affairs may get sour, because of the wrong doing of leaders as Chavez and his partners. It would be time, in Argentina as well as in the United States, to give again some public space to the traditional and democratic project of a Pan-American union , such as the now forgotten Free Trade Area for the Americas. In this union of the Americas, military alliances would be openly considered and discussed along with the usual trade issues.

In the 21st century, the politically uncultured chatter about colonial wars and paranoid sequels looks definitely misplaced and describes well the lack of modernity of many of Latin American leaders, who still see the world with a nineteen century mental frame. Continental safety matters to all the people of the Americas, and contradicting Clemenceau, we could say this time: "War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to politicians." Less to those who actually haven’t learned history’s lessons, or updated those they heard a long time ago.

A CONTINENTAL ROMANCE

I have written so many continental love stories inspired on my own that I cannot believe one which looks like issued straight from my pen is actually happening! I had been close, though, with one story that showed the love of an Argentine journalist for an American married Senator. My character was married to a British lady and the whole story, shaped as a long email (yes!) the journalist wrote to the Senator who wouldn’t pick her phone calls, was about the sad feelings my Argentine woman had when not succeeding to get him divorced. Every character worked as a living metaphor. The story was, of course, a pretence to develop a sort of essay on how Americans often prefer Europeans as partners instead of choosing what by many ways would be the natural and closest partners: Latin Americans. My story was a bit depressing and it didn’t end exactly well, with Latin America neglected in favor of the legitimate British wife, but, hey!, now the romance between the Governor of South Carolina and a beautiful Argentine woman who happened to be also a news anchor, shows that reality can be much better than my poor writer’s imagination.

Since I heard about this brand-new continental actual romance, I couldn’t help following the story in all the details the Governor, wife and lover have generously delivered to the press. I cannot stop dreaming now about what the development of this story will become and if, contradicting the story I had invented, this new continental couple will not finally show to the world that Continentalism is possible. The fact that the Governor is a Republican adds its political spice to it, for none other than both Bush pushed for the finally failed Free Trade Area of the Americas, that first step toward continental union. Why then the Republicans are asking the Governor to resign when he could become the most important and attractive asset for a new policy in the Americas?

I cannot stop raving. Why would the political career of this loving man being ruined just because he happened to fall in love? Doesn’t it also add a previously unsuspected quality to Republicans letting us know that they can put their hearts and bodies aligned with the universe acknowledging that God has more ways to express his will than we can imagine? Why wouldn’t he divorce in full honesty, faithful to his true feelings and marrying later his soul mate? If we were within a Latin soap opera, this is the way the story would end, because Latinos are prone to follow love where it’s met and also to forgive those who had to take their time discovering what true love is.

On the opposite side of the cultural continent, many American voices are calling to scandal, not noticing that the complete naiveté of confessions is taking what could have been a deplorable affair to the highest level of romance. We are also being slightly and slowly led into the most exquisite international political arena, with the hidden promise of a higher creativity in the U.S. and Latin American relationship. What if this couple became an instrument of history to unite those parted because they never suspected love could exist between them? Latin America the bride, the United States the groom, we can almost see them heading toward a Hollywood ending.

Only a small elegant adjustment needs to take place: the groom has first to become a free man, not to show himself as irresponsible or without those good manners both Americans and Latinos appreciate. Besides this tiny detail, we are all safe dreaming great days to come by the mysterious ways of love, in the magic land of the Americas, still waiting for common, everyday heroes ready to accept their fate and unknown mission in this world.