COPA the Panamanian airline is now
flying the Brazilian company Embraer's E-190 commercial airliners on
routes previously dominated by Boeing 737s. This detail highlights
broader shifts in the economic balance of power in Latin America away
from United States corporations. US businesses over-accustomed to hefty
direct and indirect government subsidy and support are steadily going
to have make sharp adjustments. The Bush regime's desperation to force
through "free trade" deals with Latin American countries is partly an
attempt to soften, if not avoid, the blows to come.
Embraer's sale of airliners to COPA indicates the incipient
displacement of European and US aerospace industry in Latin America by
Brazil. Last week President Lula decorated Brazil's first astronaut,
who had succesfully completed a mission with the Russian space
programme. Brazil is also developing its nuclear industry. Both Brazil
and Venezuela are making significant widespread use of free software in
preference to proprietary software like Microsoft's Windows operating
system. Global trade links between Brazil and China, Venezuela and Iran
combine with regional integration initiatives that are remaking Latin
America's traditional networks of international relations.
Patterns of investment and exploitation of natural resources are also
shifting. A sign of this is the environmental concern now being raised
in relation to an inter-governmental plan for a gas pipeline from
Venezuela to Argentina to link much of South America's gas resources
into a single network. But its proposed route passes through some of
the world's most precious areas of biodiversity, forest and water
reserves. Presidents like Hugo Chavez and Ignacio da Silva will have to
square the conflicting demands their drive to regional integration
imposes.
Local impacts, global context
They also face the likelihood of crises exacerbated by conflicts
resulting from the global corporate elite's refusal to share power. The
US government's commitment to "full spectrum dominance" and support for
that policy from dependent allies like the UK is non-negotiable and
extremely destabilising. One sees this all too clearly in the
continuing refusal of North American and European countries to respect
the democratic electoral decisions of the Palestinians.
That self-evident hypocrisy is a sign of political and economic failure
in a much wider context. Accompanying that failure is the delusion that
US military might and North American and European economic muscle can
staunch the flow of influence away to increasingly powerful countries
like Russia, China, India and Brazil. As they flounder and fail on
Iran, political frontpersons for the global corporate elite like George
Bush and his cronies are perhaps in even worse straits in Latin
America.
Conflicts engendered by these global and regional changes inflict heavy
costs on weak and vulnerable countries and peoples. The casualties and
the damage inflicted receive little attention. The plight of the
Palestinian people is archetypal in this regard. Haiti and, currently,
Nicaragua, show that open intervention in electoral processes and
refusal to accept unfavourable results have become so routine that they
are not even reported in the corporate media. Currently, in Nicaragua,
US ambassador Paul Trivelli's antics are proving so embarrassing that
even local church leaders have been moved to protest.
Right now a large US naval task force led by the aircraft carrier
"George Washington" is on manoeuvres in the Caribbean, in an exercise
called "Partnership of the Americas". The manoeuvres are supposed to
help bolster and coordinate activities against narcotics and people
trafficking. It is impossible to accept that anodyne gloss on such a
powerful show of force. The exercise follows a few weeks after the
Dutch Defence Minister made the absurd allegation, swiftly rejected by
the Dutch Antilles Prime Minister, Etienne Nestor, that Venezuela might
invade the Dutch territories of Bonaire, Aruba and Curaçao. The
US warships are scheduled to visit Curaçao, Aruba, Trinidad and
Tobago, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis as well as Nicaragua and Honduras,
Andean economic tensions
This gunboat diplomacy may indirectly constitute some kind of response
by the Bush regime to the shock caused by Venezuela's withdrawal from
the Andean Community of Nations. Venezuela's government feels that
recent "free trade" deals with the US signed by the governments of Peru
and Colombia undermine the community's rationale of regional
integration. The decision by Venezuela to withdraw from the ACN
threatens severe problems for Colombian businesses that have benefited
from ACN's concessionary terms of trade.
Now those benefits are at risk. This outcome, upping the ante in the
regional tussle to define trade arrangements, has found the Colombian
government ill-prepared. Venezuela's move may not be unrelated either
to damaging recent publicity in the Colombian media confirming that the
Colombian government's DAS security service has plotted to murder
Venezuela's President Chavez. Rafael Garcia, former head of information
services in the DAS, made the allegations in a detailed interview with
the Colombian "Semana" magazine.
Venezuela's decision to leave the ACN embarrasses neighbouring local
oligarchies by throwing even more doubt on the benefits to Andean
countries of opening up their markets wholesale to United States
corporations. In Peru, nationalist presidential candidate Ollanta
Humala's effective campaign prioritized opposition to the Toledo
government's signing of a "free trade" deal with the US. After winning
the first round of voting, Humala goes into a second round run-off vote
for the Presidency towards the end of May. If he wins he may trash
Toledo's deal and insist on renegotiation at the very least. Something
the US government would likely reject.
CAFTA's nemesis
Venezuela and its South American allies foiled attempts by the Bush
regime to impose a continent wide Free Trade Area of the Americas in
Latin America. The US government had already worked out and was ready
to execute a response to this setback. Originally, it was ruthlessly
implemented by former US trade representative Robert Zoellick. Zoellick
pushed through negotiations on the Central American Free Trade
Agreement before moving on to become deputy Secretary of State to
Condolezza Rice. His successors failed to persuade the Andean countries
to negotiate a regional trade deal to match CAFTA. They ended up having
to pick off Colombia and Peru separately.
But now the Venezuelan government is pursuing its vision of just and
equitable trade to favour excluded and impoverished majorities by
offering cheap fuel and fertilizer to Nicaragua. The deal has been
facilitated by the Sandinista FSLN led by Daniel Ortega and will
benefit up to 151 municipal authorities in Nicaragua regardless of
their party political persuasion. It should be formally signed on April
25th.
This support from Venezuela will help alleviate the worst effects of
Nicaragua's fuel crisis and provide much needed cheap fertilizer just
when small farmers will be preparing to sow to take advantage of the
year's first rains. Nicaragua's neighbours, with the powerful FMLN bloc
in EL Salvador and a pragmatic new government in Honduras, are likely
to want similar support. Venezuela may well be able offer these other
Central American countries terms like those it negotiated with
Caribbean countries under the Petrocaribe initiative in 2005.
Unhappy US twins - failure, aggression
In their different ways, Venezuela and Brazil are making their presence
felt in Central America and across the continent. The political and
economic options this shift opens up are likely to transform relations
between states throughout the region. Cringing from US government
threats and jumping for meagre US government carrots are unlikely to
remain much longer as the principal options dominating Central American
regional diplomacy.
Aggressive US government rhetoric about Venezuela reflects its failing
status in Latin America just as its war-mongering rhetoric on Iran
indicates its regional political failure there. Military aggression to
compensate for its political and economic debacles is an ominously
ready option for the failed regime of George W. Bush. His incompetent,
deceitful administration could lash out at any time in a misguided
military gamble to try and reshape reality in accordance with its
own delusions. The chances are such an adventure will hasten, not
arrest, the United States of North America's imperial decline.