All Quiet on the Latin American Front? Not Quite.

April 30, 2009

The Summit of the Americas brought a ton of Latin American coverage in the U.S. media.  Finally. But, now that the Summit is over, press attention to the hemisphere is waning. That is except for the swine flu spreading from Mexico.

There were a few news nuggets that came out of the Summit, but judging from post-Summit news coverage, you’d think that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuba were the only stories.  Of course, those are the two boilerplate favorites for covering Latin America. There have, in fact, been a number of positive developments—some of them coming out of the Summit. Unfortunately, none of them makes the U.S. news.

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How the Media Misinterpreted the Summit of the Americas

April 28, 2009

I swore I wouldn’t write another blog on the Summit.  In fact, I had even urged the AQ staff to move on—that it wasn’t that important.  And yet here I am with an insatiable desire to slake my thirst for just one more blog post. 

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Weekly News Roundup from Across the Americas

April 22, 2009

From the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. AS/COA Online's news brief examines the major—as well as some of the overlooked—events and stories occurring across the Americas. Check back every Wednesday for the weekly roundup.

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After the Summit

The Summit of the Americas took place over the weekend, featuring high-profile handshakes, star treatment of U.S. President Barack Obama, and much discussion of an absent Cuba. The summit concluded without unanimity on the declaration, but ended with “hope,” said Barbados’ Caribbean360. Voice of America reports that the summit gave Washington a “fresh start” with the 33 other countries in attendance. The Miami Herald asks readers to consider “the genuine progress that was achieved in healing the breach between the United States and its neighbors.”

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Post-Summit: Where Do We Go From Here?

April 20, 2009

As the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago recedes, several impressions dominate.  The first is that most of the hemisphere remains enthralled by Obama-mania and his message to the hemisphere of inclusion, social justice and the more humble exercise of U.S. power and influence.  There is a real electricity there, and on balance, much of the hemisphere is ready to put paid to the paralysis of past meetings and engage constructively with the new Administration.  I’ve participated in a number of Summits previously, the only one with a similar positive spirit was the first, in Miami in 1994.

Some of the hemisphere remains skeptical, including the leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and others, but their pronouncements at the Summit were notable for the backing they did not receive from other leaders and simply came off as being tone deaf.  Because really, even as global economic recovery continues to be of primary concern, which hemispheric leader wanted to use valuable time at the Summit to hear a diatribe from Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega—who gamed Nicaragua’s election and now works hard to subvert Nicaraguan democracy through the institutions of democracy—about the previous alleged sins of the United States?  Or to hear Bolivian President Evo Morales prattle on about goofy assassination plots he claims were cooked up in Washington.  Talk about magical realism…

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Managing Expectations at the Summit of the Americas

April 16, 2009

The Carnival Victory and Caribbean Princess cruise ships have sailed into Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, to provide an additional 3,000 hotel rooms as delegations and guests get ready for Friday’s arrival of the hemisphere’s 34 democratically elected heads of state for the Fifth Summit of the Americas.

Expectations are high as U.S. President Barack Obama—popular in the region as in much of the world—prepares to meet his Latin American counterparts. Beyond meeting with five hemispheric leaders at the G-20 Summit in April, and Obama’s one-on-one talks with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (in Washington), Mexican President Felipe Calderón (in Washington as President-elect and in Mexico City today) and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (in Ottawa), this is Obama’s moment to create a first impression with leaders who want to see for themselves how his policies will differ from the wildly unpopular ones of the last eight years. In fact, hemispheric leaders are lining up and “expect to have 10 or 15 minutes with the President” at the Summit, notes Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza.

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Weekly News Roundup from Across the Americas

April 15, 2009

From the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. AS/COA Online's news brief examines the major—as well as some of the overlooked—events and stories occurring across the Americas. Check back every Wednesday for the weekly roundup.

Thirty-Four Leaders to Gather for Fifth Summit

Trinidad and Tobago hosts leaders for the Fifth Summit of the Americas this weekend. The conference will serve as President Barack Obama’s introduction to a majority of the leaders in the Western Hemisphere. Although Washington’s Cuba policy has been in the spotlight ahead of the meeting, it’s far from the only big issue facing leaders. The National Journal reports that “Obama will have to walk the line between Latin America's heightened expectations and domestic political considerations.” But an editorial in La Opinión takes a sunnier view, saying that what’s most important is the “tone set in the relations between the U.S. and the rest of the hemisphere.”

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Obama Lifts the Cuban-American Restrictions

April 14, 2009

It should come as no surprise that it happened, nor should the timing. President Barack Obama’s lifting of the restrictions on Cuban-Americans’ travel and remittances to the island was a campaign promise and presented an easy way to set the tone for the Summit of the Americas from April 17 to 19 in Trinidad and Tobago. It won’t go as far as most will want, but it helps to set a new debate within the United States—which is where policy change toward Cuba has to play out, not the Summit of the Americas.

The restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to the island, implemented by the administration of President George W. Bush, were never popular, even among many Cuban-Americans. While their stated purpose was to deprive even more the Cuban government of resources, the truth was they seemed downright mean spirited and inhumane—an example of a policy that had gone to yet another unprecedented extreme: of denying family members the right to unite and help one another in need. But even at a strategic level, if the intent was to promote independent activity and thought on the island, denial of individuals to send money or transmit ideas through person-to-person contact gave the Cuban regime even more uncontested ability to shape the perceptions and destinies of the people who remained on the island.

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Obama at the Summit of the Americas: What to Do with Venezuela?

April 9, 2009

On April 17-19, President Barack Obama will travel to Trinidad and Tobago for the fifth Summit of the Americas that will convene all 34 democratically elected heads of state from the hemisphere.  To see a U.S. president focus so much attention on the region so early in his administration (in only his third international forum) is historic—and positive.

But beyond symbolism and a president’s rare attention it’s unclear what he can concretely achieve.  One thing he can do is reject the Venezuelan government’s blatant attempt to throw into question the human rights system in the Americas that for 50 years has protected and defended the rights of citizens, journalists and activists against disappearances, murder and censorship in places like Argentina, Chile and Peru.

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Don’t Forget Immigration! Hillary Clinton’s Spring Break in Mexico (or The real Cancun)

March 26, 2009

There’s a lot on the agendas of the three cabinet members and President Obama when they travel to Mexico this month to meet with Mexican officials, including President Felipe Calderon.  First it’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (March 25-26), then Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (April 1 and 2), and then the President—on his way to the Summit of the Americas.

For the first time in U.S. history the full complexity and proximity of our relationship with Mexico is being dealt with at the level it deserves.  Everything from drug-cartel related violence, the economic crisis, trade, security, intra-regional relations, trade, NAFTA, and immigration will be on the list of items to be discussed. And the best part is that, at a rhetorical level, the administration is approaching this with the appropriate level of partnership that the relationship deserves—a trend started with President Bush’s Plan Merida program to support Mexico’s war on narcotics trafficking.

My concern?  That immigration will slip through the cracks.  To be sure, the context is set to deal with it in the right way: bilaterally.  But the risk is that issues like the drug violence, trade spats and the economic crisis that have dominated the media coverage (particularly the former) will crowd out one of the most important bilateral issues we face: the flow of humans across our borders that serve the U.S. labor market and—through remittances back home—provide a crucial social safety net to poor communities in Mexico.

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SUMMIT PREPARATIONS

March 13, 2009

The State Department is in full gear preparing for the Summit of the Americas in mid-April. And I got a good look at those preparations at the Inter-American Dialogue’s discussion with Tom Shannon, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow—who I can now FINALLY say is the White House Adviser for the Summit of the Americas.

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What to Expect of the Summit

January 22, 2009

After almost two years of parsing first candidate then President elect and now President Barack Obama’s words for his ideas on Latin America, the world will finally get a view in April 17, 18 and 19 in Trinidad and Tobago at the Summit of the Americas. Certainly President Obama’s recent interview with Univision caused some consternation among Venezuelan public officials who saw his statements regarding Venezuela as an affront to national sovereignty and dignity. But beyond the usual sensitivities, President Obama’s meeting in the Caribbean with the 33 other elected heads of state, coming on the heels of his first international meeting with NATO allies, will provide a rare moment for the President to focus on the region—in the midst of a multitude of other demands on his time and attention—and begin to articulate a new vision for the hemisphere.

In contradiction to a recent response to an earlier blog post of mine, I really do believe that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to the Summit of the Americas is worthwhile. (I agree with Richard Feinberg that this is our opportunity to recast our relations in the hemisphere in a new and more positive light. I just believe that we—including the hemispheric community—need to be more cautious about the goals of the process and not build in multiple unfunded mandates, a series of meaningless discussion forums, and endless reams of recommendations—that often amount to little more than platitudes and demands that states do something, though what and how is never clear. (Though I’ll confess Nicole Kidman and fireworks would be nice too)

Let’s just scale back our expectations and use this as a modest opportunity to reach out to a new freshman class of elected heads of state and a way to broaden the agenda beyond (but still including) free trade.

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Protecting Journalists in Weak States

November 17, 2008

This week brought another tragic murder of a journalist in Mexico.  Armando Rodriguez was a well-known crime editor for El Diario in the violence-ridden, Mexican border-town of Ciudad Juarez. The hit (conducted while he was waiting to take his daughter to school, by gunmen who sped off) prompted strong condemnations by international NGOs and the OAS Inter-American Commission's Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression.

Yet despite the international outrage at the murder of a journalist doing his job, this isn't an easy case. We can safely assume that the murder was committed by extra-governmental groups--either narcotraffickers or corrupt police or military acting unofficially. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, this is the fifth murder or Mexican journalist. The vast majority of such cases go unsolved.

The problem is what can be done to protect journalists when the state is itself attempting to regain control over the country. Much of the traditional human rights perspective has been based on protecting journalists and civil society from the government. But this is something more sinister and complex: how do you protect journalists from lawless groups that the government (presumably) is trying to control itself?

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Does the Summit of the Americas Process Really Matter Anymore?

November 3, 2008

I applauded the initiation of Summit of the Americas Process in Miami 1994 and the subsequent meetings in Santiago and Quebec, the latter in many ways reflecting the high-water mark of inter-American cooperation. But now with the approaching April 2009 Summit of the Americas meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, I can’t help wonder: what’s the point?  In reflecting on the distortion in the coverage of the 2005 process during the Mar del Plata, the growing divisions over free trade and the accumulation of declarations and mandates with each summit (each one seemingly having less to do with the original intent than the previous) I can’t help wondering if the whole thing has outlived its usefulness. Sure, I understand (and still sympathize) with the initial goals of the first—and believe that even the mere act of assembling the elected presidents from the 34 countries (for most it will be the first time they’ve met our new U.S. President-elect) is worthy. And yes, anything that gets the U.S. president focused on the region is important. 

Look, though, at the sediment of mandates that have piled up over the last four full summits. They range from everything from the original stated goals (trade and democracy) to other more domestic issues (education spending and municipal administration). The latter make great international talking points, but quite frankly I don’t know what they are doing on a summit agenda if the skeletal body that is responsible for managing the process(SIRG) isn’t vested with the authority to make them mandates (as they’re referred to in the statements and the website). In fact, the insistence of referring to declarations as mandates risks only diluting the meaning of the word. Is it a mandate if no one has the authority to enforce compliance with benchmarks?  

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