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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2007Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mitch WeerthBush’s tour of Latin AmericaBush’s trip to five Latin American countries, March 8-14, helped to reveal to the world how powerless the U.S. has become in its efforts to make its military and free trade agreements function in the region. Even before he embarked on the trip Bush seemed intent on letting all know the tour would be a farce, by declaring on March 5 the official theme would be the "promotion of social justice in the Western Hemisphere," as if he just woke up and heard that there are 300 million living in abject poverty south of the Texas border. On March 15 Tony Snow could not state one specific accomplishment of the trip, though he insisted it nevertheless showed those millions of poor that the Bush administration cares deeply about them, something that he feels they just haven’t seemed to understand up to this point. At every stop--Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico--the tour was met with large protests, despite the fact that protesters had to deal with swarms of police everywhere. In Colombia it took some 20,000 troops and one decoy motorcade to insure Bush’s safety for his seven hour stay in the country. Bush’s entourage was so taken with the uniformity of the outcry from five very different countries--everywhere signs depicted him as Hitler and labeled him "assassin" and "terrorist"--they tried to suggest they were coordinated and even possibly paid for by Hugo Chavez. The accusation was as stupid as it was hilarious. Bush has become so paranoid about Chavez’s influence over the poor that he adamantly refused to mention his name on the tour. And the administration’s ignorance of the solidarity that Latin Americans everywhere feel for the suffering in Iraq made it impossible for them to see why everywhere he is called a terrorist. Bush made it clear, albeit inadvertently, that far from any concern for "social justice" all he has to offer is more of the same failures he has already delivered. He was asked repeatedly what he would do to produce an immigration reform that respects the humanity of those going to seek work in the U.S. and he gave the exact same answer that he gave six years ago: he’ll "work his hardest" on it. He was asked why it’s now necessary to erect a wall between our countries after over a hundred years of sharing the same continent, and he could only produce the pathetic refrain: laws must be enforced. Most glaring was his inability to speak to the concerns that even the bourgeoisie now have regarding whether they will survive the next round of free trade agreements shoved on them. The new conservative Mexican President Felipe Calderón had no success getting him to consider the precarious position the country is in now that the final installment of NAFTA--the removal of trade protections for corn and beans--is coming in 2008. Calderón is seen as a staunch free trade ideologue, yet even he had to intervene to stop the increase in the price of tortillas when it shot through the roof in December and January, causing mass protests. Even with state intervention the price increased in those two months 41.6%, ten times more than the minimum wage increased. The U.S. produces six times more corn per acre than Mexico does, three times more beans per acre, and assists U.S. farmers with more than $19 billion per year in subsidies. From 2000 to 2004 corn exports from the U.S. to Mexico increased more than 80%, causing the rural exodus of millions of campesinos. Opposition politicians in Colombia did not get a chance to make their case to Bush on his short visit that they fear the same conditions are coming to their country with the Free Trade Agreement recently signed by Bush and Uribe. Nor did he listen to their protests to his efforts to continue with Plan Colombia. That Plan has been a colossal failure. A billion dollars a year in military aid has been funneled to Colombia since 2000 to combat drug trafficking, but the U.S. government’s own statistics reveal that the flow of cocaine to the U.S. has only increased. The aid has only fueled war and the integration of the right-wing paramilitary organizations into the state apparatus. Bush went to Colombia to show his support for Uribe, even as a growing scandal racks the country; eight politicians are now in jail waiting trial on charges that they have colluded with paramilitaries. |
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