By Juan J. Paz-y-Miño Cepeda on November 9, 2020
The U.S. presidential elections have always aroused interest throughout the world. A new government in this powerful nation not only carries out internal policies but also promotes a series of foreign policies which, while they may follow certain global strategic lines, are also differentiated according to which region of the world they are directed toward.
With regard to our Latin America, the U.S. has always maintained a continentalist position with its original foundations being in the proclamation of President James Monroe (in office 1817-1825). He said: “America for the Americans,” which in his era was meant to impede the attempts by European powers to re-colonize the emerging independent Spanish-American republics. From then on, this use of “americanism” has been manipulated according to the various U.S. strategies for guaranteeing internal security, strengthening the economy, and, since the 20th Century, for maintaining international hegemony.
The interventionist character of this americanism was denounced at an early stage by the First International American Congress, held in Mexico in August of 1896, and organized by liberal-radical Ecuadorian leader Eloy Alfaro. This Congress was boycotted by the U.S. and only eight delegates attended, but these delegates approved a resounding declaration, which, in addition to outlining a series of historical events that demonstrated U.S. interventionism in Latin America, and pointing out the use made of the Monroe Doctrine for purposes of these interventions, requested that this be brought under control under a genuine continent-wide publicly agreed upon agreement.
Unfortunately, the conclusions of this congress were never acted on, and, in the 20th Century, U.S. interventions, both direct and indirect, continued in many counties of Latin America, a recurrent theme in the broad examination of the history of Latin America which can be found in a recent book with a collection of studies published in 2019, entitled Anatomy of an Empire: United States and Latin America. (Available only in Spanish as: Anatomía de un imperio. Estados Unidos y América Latina, Editoras: Carbone, Valeria L. | Mastrángelo, Mariana, Editorial : Universidad de València)
There is a historical U.S. inheritance that combines americanism and intervention. When the Cold War began, the U.S. incorporated a new element – the fight against “communism” in the continent, a policy that gained force after the Cuban Revolution in 1959. In order for this to be effective and in aid of the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), the U.S. prioritized the support, training, development and ideological indoctrination of the armed forces and police forces of Latin American countries in the fight against “communism.” In this “spirit” of supposed defense of democracy, liberty and private property, during the decade of the 70s the pernicious militaristic doctrine of national security was disseminated. According to this doctrine, there are “internal enemies” that justify “internal warfare” in order to neutralize and even annihilate them.These always turn out to be exclusively marxists, leftists, unions, community organizations, people’s movements, critical intellectuals, environmentalists, and civil rights advocates. The horrific applications of this “doctrine” have been expressed in the dictatorships recorded in the history of South America in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s (although the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chile lasted from 1973 to 1990) in which there were no limits to the violations of human rights, in spite of the policies in favor of these rights set forth by President Jimmy Carter, in office from 1977-1981.
The collapse of Soviet-style socialism did not hold back the spirit of the cold war in Latin America, although the concepts had to be revised. The U.S. blockade against Cuba continued. The policies of the “progressive “governments aroused more than just suspicion and mistrust. A blockade similar to that suffered by Cuba has been inflicted on Venezuela. Nicaragua is also in the gunsights. The governments in Ecuador and Bolivia, with Rafael Correa (2007-2017) and Evo Morales (2006-2019) were closely watched. There is an extensive literature about these topics. There is no doubt that the governments of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in México (2018- present) as well as that of Alberto Fernandez in Argentina (2019-present) broke with the tendency for a predominance of conservative governments, closely allied with U.S. interests,in the region. The triumph of Luis Arce Catacora and the return of Movement to Socialism Party (MAS) in Bolivia is reviewed by the U.S.with particular unease, as is the path of Chile, another major example of neoliberalism, which was radically imposed by the U.S. with Ronald Reagan in 1981-1989.
So it is that the question we are accustomed to ask ourselves about the repercussions of the U.S. presidential elections should be answered according to the historical bases already noted. The positions of Donald Trump are known: he not only revived the traditional Monroe Doctrine together with the menace of interventionism, but he also sharpened the continentalist strategies, including those intended to wall off economic relations with Russia and especially China; he also strengthened the blockade against Cuba, undid any progress made by Barack Obama (2009-2016), and did not reduce the threats against Venezuela and also against Nicaragua. In Central America he depended on some “allied” governments in his central obsession with stopping “illegal” immigration, even threatening to build a wall on the border with Mexico, on which construction was actually begun some time ago. In South America, Brazil and Colombia took on strategic priority due to their borders with Venezuela, and he could count on the “friendly” governments of Ecuador and Peru, without forgetting Uruguay, where the progressive path was interrupted.
As far as Joe Biden, he has some immediate antecedents regarding Latin America: he encouraged economic sanctions to prevent uncontrolled migration, as well as the flow of drugs; he supported the peace program in Colombia; in his campaign he condemned the “dictatorship” of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. He also had the advantage of being the candidate of the Democratic Party, in which the primary candidate Bernie Sanders who was noted for his progressive social concepts, from which Biden prudently distanced himself. He counted on Kamala Harris as the first woman in history as the candidate for vice-president, which was also an undoubted political advantage. (Biden won the women’s vote.) But he also made various declarations in favor of using a more cooperative style with Latin America in order to create good relations, offer economic aid to Central America, be more flexible in dealing with Cuba (probably without a return to the level reached by Obama) and even confronting global warming, questioning the deforestation of Brazil, – which provoked an irate reaction from President Jair Bolsonaro.
The victory of Biden was received by the world with relief, because of what Trump has meant. The title of the lead article of the New York Times of November 7 is greatly significant: “Biden Wins the Presidency and Puts An End to Four Turbulent Trump Years.” The article goes on to say “The Biden victory amounts to a repudiation by millions of voters exhausted by the divisive behavior and the chaotic government of Trump, and was made possible by an improbable alliance of women, people of color, young and older voters, with a remnant of marginalized Republicans. Trump is the first president to fail to win re-election in more than a quarter-century.”
However, beyond this accurate view, what we must analyze in Latin America is not only the foreign policy that the new U.S.government will carry out in the region. We must also understand what kind of governments Latin America has or will elect, in order to assess how they will set their positions and their behavior toward the U.S. As the history of the region demonstrates, imperialist-tinged americanism, which can show up sooner or later with more or less force, can be put in place easily with governments that yield and subordinate their interests to those of the U.S., but is much harder to impose with those governments that place their national vision and Latin American interests as first priority. To the economic and political powers in Ecuador, it made no difference whether Trump or Biden won (although they would prefer the former) because the conservative and business elites who have achieved control of the government will be satisfied with a free trade agreement that allows them to do plenty of business with the U.S. What disturbs them is what could happen in their own country with the elections of February 2021, with the possibility that a candidate with popular support who would return to the path of a social economy, get rid of neoliberalism, restore the public sector and its institutions, prioritize national interests over private interests, and restore constitutional principles like sovereignty in Latin-America.
In Latin America, the experiences of the pathways to progress in Mexico and Argentina, as well as the democratic revolutions in Bolivia and Chile, have begun to define an epoch in which the tendency towards a rise of the new Left, progressives, and democrats recovers force, precisely through the means of representative democracy. This has caused the political and economic right-wing to renounce democracy, question elections, criminalize social movements, and do everything possible to block the victories of those who offer projects for change. In Bolivia, even before Luis Arce takes over the presidency, there has been an attempt on his life. And it seems paradoxical that in the U.S., Trump has resorted to the typical formulas of these anti-democratic Latin-American right-wingers, in yelling about “electoral fraud” supposedly carried out in favor of Biden, whom the ex-president accused of being “communist” and being at the service of China, at the same time that he warns that the U.S. runs the risk of being like Cuba or Venezuela.
Source: Historia Presente, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau