Peruvian leaders cry foul as Chávez exports healthcare

• 400,000 Latin Americans take up free surgery offer
• Humanitarian schemes are political front, says Lima

Rory Carroll in Caracas and Andres Schipani in La Paz
The Guardian

The plane door opened and the elderly visitors, all visually impaired and in some cases blind, shuffled out slowly and carefully into Venezuela.

Disease, age and poverty had stolen their eyesight but now they were in the land of Hugo Chávez and that was about to change. A scheme called Misión Milagro - Mission Miracle - had flown them here from Peru for free surgery which would transform their lives.

A portrait of Venezuela's president gazed down from the airport terminal. "It is thanks to Chávez we are here," beamed Rosario Vilcavilca, 88, a peasant farmer in a traditional highland skirt.

Mission Miracle has helped 400,000 impoverished Latin Americans see again and cast Venezuela's revolutionary leader as the region's humanitarian benefactor.

Critics, however, see an agenda behind this and other Venezuelan-linked initatives. They claim Chávez is trying to export populist leftwing rebellions and further tilt the region away from US influence.

Peru waded into the fray last week by accusing Venezuela of funding Peruvian militants under cover of humanitarianism. It said dozens of anti-poverty centres which have sprung up across Peru to promote Mission Miracle, among other schemes, were fronts for political agitation which may have fuelled protests against the government's free market economic policies.

Many centres were linked to a radical leftist organisation known as the Continental Bolivarian Committee, claimed the prime minister, Jorge del Castillo.

"No sovereign country needs to accept actions of other sovereign countries that are done under the table" he said. "Venezuela should act through normal channels."

The president, Alan García, has backed a congressional investigation into the allegations that Chávez is trying to destabilise one of South America's few centre-right governments.

Peruvian police have arrested nine suspected militants who allegedly received cash and directions from Venezuela via leftwing allies Bolivia and Ecuador. Most of the suspects were said to be former members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a guerrilla group which had faded since the 1990s.

The anti-poverty centres, whose bank and telephone records are expected to be checked, deny any agenda beyond helping people access education and healthcare.

Venezuela's ambassador to Lima, Armando Laguna, said Caracas was not offering financial or ideological support to Peruvian militants and said if Peru had proof it should expel him.

There is an unashamed political tinge to the eye-surgery visits to Caracas. Patients are greeted at the airport by officials wearing T-shirts with revolutionary slogans and ushered aboard red buses.

Some of the Peruvian arrivals said their gratitude to Venezuela's president would boost support for Ollanta Humala, Chávez's Peruvian protege who narrowly lost a presidential bid and has vowed to run again. "We're all Chavistas on this bus. Viva Humala!" said Santiago Sanchez.

But it did not add up to subversion. These elderly Peruvian visitors, stricken with cataracts, glaucoma and other ailments were about to have their sight restored courtesy of a pioneering initiative to spread the benefits of Venezuela's oil wealth. Upon returning home they would sing Chávez's praises but seemed unlikely to foment rebellion.

Venezuela also denied another Peruvian allegation - that Venezuela's new embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, would stir indigenous unrest across the region. "It will be a simple building, bigger than the one we have at the moment as we need more space but the rumours about it being a place for training and propaganda are completely false," said Luis Oblitas, a diplomat.

There is no doubt Chávez is seeking to project his influence across South and central America and the Caribbean. He is estimated to have spent up to £18bn on foreign aid largely through subsidised oil and soft loans. He has also promoted trade deals to lure nations out of Washington's ambit.

The question is whether he is breaking laws and infringing sovereignty, something the US practised for decades by sponsoring rightwing coups and shoring up dictatorships.

Opposition movements in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua claim Chávez has made clandestine payments to their governments to shore up his anti-American alliance. Prosecutors in Argentina are investigating a suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash allegedly destined for the election campaign of President Cristina Kirchner, another Chávez ally. Both vehemently deny it.

More seriously, Colombia has alleged that Venezuela's president gave, or planned to give, $300m to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Chávez has scorned the claim but makes no secret of his sympathy for Marxist guerrillas who are deemed narco-traffickers and terrorists by Europe and the US.

Hawks in Washington want Venezuela added to the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, bracketing it with Iran and North Korea. So far the Bush administration has demurred rather than risk disrupting Venezuela's oil flow.

For impoverished Latin Americans such as Luis Nieto, a 67-year-old Ecuadorean who is almost totally blind and has been shortlisted for surgery through Mission Miracle, the politicking is irrelevant. "If Hugo somehow benefits, fine, good for him." What matters to Nieto is having his vision restored. "If I can see again," he said, a smile creasing his face. "Now that, that would be something."

Book Details U.S. Pressure On Allies Before War

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 22, 2008; A01

UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, wrote Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Muñoz wrote.

But the tough talk dissipated as the war effort worsened and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Muñoz's account suggests the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

Muñoz details key roles by Chile and Mexico, the Security Council's two Latin members at the time, in the run-up to the war. Then-U.N. ambassadors Juan Gabriel Valdés of Chile and Adolfo Aguilar Zínser of Mexico helped thwart U.S. and British efforts to rally support among the council's six undecided members for a resolution authorizing the U.S.-led invasion.

The book portrays Bush personally prodding the leaders of those six governments -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan -- to support the war resolution, a strategy aimed at demonstrating broad support for U.S. military plans, despite the looming French threat to veto the resolution.

In the weeks preceding the war, Bush made several appeals to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Mexican President Vicente Fox to rein in their diplomats and support U.S. war aims. "We have problems with your ambassador at the U.N.," Bush told Fox at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Los Cabos, Mexico, in late 2002.

"It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long," Bush told the Chilean president on March 11, 2003.

"Bush had referred to Lagos by his first name, but as the conversation drew to a close and Lagos refused to support the resolution as it stood, Bush shifted to a cool and aloof 'Mr. President,' " Muñoz wrote. "Next Monday, time is up," Bush told Lagos.

Senior U.S. diplomats sought to thwart a last-minute attempt by Chile to broker a compromise that would delay military action for weeks, providing Iraq with a final shot at demonstrating that it had fully complied with its disarmament requirements.

On March 14, 2003, less than one week before the eventual invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But U.S. ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning their governments that the effort was viewed as "an unfriendly act" designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to "leave the meeting immediately," Muñoz writes.

Aguilar-Zínser, who died in 2005, was finally forced out of the Mexican government after publicly accusing the United States of treating Mexico like its "back yard" during the war negotiations. Valdés was transferred to Argentina, where he served as Chile's top envoy, and Muñoz, a Chilean minister and onetime classmate of Condoleezza Rice at the University of Denver, was sent to the United Nations in June 2003 to patch up relations with the United States.

In the days after the invasion, the National Security Council's top Latin American expert, John Maistos, invited Muñoz to the White House to convey the message to Lagos, that his country's position at the United Nations had jeopardized prospects for the speedy Senate ratification of a free-trade pact. "Chile has lost some influence," he said. "President Bush is truly disappointed with Lagos, but he is furious with Fox. With Mexico, the president feels betrayed; with Chile, frustrated and let down."

Muñoz said subsequent ties remained tense at the United Nations, where the United States sought support for resolutions authorizing the occupation of Iraq. He said that small countries met privately in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," Muñoz said in an interview.

The United States, he added, expressed "its displeasure" to the German government every time they held a meeting in the secure room. "They couldn't listen to what was going on."

Muñoz said that threats of reprisals were short-lived as Washington quickly found itself reaching out to Chile, Mexico and other countries to support Iraq's messy postwar rehabilitation. It also sought support from Chile on issues such as peacekeeping in Haiti and support for U.S. efforts to drive Syria out of Lebanon. The U.S.-Chilean free trade agreement, while delayed, was finally signed by then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick in June 2003.

Muñoz said that Rice, as secretary of state, called him to ask for help on a U.N. resolution that would press for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. The United States had secured eight of the nine votes required for adoption of a resolution in the Security Council. Muñoz had received instructions to abstain. "I talked to [Lagos], and he listened to my argument, and we gave them the ninth vote," he said.

Settling of Crisis Makes Winners of Andes Nations, While Rebels Lose Ground

By SIMON ROMERO

After leaders in the Andes tiptoed from the edge of war to bear hugs and oaths of brotherhood, Latin America was trying to sort out the winners and losers in the region’s worst diplomatic dispute in years.

A day after the crisis was resolved at a summit meeting in the Dominican Republic on Friday, it was already clear that nearly all of the players lost something. The leaders of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela traded charges that muddied each of them. Colombia and its ally, the United States, found themselves isolated in the region.

And Latin America’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, lost two senior commanders in a week, the latest in a string of tactical and strategic defeats.

But the biggest winner appears to have been the region itself, which resolved its own dispute without outside help and without violence.

The crisis began when Colombian security forces hunted down and killed Raúl Reyes, the FARC’s second-in-command, and 23 others in a raid last weekend on the guerrillas’ camp in Ecuador. Venezuela and Ecuador assailed Colombia as having violated Ecuador’s sovereignty, cut diplomatic ties and sent troops to the Colombian border in a show of force, effectively defending the FARC’s nebulous operations in their countries.

Colombia insists it has the right to attack its enemies, but the military response by its neighbors — President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela vowed war if Colombia pursued its fight with the FARC into Venezuela — could allow the FARC to operate with more freedom outside Colombia.

Still, that victory may be small consolation for the FARC, whose very presence in neighboring countries is a reflection of its loss of strength within Colombia, as a brutally successful counterinsurgency has driven it out of territory it once controlled.

Reports emerged on Friday of yet another senior commander of the FARC who had been killed. No cross-border raid was involved. A deserter simply brought the guerrilla’s severed right hand as proof that he had killed his own commander.

The killing of the guerrilla, Manuel Jesus Muñoz, who went by the nom de guerre Ivan Ríos, was extraordinarily macabre even in the annals of Colombia’s four-decade war. Mr. Muñoz, a member of the FARC’s guiding secretariat, was the fifth senior member of group killed in the past year.

Colombia’s government contends that the FARC, which finances itself through cocaine trafficking and abductions for ransom, has seen its ranks fall from 16,000 members at the start of the decade, when the guerrillas had advanced close to the capital, Bogotá, to between 6,000 and 8,000 now.

For Colombia, too, the results were mixed. It found itself diplomatically isolated in the region, its tactics rebuked and President Álvaro Uribe under siege as a too-willing ally of the United States.

The raid was one of the most controversial chapters of Plan Colombia, the American program that has disbursed more than $5 billion in aid to Colombia since the late 1990s. And in carrying out the operation without getting Ecuador’s permission beforehand, Mr. Uribe took a page from the Bush administration’s playbook.

The predawn operation bears remarkable similarities to one carried out in late January by the United States in Pakistan. In that case, the Central Intelligence Agency used a Predator drone aircraft to drop missiles, killing Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior commander of Al Qaeda who had hidden from American officials for years.

Both operations used local informants to track the men down. Both operations were carried out in foreign countries without getting permission beforehand. Both were tactical victories, killing enemies classified as terrorists.

But in killing Mr. Reyes in Ecuador, Mr. Uribe may have misjudged the reaction that would follow. A firestorm of criticism was directed at Colombia, a nation increasingly viewed as a redoubt of loyalty to the United States in a region chafing at Washington’s waning influence.

“The Bush doctrine openly rejects nonintervention in other nations’ affairs, something that runs counter to the ideal of sovereignty that is so precious in Latin America,” said Greg Grandin, a professor of Latin American history at New York University.

The methods employed by Mr. Uribe, whose father was believed to have been killed by guerrillas in the early 1980s, may be hard to swallow in a region that has largely seen its other cold war-era insurgencies vanquished. On Thursday, Nicaragua joined the fray on the side of Venezuela and Ecuador. But the wrath of Colombia’s neighbors is a price Mr. Uribe seems content to pay.

Despite Colombia’s insistence that it acted alone, speculation persists as to whether the technological prowess of the United States was involved in the hunt for Mr. Reyes.

Mr. Chávez emphatically denied reports last week that he had placed a call to Mr. Reyes’s satellite phone; such a call might have allowed intelligence agencies to track the guerrilla down in Sucumbíos, an Amazonian province in Ecuador’s northern frontier.

In their war of words, Mr. Uribe accused his counterparts in Ecuador and Venezuela of having financial ties to the FARC, a group resembling a criminal syndicate that dresses up its actions in leftist rhetoric.

And the presidents of Ecuador and Venezuela reminded Latin America of the ties between many of Mr. Uribe’s top supporters in Colombia and the paramilitary death squads that have evolved into nothing less than criminal syndicates trafficking in cocaine.

Cocaine, guns, private armies and guerrillas remain the ingredients of Colombia’s war even as the last element is being visibly pushed into the porous border regions of the country’s neighbors.

In the end, Latin America eased its own crisis. But the celebratory behavior of its leaders in the Dominican Republic belies the tension that persists around a war without closure. Just because the FARC is weakened does not mean it will wither away.

Colombia: Latin America tries to defuse escalating crisis

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe said Tuesday that his government would ask the International Criminal Court to try Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez for financing and supporting Colombia's main rebel group.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
and Sibylla Brodzinsky | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Mexico City and Bogota, Colombia

Latin American countries are rushing to defuse the region's worst diplomatic crisis in years after Ecuador and Venezuela cut ties with Colombia, deployed troops to the borders, and issued warnings of war in the wake of Colombia's airstrike Saturday on leftist rebels based in neighboring Ecuador.

The Organization of American States (OAS) moved to hold an emergency meeting Tuesday to press for a peaceful solution, but in the current heated atmosphere, some experts expect the issue to move quickly to the United Nations Security Council.

Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Tuesday of "sponsoring and financing genocide" after Colombian officials said Saturday's raid turned up evidence that Mr. Chávez paid $300 million to support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group.

While most observers consider full-scale war unlikely, they warn that the bluster and saber rattling could ruin efforts to climb down from the current crisis.

"Rhetoric, when it reaches a certain level, is in and of itself a concern," says Peter DeShazo, the director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "To move things in a positive direction [the countries must] stop the verbal confrontations."

Colombia initially apologized for Saturday's incursion that killed a senior FARC leader, Raul Reyes, but then claimed Monday that documents found on computers seized in the raid showed that Chávez had funded the guerrillas and that Ecuador's leftist leader Rafael Correa (a Chávez ally) had sent a minister to meet with the rebels. Colombian police also say they found evidence that the FARC had been trying to get radioactive material for dirty bombs. Ecuador and Venezuela deny the allegations.

Ecuador marshals regional support

Mr. Correa arrived in Peru on Tuesday to start a five-nation tour of the region to lobby for support against what he calls a premeditated violation of his country's sovereignty.

"This is not a bilateral problem, it's a regional problem," he said. "Should this set a precedent, Latin America will become another Middle East."

Ecuador will seek a resolution at the OAS condemning Colombia for violating its territory, says Vicente Torrijos, an international relations expert in Bogotá. Colombia, he says, will defend itself on the basis of a UN antiterrorism resolution that prohibits states from "providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts."

Mr. Uribe reportedly spent the day Monday on the phone with regional leaders explaining his country's position. Colombia is expected to present further evidence of Venezuela and Ecuador's alleged support of the FARC at the OAS meeting.

Mr. Torrijos sees the conflict eventually being taken up by the UN Security Council and even envisions sanctions on Venezuela and Ecuador under the antiterrorism resolution.

Carlos Luna, a foreign affairs expert at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, says that the nations must work hard not to internationalize the conflict. "Siding of countries along ideological lines could cause lasting effects on the region," he says.

Ideology behind the tensions

But politics has driven much of the current meltdown. Chávez, who on his Sunday radio program said that it would be a cause for war if Colombia attempted a similar raid on Venezuelan territory, has been criticized for meddling. "The reaction by [Chávez] has been irresponsible in the manner in which he took the incident personally even though it is an issue to resolve between Ecuador and Colombia," says Carlos Romero, a professor of political science at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas.

Relations between Chávez and Uribe, whom Chávez calls a US pawn, have deteriorated since Chávez attempted to mediate a prisoner swap. Although six hostages have been released to Venezuelan authorities, Chávez was quickly recalled for breaching protocols.

Colombia has been criticized too, for staging the attack without warning Ecuador, and then for the timing of its accusations against Ecuador and Venezuela. "The handling of that evidence has been pretty disastrous," says Gerson Arias, an analyst with the Ideas Para la Paz think tank in Bogotá, adding that Colombia should have held off on presenting the information from the seized computers until the OAS met.

By first apologizing to Ecuador for its incursion into Ecuadorean territory – an apology that Ecuador did not accept – and then revealing the evidence of FARC ties to the media in Bogotá sends "confusing and mixed messages."

Correa said Monday that the strike by Colombia spoiled negotiations his country was pursuing on a hostage swap – putting another dent in bilateral relations. "At the present moment it is very difficult to ease the tension between Colombia and Ecuador," says Adrian Bonilla, a political analyst at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito.

Still, many expect ties between Ecuador and Colombia to improve quickly. "With Venezuela the breach is much greater, the ideological gap," says Mr. DeShazo. "The confrontation is deeper between Venezuela and Colombia than with Ecuador."

The standoff is stoking nationalist sentiment in Ecuador and Colombia, says Mr. Bonilla. "Most of the people in Ecuador are rejecting the behavior of [Uribe], in every social condition, and from every different ideological base," says Mr. Bonilla. "In the case of Colombia many are supporting their government."

The region has become polarized so quickly, in part, because of each country's weak institutions, says Riordan Roett, director of the Latin American Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies in Washington.

"The processes that would normally work out these problems don't exist," says Mr. Roett. "What would normally have happened, rather than forcing ambassadors to leave, would be dialogue of foreign ministers and special envoys."

In Bogotá, the mood is somber, following the celebratory atmosphere after Saturday's coup against the FARC. And while most Colombians believe a war with their neighbors is improbable, some have little faith in a diplomatic solution.

Javier Cardenas says things may have gone past the point of diplomacy and fears an armed conflict could break out. "Before, it seemed like something far off and impossible. Now it looks like it's something that's possible and very, very close," he said.

• Daniel Cancel contributed from Caracas.

Stress Builds Over Colombia Raid

Regional Leaders Urge Calm; Police Cite Rebel Documents

By Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; A13

RECIFE, Brazil, March 3 -- More accusations of cross-border meddling intensified diplomatic tensions Monday between Colombia and its neighbors Ecuador and Venezuela, as other Latin American leaders tried to defuse a crisis they fear could threaten regional stability.

Venezuela and Ecuador deployed troops to their borders with Colombia, which on Saturday attacked a jungle encampment in Ecuadoran territory used by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. A senior leader of the Marxist insurgency, which has battled the Colombian government for more than four decades and profits from the drug trade, was killed in the raid.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa formally cut diplomatic ties with Colombia and has joined Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in denouncing the attack as a violation of his country's sovereignty. Venezuela said later that it would expel the Colombian ambassador and other diplomatic personnel. Regional leaders, including officials in Brazil and Chile, strongly questioned Colombia's military incursion into Ecuador, but urged peaceful negotiations to avert a regional military conflict.

Colombian officials said Monday that they do not plan to send troops to the borders with Venezuela and Ecuador. But they contended that the raid proved their long-held suspicion that Colombian guerrillas have been using neighboring countries as havens from which to attack Colombian forces.

"We are accustomed to the Colombian government's lies," said Ramón Carrizalez, Venezuela's executive vice president. "They can invent whatever they like to try to cover up the violation of Ecuadoran territory."

Gen. Óscar Naranjo, director of Colombia's national police, said computers recovered from the camp revealed numerous links between the rebels and the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela, including evidence of more than $300 million in payments from Chávez to the FARC. Colombia's government, led by U.S. ally Álvaro Uribe, has accused the populist administrations of Chávez and Correa of sympathizing with the FARC's stated cause.

The documents were recovered from three computers, according to Naranjo, and their contents will be analyzed by inspectors from the Organization of American States. He said the documents also contain details of international drug deals and efforts to acquire 50 kilograms of uranium. Naranjo did not provide evidence to back those allegations, but he suggested that the documents should spur other countries to get involved in the crisis.

"This means the FARC is taking big steps in the world of terrorism to become a global aggressor," Naranjo said during a news conference. "This is transnational terrorism."

Leaders throughout Latin America tried Monday to cool the crisis. In Brazil, an adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told a radio station that the conflict was "beginning to destabilize regional relations." Lula planned to talk with Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on Monday to coordinate diplomatic efforts, said the adviser, Marco Aurélio Garcia.

"We are mobilizing all of Brazil's diplomatic resources and those of other South American capitals to find a lasting solution," Garcia was quoted as saying.

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet suggested that Colombia has the responsibility to thoroughly explain the decision to attack with airstrikes and ground troops across the Ecuadoran border. The raid killed at least 16 people, including Luis Edgar Devia, a top FARC commander also known as Raúl Reyes.

"A situation of this nature requires an explanation from Colombia to Ecuadorans -- to the president of Ecuador and the entire region," Bachelet said in comments broadcast by TV Chile. "We are very worried."

Though the incident that sparked the crisis did not involve Venezuela, Chávez -- a close ally of Correa's and a frequent critic of Colombia's close relations with the United States -- jumped into the dispute.

Relations between Chávez and Uribe have been particularly tense since Chávez tried to mediate a swap of prisoners between FARC and the Colombian government last year. The FARC has since released six hostages to Venezuelan authorities.

On Sunday, Chávez threatened to go to war if Colombia ever carried out a similar attack against the FARC in Venezuelan territory.

"When you threaten war against a country, that's pretty serious," said Peter Hakim, president of the Washington-based policy group Inter-American Dialogue. "Certainly if it were coming from anyone but Hugo Chávez, people would be taking it extremely seriously. But our experience is that he tries to take advantage of what situation emerges to get himself this kind of international attention."

The U.S. State Department defended Colombia's pursuit of FARC members and encouraged bilateral discussions to solve the crisis.

"From our perspective, this is an issue between Colombia and Ecuador," Tom Casey, a department spokesman, told the Associated Press. "I'm not sure what this has to do with Venezuela.

Castro's legacy: A changed Latin America

The Cuban leader lasted long enough to see the U.S. grip on the region weaken.
By Héctor Tobar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 23, 2008

MEXICO CITY — When Fidel Castro and his band of bearded rebels entered Havana just after New Year's Day 1959, Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States, and few questioned American hegemony in Latin America.

Castro soon declared himself a communist, and nearly every government in the region joined the United States in condemning his regime. Two generations and nine U.S. presidents later, Castro is finally stepping down -- widely admired, even if his policies are not widely emulated.

Castro did not win his battle against U.S. "imperialism," a struggle that has impoverished and isolated his people. But he did stick around long enough to see Washington's grip on the region weaken.

His revolution was, in many ways, the defining event of Latin American history in the 20th century, said Lorenzo Meyer, a professor at the College of Mexico here. "There is no other leader who was able to confront the United States for half a century and survive."

For decades, Latin America was one of the front lines in the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. As Moscow's ally, Castro's Cuba stood at the opposite end from Washington in the ideological tug of war for the region.

Today, every Latin American government except Cuba's has a democratically elected head of state. Falling trade barriers allow cash and commodities to flow back and forth across the region as never before, and the dollar even circulates as the official currency in El Salvador and Ecuador.

But the United States is far from triumphant. In some places, new players have emerged to challenge its influence, including the oil-rich government of the firebrand Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Even if they do not mirror Castro's policies, many of the region's leaders feel free to look elsewhere to ensure their countries' interests, and embrace the same defiant rhetoric that marked Castro's early career. It was a rhetoric that attacked an "oligarchy" servile to foreign interests, most famously expressed in a 1953 speech Castro made while on trial for a failed uprising against the dictator Fulgencio Batista.

"We were born in a free country that our parents bequeathed to us," Castro said. "And the island will first sink into the sea before we consent to being the slaves of anyone."

The improbable triumph of Castro's rebels over Batista less than six years laterinspired a generation of young men and women to mimic his guerrilla campaign. Cuba offered funding and training for their efforts, most of which were quixotic failures.

Castro's agents funded small guerrilla bands in Argentina, Peru and other countries that were quickly crushed. His closest collaborator, the Argentine doctor Ernesto "Che" Guevara, was killed in a disastrous attempt to launch a "continental revolution" in Bolivia.

Still, Castro's survival just across the Straits of Florida changed political calculations across the region.

"For Latin America, the steps taken by the Cuban Revolution were a clear example that change was possible," said Jose Gabriel Vazeilles, a Buenos Aires historian.

The Cuban regime, while imprisoning dissidents and constructing a one-party state, also built model education and health programs.

The Kennedy administration responded with the Alliance for Progress, a mini New Deal designed to address poverty and illiteracy and promote land reform. Billions of dollars in aid poured southward.

To stop the spread of Castro's "communist menace" to other countries, the U.S. backed some of the most violent dictatorships in the region's history, including the military government responsible for 10,000 deaths in Argentina in the 1970s and '80s. The CIA orchestrated a campaign to undermine the democratically elected leftist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, a Castro ally who was overthrown in a 1973 coup.

Chile's new military ruler, Augusto Pinochet, adopted free-market polices of the "Chicago school" of economics. By the time he left power in 1990, Chile had South America's most vibrant economy.

But other countries failed badly in attempts to implement the economic and political reforms backed by the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund. Argentina's economy collapse in 2001-02, and Bolivia's attempts to privatize its economy sparked popular uprisings that eventually brought to power to Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian with radical roots.

At the same time, the Soviet Union's collapse robbed Castro of money, power and influence, and in the early 1990s he had to implement modest economic reforms just to survive.

The United States unquestionably remains the most powerful force in the region, and some Latin American countries have sought to tie their economic fortunes directly to their northern neighbor. Mexico and Chile negotiated free-trade agreements with the U.S.; Panama, Colombia and other countries are seeking to do the same.

But for many others, railing against economic reforms urged by Washington, such as privatization of utilities, is simply good politics. Leaders with biographies much like the young Castro's have come to power through the democratic elections the U.S. has promoted.

Besides Venezuela, former leftist rabble-rousers are in power in Nicaragua, Brazil, Bolivia and other countries. Most of them are careful not to set themselves squarely against Washington. But with the U.S. largely preoccupied with the Middle East, they also are looking elsewhere.

Nicaragua returned the former leftist revolutionary Daniel Ortega to the presidency last year, and he now maintains good relations with the United States. But one of the first leaders to visit Ortega after he took office was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

Ahmadinejad also is a close ally of Venezuela's Chavez.

In January, the Iranians also sent a high-ranking delegation to the inauguration of Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom.

"In Latin America, every country is following its own path," said Colom, an engineer elected on a platform critical of U.S.-backed economic privatization and other policies. "There are lots of different flavors to choose from now, depending on your tastes."

China is also seeking to expand its influence in the region. It has contemplated building a canal through Central America to compete with the Panama Canal.

Given his age and his country's precarious economy, Castro is no longer feared much by the region's conservatives.

Instead, in his final years, he has been embraced -- even by center-left leaders such as former President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina -- as a grandfatherly symbol of Latin American independence.

"Fidel is the only living myth in the history of humanity," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said this week. "The myth lives on."

In 2002, Castro visited Argentina, where he spoke one night to tens of thousands of people gathered outside the University of Buenos Aires law school. "Tell us about El Che!" several students yelled out, referring to Guevara. Castro, by then a frail man with a tremulous voice, obliged with 20 minutes of war stories and anecdotes about his old friend.

"There are millions of men like El Che among the masses of Latin America," Castro said, to loud cheers.

Even if that was more rhetoric than reality, critics of the Bush administration say the White House lacks an effective and unifying vision for Latin America. Elsa Falkenburger, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America think tank, said U.S. policy has focused on free trade as a catchall solution to the region's problems, at the expense of social investment.

"For a number of reasons," she said, "our influence over the region is dwindling away."

hector.tobar@latimes.com

Andrés D'Alessandro of The Times' Buenos Aires Bureau contributed to this report.

Gates Defers Travel Plans To Help With Iraq Report

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 9, 2007; A08

On the eve of a trip to Central and South America, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday postponed his travel plans to help the White House assemble a progress report on the situation in Iraq.

The move comes amid growing pressure on the Bush administration to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. The political climate for the war in Washington has grown markedly worse in recent days, with a group of senior Republicans changing their stance on Iraq and now leaning toward a withdrawal of troops.

On Thursday, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) became the latest to announce his break with President Bush, joining Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), George V. Voinovich (Ohio), John W. Warner (Va.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) in voicing some level of pessimism about the current U.S. course.

Congress has given the Bush administration two deadlines to report on the situation in Iraq and assess whether it is improving. The first of those deadlines is Sunday, and the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday that Gates's participation is needed in policy meetings.

Senior administration officials have already concluded that the Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the benchmarks that Bush set for it earlier this year, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Also this week, Congress is set to begin consideration of the defense spending bill, a debate that is sure to be dominated by discussion of Iraq.

The statement said Gates's long-planned trip to El Salvador, Colombia, Peru and Chile will be rescheduled. It was to be his first trip to the region since becoming defense secretary.