LOS ANGELES — The United States is missing opportunities to advance its democratic goals for Latin America by refusing to engage with adversaries in the region, according to Chile’s new president.
Gabriel Boric, a 36-year-old who became president in March after being catapulted into power by a wave of social unrest, objected to the Biden administration’s decision not to invite the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to this week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles over those countries’ authoritarian ways.
The controversy over their exclusion, which prompted the presidents of Mexico, Uruguay and other nations to skip the summit,highlights growing disagreement over the role that democracy should play in the Western Hemisphere.
The Chilean leader took issue with what he said was a “double standard” of Washington’s support for undemocratic nations like Saudi Arabia and for Israel, which Boric has denounced for its treatment of Palestinians, even as it intensifies condemnation of authoritarians in Latin America.
“I have a lot of criticism of the countries that were excluded, but I prefer to say that to their faces,” Boric said during an interview at the summit, the first that the United States has hosted since the gatherings began in 1994 in Miami.
Rather than being able to press leaders of the uninvited countries on issues such as political prisoners or advance international solutions to Venezuela’s political crisis, he said, “the United States is now giving them a perfect excuse for victimization.”
Boric, who faces low approval ratings and instability in the South American country’s indigenous heartland, said he hoped to define his presidency not by allegiance or differences with Washington but by an alternative liberal vision in a continent long defined by the struggle between the political left and right.
Brian Winter, vice president for policy of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, said Boric is a new brand of Latin American leftist.
Winter cited the Chilean leader’s elevation of human rights more than two decades after Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship and his effort to address a host of challenges by hewing to the country’s democratic institutions.
Boric stands out among Latin America’s leftist leaders for his willingness to criticize authoritarians like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. And unlike leaders who espouse leftist economic ideas but oppose abortion and LGBT rights, like Peru’s Pedro Castillo, he is a social liberal. His Cabinet is majority-female and includes two openly gay officials.
“That’s unique and laudable, but there are no guarantees of success,” Winter said. “There is a chance that Boric and his government don’t land the plane safely.”
Boric’s remarks elevate the stakes of the week-long summit, which President Biden has framed around his administration’s attempt to prove that democracy, challenged globally by a rise of autocratic governments, can deliver a better quality of life than other systems in Latin America and around the world.
In a speech Wednesday officially opening the summit, Biden cited the 2001 hemispheric charter that committed to making the Americas a wholly democratic region.
Speaking alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday, Biden said the region was already the most democratic in the world. “There’s no reason why it can’t become more democratic and prosperous,” he said.
But analysts say the region’s commitment to democracy has waned, in part because such systems have not resolved enduring problems of corruption, insecurity and severe economic inequality. Many in the region no longer feel elections and democratic institutions should be the ticket for entry to trade and other forms of global cooperation, a trend reflected in the region’s growing commercial relationship with China.
“That’s the real tension of that debate,” Winter said. “You have a U.S. government that has tried to place democracy front and center in its foreign policy, and a region that is saying, ‘We really need to engage with everyone, and also don’t make decisions for us.’ ”
Boric also warned of a democratic retreat, but in facing that challenge, he prescribed a different role for the United States in the region than that of the past.
A native of Punta Arenas, a remote windswept city on Chile’s southernmost tip, Boric rose to prominence as a student organizer. In December, two years after a transit fare hike ignited massive protests and violent riots that reflected Chileans’ deep-seated frustrations, he secured a landslide election victory against a right-wing opponent. Informal and tattooed, Boric represents a generational shift in conservative Chile.
Speaking about Washington’s role in the region, he cited a U.S. political adage, “America for Americans,” a phrase often associated with the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. When he first read about it, Boric said, he thought it meant the hemisphere should belong to all its inhabitants, including those in far-flung places like Chile.
“I understood later — when I lost my naivete — that the U.S. understood this as the American continent being its region,” he said. “I believe we can have a much better relationship if the U.S. understands it in terms of political equality with the region’s countries, particularly those with shared values” like respect for human rights and basic science and freedom of the press.
“Those values would be much better supported without paternalism” in the U.S. approach to the region, he said. “This is what we, from the south, humbly come to propose.”
In Chile, Boric must deal with mounting inflation and the lingering toll of the coronavirus pandemic as he seeks to address inequality and build a more generous welfare state. While Boric vowed to make Chile the grave of the Pinochet era’s free-market economic model, he has so far shunned radical moves, appointing the current Central Bank head as his finance minister.
He described an attempt to balance competing pressures in his steps to manage violence in the country’s south. He said his government aimed to accelerate the process of purchasing land for indigenous communities from powerful forestry companies, foster investment and support indigenous languages and identity. At the same time, Boric sent the military back to the region, reversing a campaign pledge in what he said was a “difficult decision” aimed at ensuring basic security.
A signature element of Boric’s vision for Chile is the process now underway to rewrite the country’s constitution, which dates back to the Pinochet years. But polls indicate weakening public support for the effort, which will be put to a plebiscite in September, a dangerous sign for Boric’s broader agenda.
At the summit, questions include how much the United States can contribute to solving regional problems as it refocuses its foreign policy on Asia and scrambles to respond to an unpredictable Russia. While the White House announced steps to shore up the region’s economies, it was not immediately clear how much private investment Biden can marshal and how much U.S. government money will be involved.
The stakes of Latin America’s political choices are heightened as the region becomes an increasingly important theater for U.S.-Chinese competition.China, a major customer for the region’s natural resources, has now overtaken the United States as South America’s top trade partner. But U.S. officials warn that Chinese investments could lower labor and environmental standards and, as it buys stakes in critical infrastructure, ultimately jeopardize the region’s security.
Boric said China had not imposed any onerous conditions in its commercial dealings with Chile. “We don’t feel that we need to put ourselves on one side or the other,” he said.
He also said Latin American nations needed to come together to advance solutions to global problems — for example, a regional position in global negotiations on climate change — just as much as the rest of the world needed to see more than the long-running political conflicts.
“For a long time, the only thing we talk about when we talk about Latin America is Venezuela and Cuba. Enough!” he said. “We have much more in common to work on.”
Cleve Wootson contributed to this report.
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Publish date : 2022-06-09 03:00:00
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