Word: latinization
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...little else, President Bush has learned one valuable thing about Latin America since his last visit to the region: how to duck the protests. In 2005, at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Bush was greeted by violent demonstrations and angry speeches from leftist leaders like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But the five countries Bush has chosen for his six-day Latin America tour that starts today in Sao Paulo, Brazil, are led by either kindred conservatives or more moderate leftists. And the venues he's visiting are often far from metropolis hotbeds of anti-yanqui...
...fueling that kind of negative feedback. So the question that hovers over the trip is whether Bush and Washington have finally learned to address all that anger in their own backyard. That resentment stems from both a widespread feeling that Bush - who came to office pledging to be Latin America's mejor amigo - instead essentially abandoned the region when it refused to line up behind his Iraq invasion, and a just as pervasive belief that Washington-backed capitalist reforms have helped widen the region's gap between rich and poor, the world's worst. Add to that...
...Fortunately, all indications are that the Administration has finally gotten the message. The major ethanol investment project that Bush will promote in Brazil with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at least captures the spirit of what Latin Americans say they've been wanting from Washington for so long. That is, it's less about the abstractions of free trade - the fruits of which too rarely trickle down in Latin America's corrupt societies - and more about targeting specific development engines that may well create decent-paying jobs. The gesture may be too little too late to repair Bush...
...that free trade is a bad thing for Latin America by any means. Since NAFTA began in 1994, Mexican exports to the U.S. have leapt from $40 billion to almost $200 billion. The problem is that, at the same time, the richest 10% of Mexicans have seen their share of national income grow appreciably while that of the poorest 10% has declined. The reason: neither free trade nor the U.S. has done much to help Latin America build the kind of institutions, like adequate schooling or functioning judiciaries, that spread that wealth through the economic bloodstream...
...need for rule of law in Latin America, for example, should smack Bush squarely in the face when he visits U.S. allies Colombia and Guatemala this weekend. Scandals there - one involving Colombian senators allegedly in league with drug-trafficking paramilitary armies, and another implicating Guatemala's national police in the murder of three Salvadoran congressmen - are another harsh reminder that, despite what so many in Washington seem to think, elections alone don't constitute a democratic society...