latin america
Return
to Common Sense
June 2, 2009
Section: Foreign – Latin
“Our southern neighbors are evolving politically and sharing
in our economic prosperity with Free Trade Agreements can help tip them toward
a free market economy and democracy.”
Philosophy (Background, Issues,
Objectives):
Latin
America is divided into 20 independent countries and several dependent
territories.
- Latin
America is the
region of the Americas where Romance languages are officially or primarily
spoken.
- Most Latin American countries
predominately use Spanish as their official language.
- Brazil is by far the largest
country of Latin America, both in area and population, but speaks
Portugese.
- The primary religion throughout
Latin America is Roman Catholicism.
- The rich mosaic of culture is
derived from combination of Native, European, and African cultures.
Organization
of American States (OAS) is composed of 35 independent states of the Americas.
·
Charter of the Organization of the American States is a Pan-American treaty signed in
1948.
·
OAS
goal is "to achieve an order of
peace and justice, to promote their solidarity, to strengthen their
collaboration, and to defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity,
and their independence."
·
OAS
has eight essential purposes:
o
To
strengthen the peace and security of the continent.
o
To
promote and consolidate representative democracy, with due respect for the
principle of nonintervention.
o
To
prevent possible causes of difficulties and to ensure the pacific settlement of
disputes that may arise among the member states.
o
To
provide for common action on the part of those states in the event of
aggression.
o
To
seek the solution of political, judicial, and economic problems that may arise
among them
o
To
promote, by cooperative action, their economic, social, and cultural
development.
o
To
eradicate extreme poverty, which constitutes an obstacle to
the full democratic development of the peoples of the hemisphere.
o
To
achieve an effective limitation of conventional weapons that will make it
possible to devote the largest amount of resources to the economic and social
development of the member states.
Latin
America is important to the U.S. economically and politically.
- In 2001, the region’s
governments adopted the Inter-American Democratic Charter, committing
themselves to the promotion and defense of representative democracy.
- In 2004 total merchandise trade
between U.S. and Latin America was $409 billion, about 17% of total.
- Free Trade Agreements lower the
cost of commerce and open door to opportunity.
- Free Trade Agreements have been
made with Canada, Mexico, Chile, Dominican Republic, and four Central
American states.
- Free Trade talks are underway
with Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.
- Since 2004 U.S. Chile Free Trade
Agreement total U.S. exports increased by 24%.
- 57% of people expressed
confidence in the private sector in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Mexico, Peru and Venuzuela.
·
·
President Luiz
Inácio Lula da
Silva, labor leader turned statesman, has been defined largely by steady
pragmatism.
·
Lula has demonstrated that
antipoverty programs are good business and that economic growth is objectively
better when the opportunity that comes with it is shared more equitably.
Some hard
line regimes remain in poor and undereducated countries.
- The communist regime in Cuba
remains isolated economically and politically and has turned into ruins in just five
decades.
o Cuba’s inflation-adjusted GDP is
5% of what it was in 1958, the year before Castro.
o Cuba is unable to meet its own food
production needs and now imports 84% of its food.
o Cuba produced 7 million tons of sugar
in 1952, but is down to 1.5 million tons in 2008.
o Economic policies of collectivization,
killing of individual incentive, inefficiency, constant changes of policy
destroyed the economy.
o “Voted” to hand over
absolute power over to Chavez for next 18 months.
o Plans to nationalize country’s
major infrastructure-related industries.
o Promoting a homegrown socialism
inspired by the Cuban experience, with
o Funding FARC, a narco-terrorist
organization, that is the ruling power in several countries.
o Constitution enshrines state ownership
of natural resources and communal property principal.
- Politicians
falling into an authoritarian populist model have also emerged in
Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru.
o
While these leaders have leftist
economic agendas in common, what is far more disturbing is that in most cases
they advocate the dismantling of the political and constitutional orders of
their countries and the concentration of power in their hands.
The threat of corruption sown systematically by transnational
organized crime is serious, and it requires the region's urgent attention.
- In Mexico
the criminality surrounding the illicit drug trade is a "serious
national security threat" that undermines the nation's quality of
life, development, and citizen safety.
- Eighteen
nations in Central and South America have agreed to a Colombian-led effort
to produce a "transit zone" strategy to "confront all the
links" in the drug chain.
Principles:
Support
our allies economically and politically.
- Provide an economic free trade
alternative to hard line regimes.
Recommendations:
Promote
Americas Free Trade Agreements to include as many
- Approve FTAs with Peru, Columbia,
and Panama.
- Extend trade preferences to
- Pursue additional bilateral FTAs
with other Latin American countries.
- Cut funding for all
Promote
regional collaboration against transnational crime and terrorism.
References:
“How
“Assembly to rewrite constitution”
by Martin Arostegui dated
“
“Promote
Andean Free Trade But Limit Preferences” by Ana Isable Eiras and Stephen Johnson
dated
“A Long Goodbye to Democracy” by
Mario Loyola dated
“Collapsing
“Nuance in Chavez’s Rhetoric Tells of
Future Plans for Region” by Helle C. Dale
dated
“Carbon Copying the Cuban Model” by
Eric Driggs dated
“Working Capitalism” dated
“Hectored by Hugo” by William
Ratliff dated
“
“Chavez Moves Toward War” by Martin
Sieff dated
“Legacy or Complacency?” by Roger
F. Noriega dated
“Rethinking the
“Communist Cuba: 50 years of Failure”
dated December 30, 2008 published by Investor’s Business Daily at http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=315532982181405 .
“10 Points for President-Elect Obama’s
Latin America Strategy” by James M. Robert and Ray Waiser dated January 9, 2009 at http://www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/wm2198.cfm .
“Heading Off Another
‘Lost decade’ in Latin America” by Roger F. Noriega dated
March 17, 2009 published by American Enterprise Institute at http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.29556/pub_detail.asp .
“Obama and Lies About Castro’s Cuba”
by Christopher Ruddy dated April 20, 2009 published by News Max at http://www.newsmax.com/ruddy/ruddy_castro_cuba/2009/04/20/205214.html .
“El Insulza
Conspiracy” dated June 1, 2009 published by Investor’s Business
Daily at http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=328747339570574
.
