The U.S. out-of-synch with the OAS and Latin America

the slant of this article is that the u.s. has a distorted vision of latin america because it sees everything through the filter of the "war on terror..." personally, i think it's more than that... the u.s. has ALWAYS had a distorted view of latin america... we're either trying to exploit natural resources or cheap labor to the detriment of the locals or we're trying to prop up or take down governments to serve our interests or we're loaning vast sums of money with plenty of strings attached that essentially perpetuate indentured economic servitude... for the most part (to borrow a phrase from The Donald - rumsfeld, that is), latin american nations have existed in the shadow and often at the whim of the u.s. so it's delightful when an organization like the oas, a u.s. puppet organization for most of the years of its existence, suddenly grows a spine... and DOUBLY delightful when the new oas secretary general, insulza, won u.s. support for his confirmation by promising condi that he would push for her "proposal for the creation of a mechanism to evaluate and 'oversee' democracies in the region..."

The U.S. government, whose proposal was voted down this week in the Organisation of American States (OAS), is piling up defeats in Latin America because of a vision of the region that is "distorted" by its "war on terrorism," according to analysts.

Washington has an erroneous perception of Latin America not only because it is concentrating its attention on other regions, like the Middle East - especially the war in Iraq - but also because it looks at this region "through the 'fight against terrorism' lens," Clovis Brigagao, director of the Centre of Studies on the Americas at the University of Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.

The 35th OAS general assembly, which ended Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, approved a declaration that discarded a U.S. proposal for the creation of a mechanism to evaluate and "oversee" democracies in the region.

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