A porteño view of the Summit of the Americas

(porteño = a resident of buenos aires...)

for major headline events, it's always fascinating to get the take of those who were there... admittedly, the english-language buenos aires herald is the only bsas paper i read which leaves me without a point of comparison, but, i can tell you, they do a pretty good job of watchdogging president kirchner, an example our own u.s. media could take to heart...

The host must shoulder his responsibility for the failure of any party and the Mar del Plata summit was no exception. If everybody lost, it was partly because President Néstor Kirchner — torn between Bush (his chief support in debt talks) and Chávez (his main oil supplier) — lacked the hemispheric vision or the diplomatic skill (especially with an improvised, lame duck foreign minister) to throw the chairman’s weight behind anybody or to steer the agenda in a more promising direction. Kirchner’s alignment with the Mercosur position against the FTAA clashes with the way he himself undermines Mercosur by maintaining differences with Brazil (over the trade gap), Uruguay (pulp mills) and Paraguay (the presence of US troops). Snubbing President Vicente Fox of Mexico (a three-billion-dollar customer with huge room for growth) for his pro-FTAA stance made even less sense.

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