bubble boy's going to visit five whole countries...
...
Brazil and Colombia
...
Guatemala and Mexico
Uruguay
let's see what's he's going to find...
brazil...President Lula da Silva of Brazil made a point of visiting Venezuela for his first foreign trip after being re-elected last October. There he presided over the dedication of a $1.2 billion bridge over the Orinoco river, financed by the Brazilian government, while he lavished praise on Chavez and gave the popular Venezuelan president an added boost in his own re-election campaign.
colombia...Colombia is in the midst of a huge national scandal over the responsibility of government officials for mass murder and assassinations of political opponents. More trade unionists are killed in Colombia each year than in the rest of the world combined.
guatemala...Guatemala is another right-wing ally with a terrible human rights record: two weeks ago three Central American parlimentarians were murdered by a Guatemalan police death squad.
mexico...Mexico, where the agenda is sure to include immigration, a constant source of tension in relations between the two neighbors.
uruguay...Dr. [Tabare] Vázquez’s government includes former Tupamaro guerrillas; the guerrilla group kidnapped and killed an American official in Montevideo in 1970.
colombia, mexico, guatemala...All three governments have been linked to narco-trafficking, but President Bush will likely praise them for their co-operation in the war on drugs.
the region...For twenty-five years our government has pushed a series of reforms throughout the region: tighter fiscal and monetary policies, more independent central banks, indiscriminate opening to international trade and investment, privatization of public enterprises, and the abandonment of economic development strategies and industrial policies. The Bush team thinks that these reforms, known as "neoliberalism" in Latin America, were just the right formula to stimulate economic growth.
But in fact Latin America's economic growth over the last 25 years has been a disaster -- the worst long-term growth failure in more than a hundred years. From 1980-2000 GDP per person grew by only 9 percent, and another 4 percent for 2000-2005.
and...“[T]here is a sense that things are not going well for the U.S. in the region,” said Peter Hakim, president of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy research and advocacy group. “There has probably never been so much anti-Americanism and so little confidence in U.S. leadership since the cold war.”
i don't suppose it would make much difference to george w. bush that his trip might 1) actually inflame anti-u.s. sentiment in latin america, 2) subtract another point or two from his standing in the polls as he, don quixote-like, trots off to tilt at more windmills while ignoring the desperate state of his own country (virtually all of which has come about thanks to him), and 3) only serve to throw the spotlight on hugo chávez...While Mr. Bush is in Uruguay on Friday and Saturday, Mr. Chávez plans to be leading anti-Bush demonstrations just across the River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he has cultivated an increasingly friendly relationship with that country’s Peronist president, Néstor Kirchner.
i'm almost tempted to go see mr. chávez myself as long as he's going to be in the neighborhood altho' i hate crowds at outdoor political rallies... they make me nervous...Labels: Argentina, Brazil, Buenos Aires, Central America, Colombia, George Bush, Guatemala, Hugo Chávez, Latin America, Lula da Silva, Mexico, Néstor Kirchner, Tabare Vázquez, Uruguay, Venezuela
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