First Presidential Debate and Latin America
Articles - News, Politics and Issues
The focus of the presidential debates last night was supposed to be on foreign policy. All of the issues mentioned affect Latinos in the United States and likely those in other countries. But in major debates, I also try to look at how the candidates look on issues more specific to Latinos and Latin American or Hispanic countries.
This year, there was next to no mention of Latin America. While many complain about "losing Latin America," it looks like the trend of ignoring positive connections with Latin America will continue.
This debate was largely based on fear. Fear of the economy and fear of attack. In all fairness, Latin America wasn't just ignored, but the whole world was. It seems "foreign policy" for the purposes of this debate was "what foreigners might attack us."
I saw four mentions of issues directly addressing Latinos last night.
Obama mentioned Latin America in the context of China having influence.
Obama: In the meantime, we've got challenges, for example, with China, where we are borrowing billions of dollars. They now hold a trillion dollars' worth of our debt. And they are active in countries like -- in regions like Latin America, and Asia, and Africa. They are -- the conspicuousness of their presence is only matched by our absence, because we've been focused on Iraq.
This was actually a positive mention, in the sense that he thought the United States should be more present and focused in areas outside of Europe.
Barack Obama also mention Venezuela in the terms of "rogue states" and grouped it with Iran.
Obama: That means that we, as one of the biggest consumers of oil -- 25 percent of the world's oil -- have to have an energy strategy not just to deal with Russia, but to deal with many of the rogue states we've talked about, Iran, Venezuela.
This is unfortunate, because the current policy and rhetoric againt Venezuela is largely based on personal tit for tat. It ignores the fact that Hugo Chavez was elected democratically and any additional powers he was granted was done so by a constitutional vote. The elections there have been monitored by several international groups and deemed to be clean. When he wanted too much power, it was put to a vote and the peopel rejected it. In all things, he has had the very popular backing of the people.
In the meantime, our own president has gained power by his own signing statements, repealing posse comitatus and skirting the laws with wiretapping and other abuses. It's also worth noting that when an illegal military coup overturned the government of Hugo Chavez, we were one of only two countries to support the illegal military coup. The people of Venezuela took to the streets and returned Hugo Chavez to power. It's also widely known that the US Government supported the coup.
This is important because Barack Obama seemed to notice this approach has failed.
Obama: And the problem, John, with the strategy that's been pursued was that, for 10 years, we coddled Musharraf, we alienated the Pakistani population, because we were anti-democratic. We had a 20th-century mindset that basically said, "Well, you know, he may be a dictator, but he's our dictator."
And as a consequence, we lost legitimacy in Pakistan.
We supported a military coup in Pakistan and sided with the dictator instead of the democratic will of the people. In the end, the people regained power and alienated supporters of the dictator - the US. I would hope we could return to a policy that stops calling democratically elected presidents dictators because clean elections put him in power and granted him more authority.
John McCain seemed to view Latin countries wholly in terms of security. In a question about a possible future 9-11 attack, he finished with:
McCain: But we still have a long way to go before we can declare America safe, and that means doing a better job along our borders, as well.
He also seemed to continue his bizarre urge to alienate Spain and treat it like an unknown rogue country instead of the NATO ally and partner in the war on terrorism.
Obama: He even said the other day that he would not meet potentially with the prime minister of Spain, because he -- you know, he wasn't sure whether they were aligned with us. I mean, Spain? Spain is a NATO ally.
McCain: Of course.
Obama: If we can't meet with our friends, I don't know how we're going to lead the world in terms of dealing with critical issues like terrorism.
McCain: I'm not going to set the White House visitors schedule before I'm president of the United States. I don't even have a seal yet.
All in all, Spain and Latin America seemed to be dealt with entirely in terms of hyperbole and fear. I wonder why ties with the region have been deteriorating.
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