Globe and Mail | By PAUL KNOX | January 14, 2004
Geographically, the special Americas summit that ended yesterday couldn't have been much closer to the United States and still taken place in Latin America. Monterrey, Mexico's second-largest city and host of the meeting, is just 138 kilometres from the U.S. border. It has many gringolandia trappings, too - a Wal-Mart, gleaming glass towers, the feel of a hard-working, businesslike town.
But getting close to the United States wasn't on the agenda for many of the leaders who attended the two-day, 34-nation meeting. Instead, they seemed anxious to emphasize just how different their vision of fighting poverty and entrenching democratic rule is from that of the United States and its president, George W. Bush.
There were substantial achievements at the summit, the fourth of its kind. In their final declaration, the leaders issued their strongest anti-corruption pledge, vowing to deny sanctuary to corrupt officials and business people. For the first time, they acknowledged the importance of the billions of dollars sent home every year by migrant workers in the United States and Canada, and pledged to lower the cost of transferring funds.
But the mood was decidedly cranky. Speaker after speaker took the floor to lament the legacy of the so-called Washington consensus, the market-oriented package of economic measures that virtually all of Latin America had adopted in one form or another by the end of the last century, under pressure from the United States and other industrial-world governments.
"Economic stability was planned at the expense of social justice," said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio (Lula) da Silva. "We wound up without either of them."
In a stolid blue suit and with gritty, back-street Portuguese, the former metal worker traced the economic carnage by reciting United Nations statistics. The number of Latin Americans living in extreme poverty grew from 48 million to 57 million during the 1990s, he said, and more than 100 million people in the region subsist on the equivalent of less than $2 (U.S.) a day.
According to orthodox economic theory, governments can pull these people out of misery by imposing fiscal austerity, privatizing state-owned assets, ending price supports and exchange controls, and smashing barriers to trade.
But the lesson of the 1990s, referred to as the "decade of desperation" by Mr. da Silva, is that it doesn't work without simultaneous investment in health, education, housing and emergency programs to fight hunger and disease. Lacking such programs, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia experienced social and political unrest that eventually toppled presidents.
Talks toward a free-trade area of the Americas are mired in recriminations over the disasters of the 1990s and the United States' refusal to drop its own barriers to imports from the developing world.
The Monterrey summit wasn't supposed to be about trade, but the FTAA took a beating anyway. Brazil, which has led efforts to slow negotiation of the hemispheric pact, succeeded in blocking a U.S.-Canadian attempt to reaffirm the deadline of Jan. 1, 2005, for it to come into force. Since trade ministers reaffirmed that deadline only two months ago at a meeting in Miami, that seemed a clear setback for the FTAA's proponents.
Argentina's Nestor Kirchner blasted the FTAA as insufficient to guarantee growth and stability. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who issued a formal reservation to it at the 2001 Americas summit in Quebec City, did so again yesterday as he signed the final summit declaration.
When the principle of creating the FTAA was approved at the first Americas summit in 1994, it was accompanied by an ambitious agenda for education, social and democratic reform. Much of that lies unrealized because follow-up activities have been seriously underfinanced.
The situation was summed up eloquently by Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of tiny St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He said the summiteers have "gone from a total package including the areas we are trying to rescue now, into a side road of trade."
Even Prime Minister Paul Martin, a solid supporter of freer trade, was eager to distance himself from market orthodoxy. Liberalized trade and a strong financial system are needed, he said, but "at the same time, not in second place, we build a social safety net that includes accessible and high-quality health care and education."
Canada continues to favour signing an FTAA agreement as soon as possible, and Mr. Martin made it clear following a one-on-one meeting with Mr. da Silva that the two leaders differ significantly on the free-trade timetable. But in his first appearance as Prime Minister on an international stage, he appeared to seek a classic Canadian role: that of broker between the U.S. colossus and poorer, weaker nations.
At the final press conference yesterday, he said he wanted Canada to play a more significant role in Latin America. So have most of his predecessors. It will take far more than a summit to measure success. And it remains to be seen how Canada will deal with shifting power alliances in the region - particularly Brazil's assertive leadership in South America since Mr. da Silva took office a year ago.
As for Mr. Bush, his priority clearly was making nice to Mexico in a year when he will be seeking the support of millions of U.S. voters of Mexican descent. Mexican President Vicente Fox obliged, extending a warm welcome in the hope of mending relations that suffered a setback when Mexico opposed the war in Iraq.
Apart from the Fox meeting, Mr. Bush seemed peculiarly disengaged. He offered no detailed response to the critique of market orthodoxy. His implicit invitation to his counterparts to criticize Cuba was not taken up.
He took the floor yesterday to speak about the HIV/AIDS pandemic. But he failed to mention Brazil's pioneering role in designing prevention and treatment programs, and in making cheap anti-retroviral drugs available on a large scale. Instead, he extolled the virtues of Uganda, a key U.S. ally in Africa, and its so-called ABC approach to AIDS education - "abstinence, be faithful, use condoms."
It may not have been exactly a snub. But it was a clear indication that at a time when the Americas need help, the attention of the largest among them is focused elsewhere.Globe and Mail:
