The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 wrested the Americas from the European sphere of influence and effectively claimed it (all of it) for the United States. In its 19th century context, the Doctrine sought to protect the self-determination of newly independent countries throughout the hemisphere, with the United States acting as those countries' shepherd, ever-vigilant of the wolves of Europe.
In the 20th century, and especially during the Cold War, the Monroe Doctrine gained new life in a new geopolitical context. The United States' new mission was to shepherd North and South America economically, expanding free markets and stamping out communism (ruthlessly) wherever and whenever it sprang up: Chile 1973, Guatemala from 1966 up through the 1970s, Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. Only Cuba managed to stay a red thorn in the U.S.'s side during the Cold War era.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, an emboldened United States sought to further its neo-liberal influence throughout Latin America. The Washington Consensus became the credo of the Western Hemisphere. Through such organs as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. imposed its economic and political influence on the newly revived democratic regimes of Argentina and Brazil. Deregulation and integration into the global capitalist system - headed by the world's now lone superpower - became the key to economic development. More than the key, it was the only option.
After 9-11, the United States began to tend less and less to its backyard, and more toward the Middle East, where 1) radical Islamist terrorists could be hunted down, and 2) where the vast majority of the world's remaining oil supplies could be secured and controlled. In the wake this shift, many a Latin American government moved left. Particularly in South America. Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, and has consolidated his power with evermore vocal anti-Americanism since his first reelection in 2000. Evo Morales took control of Bolivia in 2006, and has since nationalized the country's natural gas reserves and become Chávez's number one ally. Rafael Correa has similarly shifted Ecuador away from free-market policies since assuming the presidency in 2007. Meanwhile, Lula's Brazil, the Argentina of the Kirchner couple, Vázquez' Uruguay, Bachelet's Chile, Alan García's Peru and Fernando Lugo's Paraguay have all adopted policies that blend socialism with neo-liberalism. Only Colombia, under the mandate of the right-leaning Álvaro Uribe, has remained a firm foothold for North American influence in the region, due exclusively to the billions of dollars in military aid the U.S. pumps into Colombia to fight the Marxist FARC guerilla faction, an officially declared terrorist organization.
This so-called "loss of Latin America", for which the Bush Administration has been blamed, has revealed a United States less able to wield its political and economic influence certainly in the region, but throughout the world as well. Brazil, with a steadily growing economy that accounts for roughly two-thirds of the economic output of South America, has gradually wrested control of the region from U.S. hands. The EU-like continental common market MERCOSUL is still in the development stages, but as it grows, dependence on the United States diminishes.
Yet the current financial crisis has proven that Latin America has not yet achieved complete economic independence from the United States (or, as Chávez put it, "uncoupled itself from the wagon of death.") I invite you to read the New York Times article below to better understand how the region is coping with North America's mess:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/world/americas/03latin.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1It's hard not to agree with Lula's analysis. The same deregulation the U.S. has always preached to its neighbors to the south is the same deregulation that led us all down the path to financial mayhem.
In regards to the fall of the Brazilian currency, the
real, I'll admit, I'm currently enjoying an exchange rate of 2.30 reais to the dollar. When I arrived back in February it was 1.80 to one. That rate declined to about 1.54 to 1 in late July. As the crisis deepens, I wouldn't be surprised if the rate ballooned even more: just yesterday it was 2.17 to 1, and two days before it was 2.02 to 1. Yet my gain is Brazil's potential loss. Brazil, since colonial times, has depended on the export of commodities such as coffee, sugar, and now soy for economic growth. The IMF's forecast for Brazil in 2008 was growth of around 5%, due in large part to the expected growth in the agricultural export sector. While it is true that a weak real makes Brazilian commodities cheaper and thus more attractive, an overly devalued real would make Brazilian producers reap smaller returns on their investments of previous years when the currency was stronger. To make matters worse, the weak real makes foreign capital that much more expensive, which is
further complicated by the fact that frozen global credit markets have little to offer Brazilian Agrobiz even if it did want to invest in more expensive capital.
The bottom line: 5% growth may now be out of reach, and prospect of a prospering and evermore economically independent Brazil may not come about as quickly as many Brazilians had hoped.
As karma would have it, heightened anti-American angst among many of my Brazilian acquaintances has been the price of the exchange rate I currently enjoy. Just when they saw their country almost free from North American economic domination, with prosperity and growing regional power on the horizon, the present crisis threw a wrench in their expectations. More than ever during my stay down here I'm hearing claims that current events are a sign that U.S. world hegemony is all but at an end (here's a good
BBC report on just that topic). And now I hear this with an air of "good riddance." It makes being an ambassador of goodwill that much harder, and I'm starting to feel a little more thankful that I only have two months left here.
One thing I do tell people is that, well, if the U.S. does lose its hegemonic status, so what? When you're on top of the mountain, everybody resents you. Everybody is either trying to knock you off, cheering for you to be knocked off, or predicting when exactly you will get knocked off. I can't deny that my tiny vindictive side would love to see carefree Brazil assume that onerous position. It's no enviable position, and quite frankly any prosperity that comes from there isn't worth it. We Americans need to take this crisis as a wakeup call. We are not at the end of history, as Francis Fukuyama boasted shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. History, just as it always has, is only beginning. More than ever we need to realize that we are fallible, we are vulnerable, and we can easily (and perhaps gleefully in the eyes of many around the world) be replaced atop the mountain by a China, India, Russia, Japan, or even Brazil. If we want to have more friends than enemies (or any friends at all) going into the second decade of the millennium, we need to willfully reach down and collaborate with the throng of hands below our perch, not beat them back with a stick. If we're lucky, we can turn that mountain into a plateau, where we can be equal partners with B.R.I.C., Japan, South Korea, Europe, and other powerhouse nations, and where we can work together to pull up other impoverished nations one by one to join us. If not, we'd better get used to the view from the bottom of the mountain, because that's how low we will fall. And fall hard.
