Bush's Other Half
U.S. President Hopes Softer Side Will Win Over in Latin America

By Marcela Sanchez
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, March 9, 2007 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON -- Latin Americans might be surprised when they hear President Bush lament the "scandal" of persistent poverty and inequality during his six-day, five-country trip to the region. Or they might have a similar reaction as they hear him discuss the importance of U.S. programs to help bring health, housing and education to the region's poor.

Their surprise will only grow as Bush addresses some of the fundamental ills in Latin America that his regional nemesis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, repeatedly cites as the flaws of capitalism, or if by chance Bush invokes the name of Simon Bolivar, tacitly reminding Chavez that Bolivar "belongs to all of us."

As one senior administration official told me this week, the White House wants to show that it is in tune with the region's priorities and that Latin Americans should "feel that we are responding to their agenda, that we have decided to listen." Bush intends to "showcase the other half of his agenda," according to national security adviser Stephen Hadley, the one that is not "counter-terror, trade and counter-narcotics."

The administration's hope is that Latin Americans will discover that Washington doesn't really deserve their hostility. Apparently, all along it has had a positive agenda -- even if the administration has appeared to make a darn good effort to conceal it: punishing in some way those who disagreed with Washington, and decreasing funding for developmental assistance, child survival and health programs.

Part of that concealment effort would seem to be Bush's insistence in pursuing free trade agreements in the region when there is a growing anxiety that market reforms and free trade are contributing to Latin America's persistent poverty. Even when given the opportunity to directly acknowledge this anxiety, as during the 2004 and 2005 Summits of the Americas, Bush's reluctance reinforced the widespread belief that Washington was oblivious to the plight of its poor neighbors.

In contrast, Chavez -- no matter how you feel about him -- has been speaking directly to these very issues, which are at the core of the region's anti-American sentiment. Washington in turn has far too often fed Chavez's ego and confirmed Latin American sentiments that the United States just doesn't get it by bickering with the Venezuelan and obsessing over the need to contain him and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

This confrontation has had a devastating effect. Rarely has the U.S. image in Latin America been in worse shape. Barely a quarter of the people polled in the region approve of the United States these days. Roberto Abdenur, the former Brazilian ambassador to the United States, has recently complained that anti-Americanism is institutionally entrenched in his country.

On this trip, Latin American analysts say, Bush is avoiding Mexico City to steer clear of anti-American protests -- the kind that will probably make headlines during his stop in Uruguay.

The fact that this is Bush's eighth trip to the region shows that the United States has not been disengaged from Latin America, but that its engagement has taken the wrong approach. Bush's newly articulated sympathy signals a shift that is probably due in no small degree to Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, who advocates a less confrontational line toward Washington's southern neighbors.

Also, the Bush administration is borrowing a page from the Clinton years to counter anti-Americanism abroad. Back in the late 1990s when globalization had generated so much bitterness toward the United States that McDonald's restaurants were being attacked in France, Felix G. Rohatyn, the U.S. ambassador at the time, sent diplomats out from the embassy in Paris to make themselves available to the French people. The initial goal wasn't to change minds, Rohatyn told me recently, but "to have an exchange of views" and to articulate the logic behind U.S. policy.

The State Department will soon be opening six American Presence Posts in Latin America as part of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's efforts to get "more Americans onto the diplomatic front lines of the 21st century." Like Rohatyn's diplomats, they will be living and working outside the embassy and will counter animosity through more direct communication.

The six posts aren't much, but they are a start and hopefully represent both a return to true diplomacy and a victory for those in the administration who know that empathetic engagement will be a more fruitful tactic.

Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.