Should reason prevail
By
Manuel E. Yepe Read Spanish Version
manuelyepe@gmail.com
There’s
no waste in the inaugural speech Barack Obama would supposedly
deliver in January 2009, should he stick to the text prepared by the
experienced British journalist and historian Richard Gott published
in The Guardian last July 9.
Gott explains in his
"project" that although Iraq and the U.S. economy have
dominated the presidential race, Latin America presents important
challenges for the next president to solve, and to that effect,
assuming Barack Obama wins the election in November, he recommends a
text that amounts to a whole new continental agenda.
Obama
would say: "In some parts of the world, in recent years, we have
tried to do too much. In Latin America, we have done too little. With
our attention focused elsewhere, anti-American forces have moved in
to fill the vacuum. Today we have little to build on, and few friends
in the continent. Yet I have promised change, U.S. citizens have
voted for change, and change is what I intend to bring about."
Then
he would go on to recall some positive features of fellow past
presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. About the latter
he would say that the "Alliance for Progress" was an
approach to Latin America seen as an "alternative to the
revolutionary rhetoric of Castro."
Obama would
recognize that "the continent has changed dramatically since
that time, notably in the 20 years since the end of the cold war.
Latin America has begun to stand up, to march forward without
assistance. It has thrown off the military dictatorships that
successive American governments so misguidedly supported. Democracy
is no longer the exception, but the rule. We cannot ignore these
developments: neither the banner of Simón Bolívar that
now flies again over much of the continent, nor the sudden explosion
of the indigenous peoples that has spread out from the countries of
the Andes."
What follows would be: "The most
significant change will concern the island of Cuba, where the
policies of my 10 immediate predecessors have failed to advance the
interests of the United States. We meet today in the month of the
50th anniversary of the original Cuban revolution, in January 1959,
and we have to recognize that the Castro brothers are still alive and
in power.
Cuba
is not a democracy in the way that we understand the term, yet the
island’s government is recognized and accepted
by all our southern neighbors. We need to accept this fact and take a
new and different approach. Cuba is not a prison island. It is not a
failed state. Unlike the United States, it is a country where its
black citizens, half the population, enjoy equal status with whites.
Yet, like the United States, it is a country that will welcome change
on its own terms. We should recognize and respect that
possibility."
Obama would then level some criticism
at the hopes for annexation that several U.S. presidents have held
since the 19th century, which paved the way for conflicts between
both countries. He would compare mistakes such as the 1898 military
intervention in Cuba with the U.S. occupation of Iraq, "neither
well-planned nor well-executed." In the case of Cuba, those
mistakes "would fuel Castro’s revolutionary struggle half
century later."
Then he would announce two
important appointments: "Former President Jimmy Carter will
become my personal representative for Cuban affairs. He will now
immediately fly to Cuba to communicate in the name of my government
the decision to lift the travel ban on U.S. citizens and end the
economic embargo, and to prepare the ground for my own presidential
visit. He will work toward an eventual agreement on the outstanding
issues between our two countries. We shall also put on the table the
future of our naval base on the island at Guantánamo Bay,
whose infamous prison we propose to close.
At the same
time, I have asked Wayne Smith, our oldest former U.S. state
department official, to come out from academic retirement to become
the chief of our embassy in Havana and work toward the normalization
of our diplomatic relations with Cuba.”
In his speech,
Obama would announce his plan to fly from Havana to Caracas to greet
President Hugo Chávez, welcome his contribution to the peace
process in Colombia, and offer U.S. support to him and to President
Uribe of Colombia, to advance that process by "calling a halt to
our own Plan Colombia, which is a drain on our resources that should
be diverted to more socially useful ends".
He would
also say: "From Caracas I shall fly to Brasilia to talk to
President Lula, and then to Bolivia to greet Evo Morales and express
the support of America for the indigenous resistance against white
settler rule that is now changing the face of the
Americas.
According to the speech suggested by Gott,
Barack Obama would make those visits to make the North Americans
identify with the peoples of Latin America in their capacity to
embrace change and reinvent their history, to make sure that the
voice of the United States is heard in this great new chorus of
liberation.
The ultimate inaugural speech to be
delivered by the new U.S. president next January is likely to bear no
resemblance to the text written by Gott as an exercise in
interpreting reality on the basis of the Union’s true interests about
its security. Coming out of the White House, a statement like this
would bring the head of state face-to-face with unscrupulous
reprisals by the less clever corporations and the industrial-military
complex.
Manuel
E. Yepe Menéndez is a lawyer, economist and journalist.
