Biden and Nixon: A tale of 2 Latin American experiences
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
On
March 27, Vice President Joe Biden began a three-day tour to Latin
America to attend a high level consultation session for the Summit of
the Americas, scheduled for mid-April in Trinidad and Tobago. He met
in Chile with President Michelle Bachelet and Presidents from
Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, and the Prime Ministers of
Norway and the United Kingdom.
Biden
then went to Costa Rica. Hosted by President Oscar Arias, and
surrounded by other Central American leaders in San Jose, Biden
listened, a trait not usually associated with the verbose former
Senator — nor with other U.S. officials — as they enunciated the
pressing problems of the region.
Biden
returned without getting Nixonized. In May 1958, Vice President
Richard M. Nixon and his wife Pat began their eight-nation tour in
Lima, Peru. Newsreel film showed Nixon greeting Peruvian crowds who
answered with boos and hisses. Young Peruvians shoved the VP and his
wife and then spat on him. The New
York Times
huffily described the hostility as simply “communist inspired.”
A
week later, the Nixons landed in Caracas. An official band played the
“Star-Spangled Banner” and a 21-gun salute exploded. But the
crowd greeted the Nixons with a white sheet: “Get out, Nixon!”
The confused VP descended into the crowd, where he got spat on again.
Inside
the limo, the Nixons wiped spittle from their faces. Other angry
Venezuelans hurled rocks at their chauffeur-driven car. An hour
later, the Nixon convoy slowed in the Caracas traffic. Hundreds of
demonstrators attacked the VIP caravan ripping up U.S. and Venezuelan
flags draped on the limo. Infuriated men pounded the car doors with
lead pipes; others threw stones. The safety-plated glass shattered.
One shard hit Nixon in the face. It was quickly removed.
The
Venezuelan escort police seemed reluctant to confront enraged
civilians. They had been victims of vengeful mobs earlier in the year
when citizens rioted and overthrew pro-U.S. dictator Marcos Pérez
Jiménez. Uniformed police dragged away a student lying in front of
the car. But they didn’t engage a group trying to overturn Nixon’s
auto. The driver sped up and escaped.
Nixon
planned to lay a wreath at Simon Bolivar’s tomb. But more
protesters awaited him. Time
(May
26, 1958) estimated that “3,000 rioters, mostly high school
students,” awaited him.
U.S.
Embassy officials phoned President Eisenhower to report the
incidents. Ike dispatched a military unit to rescue the Nixons. The
ruling military junta in Caracas that replaced Pérez Jiménez sent
soldiers to protect the American VIPs. The next day, military squads
escorted Dick and Pat to the airport in a bulletproof limousine.
Provisional
President Rear Admiral Wolfgang Larrazabal described the incidents as
“very sad.”
Sad?
Currently, most Latin Americans feel relieved. In recent decades,
they have gotten the proverbial U.S. monkey off their backs. U.S.
officials continue to tell people “down there” how to run their
governments and their economies, but they can’t easily bring in
troops or CIA destabilizers. Bolivia and Ecuador ousted several U.S.
“diplomats” and terminated Washington’s costly and stupid “drug
war” as well.
In
1958, however, Ivy Leaguers at State and CIA couldn’t conceive of
Latin Americans feeling outrage at imperial U.S. behavior. In
Washington, under the tutelage of General Hubris, few considered that
installing brutal dictators throughout the lower hemisphere might
have negative repercussions, even though clear signals should have
prepared the foreign policy nomenklatura. Seven months later, in
January 1959, official policy mavens gasped in surprise again when
Cubans overthrew another U.S.-backed dictator.
This
event occurred while the apocryphal General Hubris had filled his
chest, in the lecture words of my late professor, William Appleman
Williams, with “visions of omnipotence.” After all, the United
States possessed a mammoth economy, super technology and nuclear
pre-eminence.
For
more than a century, Washington chose to intervene militarily and
then behaved as if its aggressive acts showed concern for the welfare
of those lesser peoples. In 1980, former Director of the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency under President Carter, Paul Warnke, described
to me official attitudes after World War II. “Latin Americans
should be grateful. We allowed them to have UN seats. The Monroe
Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary became truisms. Nobody
questioned them. It was assumed that we controlled the area forever.”
Latin
Americans learned, however, that the Washington policy brain had
become frozen. In the name of “containing” Soviet expansion and
protecting democracy, the United States backed dictators and their
militaries — just as they did before the Cold War.
Kennedy’s
bright 1961 Alliance for Progress rhetoric paled before his and his
successors’ far larger counterinsurgency budget. Democracy got
upstaged by military and the police, while the CIA resumed its
destabilization of disobedient governments (Brazil in 1964, Dominican
Republic in 1965, Chile from 1970-3) and tried hundreds of times to
assassinate Fidel Castro.
In
1991, the Cold War ended. The “evil empire” imploded, showing,
like the fabled Emperor, that it had no clothes. Latin Americans
logically awaited Washington’s policy changes — in vain. The U.S.
aura of supremacy continued to prevail. By 2001, Neocons began to
impose, with presidential blessing, their short sighted vision of
long term U.S. interests. The invasion of Iraq, they convinced Bush,
would begin the next phase of the American Century. As cruel facts
demonstrated after U.S. forces still occupy Afghanistan and Iraq,
U.S. policy around the world makes no sense.
Mythical
General Hubris, still informally in charge of official thinking,
clung to outdated strategies — like anti-Castroism. The slippery
slide of pro-U.S. dictators receded under U.S.-dominated free trade.
However, the façade of Latin American democracy — political
parties, elections, multiple sources of media — could not mask the
depths of poverty and misery throughout the area.
By
the late 1990s, voters responded to their conditions. Most of the
region’s nations elected governments critical of U.S. policy,
ranging from openly pro-Fidel Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo
Morales in Bolivia to Presidents who express admiration but don’t
take direct advice from Cuba’s former President. (Chile,
Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras, the
Dominican Republic, Panama and El Salvador)
If
Biden
tries
to argue for a continuation of “punish Cuba” policy, all Latin
Americans will sneer. The United States has lost Latin America. In
the post World War II era, critics of President Truman charged he had
“lost China,” referring to his refusal to intervene military in
the civil war won by the Communists in 1949. In fact, the United
States never had China to lose. But Washington did dominate Latin
America for a century. And it lost control of most of its countries.
In the 1960s, Washington pressured Latin American leaders to break
with Cuba. In 2009, those links have been reestablished.
The
new political generation in the region reasons with President Obama
to drop the “destroy Cuba” policies. Instead, Latin American
presidents appeal to Obama for focus on issues that scream for
solutions: poverty, crime, drug trafficking and immigration. Cuba did
not cause these issues. U.S. policy, however, facilitated a vast
corporate rip off of Latin American wealth.
U.S.
free trade policy led to an increase in poverty. The drug war
fostered more violent crime in several Latin American nations and
poisoned good agricultural land under the pretext of ridding it of
coca and opium poppies.
Drug
demand comes mostly from the United States, which has done nothing to
reduce the number of its addicts. Free trade formulas led Argentina
to bankruptcy. Other nations stopped growing traditional crops that
fed their people. Costa Rican farmers grow macadamia nuts and
flowers, not corn. For five hundred years, Mexico was self sufficient
in corn. Now, she imports more U.S. corn than any other nation. Thank
you, NAFTA!
Brazil
has become a power, one that merits a seat at the world table —
especially the areas of
financial
collapse and global warming. Obama and Biden could announce a new
partnership and permanently retire General Hubris.
Obama
faces a strange problem. In the midst of financial collapse, will he
also concede the loss of U.S. political power? In 1897, Queen
Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrated an empire that spanned the
world, including highly populated India and China (an informal
colony). The grandfather of General Hubris lived in London. God, he
believed, had blessed the Brits with a perpetual lease for the
universe.
By
1948, that lease had dwindled to a few remaining minor colonies. In
1956, as British warships sailed for the Suez Canal intent on
reestablishing their Middle Eastern power, President Eisenhower
ordered them to stop. They obeyed. In 2001, Prime Minister Tony Blair
tried to kiss George W. Bush’s ass, perhaps to reignite some fading
visions of past imperial glories.
Hopefully,
someone in Washington will scream as Ike did to the British: “Wake
Up! It’s over.” The American Century lasted 60 years. Biden could
help redefine U.S. relations — partnership, not domination — with
Latin America. What a relief that would be — for almost everyone.
Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies Fellow, author of A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD and
maker of films, available on DVD from roundworldproductions.com.
