E-Notes

An Apology Instead of a Policy: U.S. Blunders in Latin America

By Michael Radu

March 19, 1999

Michael Radu is a Senior Fellow.

On March 10, while on a visit to Guatemala, President Clinton apologized for the U.S. role in the 1962–1996 civil war in that country: “For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that the support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression … was wrong… . The United States must not repeat that mistake.” The Guatemalans were neither impressed nor particularly interested. Amidst cries of “Viva Monica” they protested against the apparent refusal of the United States to grant residence to tens of thousands of Guatemalan illegal aliens who have abused immigration laws. The president has once again decided that rewriting history and blaming his predecessors is the easy way to avoid hard decisions and cover up the almost total failure of his Latin America policies.

The facts show that a presidential apology in Guatemala was hardly warranted. Between 1962, when the Marxist insurgency began, and 1977, when Guatemala rejected the Carter administration's conditions for a $2.1 million military aid package, that country received $2 million per year, or about $30 million in military aid — a pittance by any reasonable standard. Aid was never restored, and after 1977 Guatemala was even denied the right to buy parts for American military equipment previously provided or sold.

One might also point out that the most intense phase of the insurgency in Guatemala, claiming the greatest number of casualties, took place after the discontinuation of all U.S. military aid, during the military governments of Romeo Lucas Garcia (1978-82) and Efrain Rios Montt (1982-83). Those two regimes finally broke the communist insurgency's back – and they did it without any American “support.”

Of course, throughout the insurgency period the CIA was present in Guatemala and no doubt aware of the brutally effective counterinsurgency methods used by government forces — in other words, doing precisely what an intelligence service is supposed to do. Since aid was nonexistent, the United States had no leverage left with the Guatemalan military — unless the president suggests that we should have used force in support of the insurgents.

It is easy to rewrite history now to feel good and make revisionists feel even better, but at the time the possibility of a Marxist Guatemala — the largest Central American country and Mexico's neighbor – joining totalitarian Nicaragua was deemed unacceptable by responsible policy makers in Washington.

Whatever the state of the president's knowledge of history, the Guatemala apology is indicative of a more profound problem: the administration's unwillingness to accept disturbing political realities in Latin America today. The Cold War may have ended elsewhere, but someone forgot to tell that to the increasingly victorious Marxist guerrillas in Colombia or their less successful comrades in Mexico and Peru.

And the Clinton administration doesn't know what it should do about that. Despite the State Department's characterization of the communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as terrorists and drug traffickers, Peter Romero, acting assistant secretary of state for Western Hemispheric Affairs, held a meeting last December in Costa Rica with “Raul Reyes,” one of FARC's leaders. The dilemma posed by that meeting was plainly evident in February after FARC murdered three American leftists (not their first U.S. victims), when the State Department was reduced to lame protests and demands for the extradition of those responsible (perhaps Comrade Reyes?). Nevertheless, the administration is still supporting the “peace process” — the fashionable code word for Colombian President Pastrana's capitulation to the Marxists.

After Hugo Chavez, a leftist demagogue, tried to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela, he was denied a United States visa. When he was elected president, however, all was forgiven — as if that victory suddenly made him a democrat. Now Venezuela's government is full of military officers, its congress is under threat, and Chavez has recognized the belligerent status of Colombia's terrorists.

In 1994 American forces were sent to “restore democracy” to Haiti, a country which has never known it. The only restorations were those of Jean Bertrand Aristide – a defrocked Marxist priest — and of chaos and violence. On February 25, Gen. Charles Wilhelm, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, called for a complete U.S. pullout from Haiti because “we see little progress toward creation of a permanently stable internal security environment… . In fact, with the recent expiration of parliament and the imposition of presidential rule… we have seen something of a backsliding.” Naturally enough, the main cause of this situation, Aristide, is also the overwhelming favorite to win the next presidential election. As the president of Haiti's Chamber of Commerce and Industry accurately put it, “The country is dying.” Meanwhile Haitian illegals are again invading Florida's shores.

As for Cuba, the Clinton administration is trying to weaken the embargo and “improve” relations with Castro. In January the administration decided to increase the amount of remittances from family members in the United States, and to allow direct flights. In response, the Havana regime has heated up its anti-American rhetoric and put its kangaroo courts to work full time against political dissidents.

Closer to home, the drug certification policy is in shreds because of the administration's lack of will. The re-certification of Mexico, which is now the main source of drugs to the United States, and (according to the Drug Enforcement Administration itself) increasingly uncooperative and corrupt, makes a mockery of the law. Colombia has gotten off just as easily: although drug
production there has skyrocketed, the country has been re-certified after a two year pause. The administration cannot make up its mind whether to continue its head-in-the-sand certification policy or discard the entire process and start over.

Against this background of wrong directions and dashed hopes, the two successes — NAFTA (negotiated by the Bush administration and passed with Republican support in Congress), and its role in the resolution of the Peru-Ecuador border dispute (in which most of the credit should go to Ambassador Luigi Einaudi, a hard-nosed survivor from the Reagan and Bush administrations) — appear nearly accidental.

Washington may not realize it but Latin America is undergoing a general swing leftward, against the democratic and free market developments of the past decade. The signs cannot be clearer: the election of Chavez in Venezuela; probable victories by the Left in Argentina and Mexico; the lethal Marxist threat in Colombia; Ecuador's descent into chaos; Brazil's economic crisis; Castro's new political and diplomatic relevance; and the dangerous vacuum left in Panama by the departure of U.S. forces that may be filled by FARC and its narcotrafficking friends. All of these require a coherent and steady strategy from Washington.

Instead, we get the president's apology in Guatemala; Justice Department cooperation with a Spanish judge's dangerously broad proceedings against former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet; the high-level meeting in Costa Rica with the hemisphere's most dangerous totalitarian group; the misguided embrace of Aristide and the refusal to admit that error; the search for some accommodation with an unrepentant Castro; and they all seem to suggest that a feel-good posture on the “right side of history” (the Left, openly Marxist or not!) has replaced a coherent Latin America policy based on the national interests of the United States.

You may forward this email as you like provided that you send it in its entirety, attribute it to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and include our web address (www.fpri.org). If you post it on a mailing list, please contact FPRI with the name, location, purpose, and number of recipients of the mailing list.

If you receive this as a forward and would like to be placed directly on our mailing lists, send email to FPRI@fpri.org. Include your name, address, and affiliation. For further information, contact Alan Luxenberg at (215) 732-3774 x105.

Become an FPRI member

E-Notes

An Apology Instead of a Policy: U.S. Blunders in Latin America

Follow FPRI

FPRI Wishes to Thank its 2011 Partners Who help make all our programs possible.

FPRI Wishes to Thank its 2011 Partners
Who help make all our programs possible.