US vs. Latin America -- No Neutral Corner

Mediocrity detests talent. On one level, the recent exchange of abuse between Lilliputian Vicente Fox and Hugo Chavez reflects no more than that. Chavez looms large over Fox for many reasons, not least because 80 years ago Mexico under President Calles defied the United States the way Chavez does now. Chavez seems likely to succeed where Calles failed. Fox's hostility to Chavez probably springs as much from Mexico's history and his National Action Party's (PAN) roots as to his collaboration with the Bush regime.

Calles tried to impose Mexico's revolutionary constitution of 1917, expropriating foreign oil companies and dismantling the influence of the Catholic Church. As well as the hostility of foreign petrol interests and the Cristero armed rebellion, he also faced the hostility of aggressive international creditors. PAN was born out of those years, a reactionary, elitist, pro-church political movement hostile to the Mexican revolution. Sharp political antagonism between Hugo Chavez and Vicente Fox is hardly a surprise.

Fox criticized both Argentina's President Kirchner and Venezuela's President Chavez at the recent Summit of the Americas in Argentina's Mar de Plata. Both Kirchner and Chavez responded in kind. But whereas Fox mended fences fast with Kirchner, he and his advisers pushed the spat with Hugo Chavez to the point where ambassadors of both countries were withdrawn, leaving relations between the two governments managed at the level of charge d'affaires.

The agenda at the Mar de Plata summit was supposed to be primarily about employment. Fox wanted to force discussion of the Bush regime's continental trade project, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Summit host Nestor Kirchner refused. Outside the official summit engagements, President Chavez attended a huge rally where he declared the FTAA dead and buried. His speech was enthusiastically received by tens of thousands of people.

Venezuela is addressing in successful and practical ways its problems of poverty and inequality within a continent wide strategy based on sovereign integration. By contrast, like all the other trade-in-your-sovereignty politicians in Latin America, Mexico's current leaders have no idea how to overcome poverty and inequality. They tag along on the shabby coat tails of the grandiose derelict once recognizable as the United States, failing ever more noticeably to meet their people's basic needs.