Mikaela says:
CAVEAT: I am not anywhere NEAR the resident authority on either Free Trade or South America and am very much hoping Marjorie will have time to talk about this next week once her masters degree is over (YEAH, MARJORIE!!), but I wanted to be sure to call attention to key quotes from today's New York Times article about the upcoming summit of Western Leaders:
Bush Faces Tough Time in South America:
- Polls show Mr. Bush to be the most unpopular American president ever among Latin Americans...
- [T]he feeling among many Latin Americans is that the United States is coming with little to offer other than the usual nostrums about free trade, open markets, privatization and fiscal austerity, the same recipe that has vastly increased social inequality throughout Latin America during the past decade. ...
- No country on the continent has suffered more economically in recent years than Argentina... .After an economic and political crisis in 2001 and 2002 that led to the collapse of its currency and the biggest debt default in history, Argentina is now the fastest growing country in South America, despite ignoring the guidance of the Treasury Department and the International Monetary Fund.
- "There is just a lot of skepticism and mistrust, because the United States continues to regard Latin America as a region we can take for granted, that has to go along with us on whatever we do," said Michael Shifter, an analyst at Inter-American Dialogue, a research group based in Washington. "But Latin America has changed and is behaving very differently on the world stage."
- A "countersummit" by groups opposed to free trade, globalization and Mr. Bush is scheduled to begin Wednesday. ... Mr. Chávez, the current hero of the Latin American left, said he would attend.
- "Bush is a torturer, a violator of human rights and a murderer, who does not respect United Nations resolutions, international treaties or the sovereignty of peoples, as in the case of Iraq," said Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is one of the protest organizers. "He is not welcome in Argentina, and he should be repudiated."
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