Old Neighbors in a New World

The United States and Latin America need more high-level engagement
In early October of last year, thousands of Brazilians who were gathered at the Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro suddenly erupted, cheering, hugging, and waving flags. International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge had read the result of the Committee’s final vote and named Rio the first South American city to host the Olympic Games, which it will do in 2016. Just hours earlier, crowds in downtown Chicago had despondently dispersed after receiving the news that their city had been eliminated in the first round of voting.
Whatever the IOC’s motivations, the selection of Rio over Chicago illustrates a real trend: the ascendance of Latin America. Less certain, however, is the willingness of the United States to engage productively with that ascendance. Growing in economic independence and political autonomy, Latin America is increasingly separating itself from the United States. While many low-level social and economic interactions keep the United States relatively engaged in Latin America, America must commit to a new era of high-level engagement if its relationship with the region is to flourish.

Over the last few decades, Latin America has grown in geopolitical importance. Harvard professor of Mexican and Latin American politics Jorge Domínguez told the HPR that Chile and Brazil “have had noteworthy success,” and “Peru has been amazingly successful.” Domínguez argued that Latin America has weathered the global recession fairly well, with the exception of those countries most closely tied economically to the United States, such as Mexico and Colombia. Still, even today, the United States exports more to Mexico than to any country except Canada, and Venezuela remains America’s fifth-largest supplier of oil.
Despite the region’s economic growth and geographic proximity, however, the United States has been accused of avoiding high-level engagement. “China on the one hand and two wars on the other absorb a significant amount of the president’s time,” said Dominguez. Peter Hakim, a senior fellow at Inter-American Dialogue, a U.S. think tank, echoed this analysis, telling the HPR that “there is less intensity of [American] interest in Latin America than there has been in a long time.” Hakim described a trend of “lowered expectations,” the result of real and perceived failures of governance in Latin America and of diverted attention in the United States. Indeed, aside from anti-drug initiatives like Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, the United States has offered relatively few programs to engage with Latin America.
A Complex Relationship

Concern over the lack of high-profile engagement on the part of the United States may nonetheless be somewhat exaggerated. As Peter Smith, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, told the HPR, relations between the United States and Latin America have “a long and interesting history.” Smith pointed to significant links between America and its neighbors, from the billions of dollars in migrant remittances to the thousands of Latin American students attending American universities. These linkages constitute the foundation of America’s interaction with its southern neighbors, no matter how many times President Obama is photographed with Felipe Calderon.
Moreover, this connection should only strengthen in the future. Kevin Casas-Zamora, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and formerly Costa Rica’s vice president, told the HPR that immigrants from Latin American countries will comprise “well above half of the growth in the U.S. labor force between now and 2050.” The arrival of these immigrants contributes to what Domínguez called the “less well-known but very important story [about] things that work well.” For even if the United States has not embraced Latin America at the highest level, relations between the nations can still be characterized as a low-level, but successful, exchange of goods and peoples.
Looking Forward
Latin America and the United States are, as Casas-Zamora said, “doomed to living closely together.” But geography alone will not necessarily prevent Latin America from moving away from the United States as the region solidifies relationships with countries outside the hemisphere, particularly China. Indeed, Latin America’s trade with the People’s Republic has grown tenfold over the past decade, largely eating into the market share of the United States. Although low-level engagement ensures that the United States will not be entirely forgotten in Latin America, then, only high-level hemispheric interaction may be able to ensure that the United States will remain the central player it has historically been.
Matthew Bewley ’14 is a Staff Writer.
Photo Credit: Newscom