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right to see. first. and i think the. orders. oh and welcome to cross talk we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle americans have long seen latin and south america as part of their geo political

backyard stereotypes die hard but new realities on the ground give reason to believe this continent is on the rise and determined to control its own fate regardless of washington's unilateral perceived interests and given the trends should americans be learning spanish. to cross out the rise of latin and south america i'm joined by my guests in washington all the hundreds sanchez he is a research fellow at the council on hemispheric affairs and mark weisbrot he is co-director of the center for economic and policy research all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it alex if i go to you first secretary of state kerry said recently that he treats latin america and south america as america's backyard what is what is the kind of disconnect does that tell you about north america and south america today. let me rephrase that b.s.

the obama when he was elected the first time around there was a lot hope that he was no bring to a bring a new kind of dog or how to do it like in america spartan ops are equals fortunately this wasn't the case. with obama the obama presidency they were actually brought up as some kind of dog train like j.f.k. had done with the lance or progress or rules but the good neighbor policy certainly have been some interesting regarding cuba some treaties with colombia panama brasil the usual suspects really but obama. never had some kind of a concrete ideology or be shown how to do this little america. going to alex i mean why is the case because of the wars in the middle east i mean just that the administration had too much on its plate is that the reasoning are things we will take you had you had the war in iraq and afghanistan you had the us economy obama

also trying to reset reset he was so famously called the relation of the russia so i think america was not at second best of second importance second level of importance he was not priority for for the us administration came in and we're going to leave them aren't here i mean maybe that's not a bad idea considering the american history with south america maybe was best to leave them alone. well i think that true that is no doubt the region benefited from some of the attention that unfortunately the people of iraq in that region suffered from a lot but it did take the us a little bit away from from latin america but not enough i mean you still had the two thousand and two short lived coup in venezuela against the democratically elected government there which the u.s. was involved in and you had in two thousand and nine the u.s. government the obama administration this time supported and did

a lot to support. the coup the military coup against the democratically elected government there they they were involved in trying to support the coup government and to legitimize it they of course also if you count the caribbean here they also in broad daylight overthrew the government in this was the bush administration in. two thousand and four in haiti so they are going after targets of opportunity and have been really hostile to most all of the left governments there i think they have a strategy and a vision the vision is rolled back and they want to go back to the days which was not that long ago i mean fifteen years ago even they had enormous influence in the region they had governments that aligned mostly with their foreign policy and

there's been a vast change and they want to roll that back they haven't accepted it and you know when nixon went to china twenty three years after the chinese revolution it was a recognition that this change was going to stay and they haven't made anything it's ironic because i mean these are democratic governments examining they haven't recognized that these changes are. alex go ahead jump in because the united states doesn't recognize the democratic outcomes on the continent if they don't like them . i would agree that short probably the u.s. was probably hand in both mean even in business willing to listen to the hate and for now the poor help much to want to blame the u.s. for every single coup or call for government to happen in america i mean you can talk all day one hundred hours today was pretty low was over from last year last june they believe two thousand and twelve in part of why i do want to blame the u.s. also for that one i simply do believe that the u.s. still has a. you know in america i think we need to promote and promote its influence and if

national interests but we have gone along what far we're far away from me here only as alex martin are saying that martin said that the americans want to roll back on the continent how do you respond to that. i think that the obama's vision is mostly . all obama's positions as a bishop for the team america and the u.s. trying to get no make up a as they go along i don't think that the are trying to roll back you mean to trying to go back to the base of the nine hundred seventy thousand eight hundred sixty if we you know all the all the course and what the molly fifty four and all those terrible examples all we see i think were the were exaggerating things there is more isolated cases than anything else ok mark the exception to the rule what do you think you know i think they just can't get away with what they i mean they did try the coon in venezuela and they were involved in the i mean there was we have the evidence from the state department's own documents saying that they paid the

people who were involved in the organizations received money and training from you know from the u.s. government who were involved in the coup and then they got on television and tried to convince the world that it wasn't a coup at all even though the cia documents to show that they knew in advance it was a coup so they were lying to the world to try and help this coup succeed there's a whole body of evidence which the press here doesn't discuss but it's a matter of public record showing that they were actually involved in itself so they have targets of opportunity they go after them on their orders they were able to get rid of eighty they were able to get rid of part of why i would also add to that the you know have evidence which was. uncovered by natalia of yano investigative journalist in brazil who showed that they also paid the people who are involved in that so-called parliamentary coolant part of why last year and then

they manipulated the oas as they have done in they did in the honduran case to also support the outcome so this is what they do they can't get rid of the other governments but they would if they could and they are hoping that you know. since these are democratic governments they have to face elections they're hoping that you know some will lose like the left left of center government in chile last few years ago no michel botulin will probably come back but they're trying to they want to get real right there stood point mark let's go and go back to alex alex you want to jump in go ahead make my point is that we were in a group human soil i'm not denying that i'm not agree if you were in haiti as well but the one thing the one i like blame the u.s. consul in saying well there was a coup in part of why or you know if we do more with overflowing to farson improve so we were always ultimately think or the u.s.

was behind this just like you was he was invoking all the school scene in one thousand nine hundred seventy s. or going to say well it happened because the government in those countries was coming off some very bad put in positions and that was that i lean a public see a sense and they want to over for the government i'm not saying that the us is free of sin i'm not saying that but it seems to work seem to want to blame the us every single time and saying oh yeah the loss over from him but a wife and he was only the u.s.'s fault it's not because there would be anything wrong i think president he's time a president that's my that's my my concern here. you know mark i mean he it has the reach and done well in spite of the united states because over the last ten years we've seen millions and millions of people leave poverty we see a lot of economic growth we see growth the middle classes i mean the continent overall is doing quite well you know that's right and i think a good part of that is a result of these changes you know in the past people weren't able to vote for

social democratic governments generally because the u.s. did. seems to acknowledge intervene and get rid of these kinds of governments well as i said they're still trying to do it in a by the way i'm not saying that the united states. was the only actor in the schools or any it that they wouldn't of. the that the people within these countries who carried them out the military for example in venezuela in two thousand to one to try to just the united states was active in helping and that's what i'm that's all i'm saying and so that is an indication of their policy they want to get rid of these governments by any means necessary but in terms of the improvements yeah you can go through country by country and they've never done this well for at least twenty twenty to thirty years you know you have poverty for the region just between two thousand and three and two thousand and nine because there's a lag if you want data for all the countries has dropped from forty two to twenty

seven percent where it was the poverty rate was stuck around the forty's for for two decades before two thousand and three so you have you know that in the ghetto you have growth you can look at unemployment is at a record low in ecuador and brazil poverty was reduced much more than it was regionally and any quality too in venezuela was reduced by half and these are governments that the united states doesn't like very much mark these are governments the united states isn't like very much. you know that's right and again the i mean it is an indication what we said at the beginning that to the extent that the region has you know achieved this historical second independence it's called it has it has drawn enormous benefits ok alex you wanted the last word before going to go to the break go ahead i think back

to senator kerry's. statement that knowledge in america. and the. america's backyard i mean a sign that it's both regions like marking the caribbean are not is because of the plethora of. words that. can emerge and occur again we're talking all russia we're talking about china taiwan has a free trade agreement with within for america ok so i'm going to jump in after the short break we'll continue our line of argument after a short break we'll continue our discussion on latin america and south america stay with our. legal. if the main competitor girl on the market is mother nature. may customers

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welcome back to cross talk we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the rise of lott and south america. ok alex if i go to you one of the interesting things that we have seen over the last ten years or so is foreign investment into the region and china is going twenty fold no wonder a lot of these governments feel they don't have to listen to the united states very much anymore because the money is coming from different sources. definitely like i was saying before the break i think like in america and the caribbean let's not forget about that region is sort of open for business at the china for example very interested in buying soybeans from argentina from brazil then you have

a japan that just summit in in tokyo we have this into american nations sica to him promote trade between these two this country and in the america the e.u. also has a three to agreement a strength ratified within that america you have transpacific partnership also includes the u.s. you have all these kind of initiatives from different regions across the world because you want to be embarrassed to be more diplomatically involved in that in america and the caribbean as well well mark i mean it but that's a low you know china invest without a lot of strings attached right i mean it doesn't care what governments in power it doesn't particularly care what political flavoring the government has it just wants to do business. you know that's right and this is one of the things i mean if we want to describe this historic change in the region where the country is now more into the region is now more independent of the united states especially south america than europe is for example which was never true in the past one of the

reasons for this change is that they don't have to take they're not taking policy economic policy dictates from washington as they often did during the period prior to the two thousand the most important avenue of influence of the united states in latin america and developing countries generally over the last thirty to forty years has been the international monetary fund yeah exactly and that power broke down in developing countries and in latin america during the last decade and a half and that was a huge change and then of course as you've already mentioned the availability of investment in demand for exports also growing demand for exports from other sources including china the fastest growing economy and the large now the largest economy by the best measures the largest economy in the world. also had

a had an impact and you know this came after the washington's policies had failed miserably for two decades from one nine hundred eighty to two thousand income per person in the region grew by only five point seven percent over the whole twenty years now you compare that to ninety two percent in the one nine hundred sixty to nine hundred eighty period the prior two decades and you can see why you had these left governments winning one after another in venezuela argentina bolivia brazil ecuador of part of why nicaragua this is what happened and it was a result of an unprecedented economic failure of the i.m.f. policies alex you want to jump in go ahead. i mean something else that when it comes to china he just wants resources. for

a change of government this one in the country is anti washing their pro washing the for example china has become a huge customer of an a sort of oil a huge big buyer but for example the chinese president wants to sit in mexico because china also wants to be by mexican or in the next. you know he's sort of a close ally of the u.s. and the reason why we have mentioned so far and the reason why the chinese very much involved in latin america and the caribbean it's also because of taiwan a lot of the countries the next one sovereign nation are simpler america and they are also in the caribbean as well so china is trying to use what we're calling dollar diplomacy. giving loans giving investments giving. best means giving out credits create alliance to the small nations so that it that they will decide to switch between recognizing taiwan to switching to. china one of the biggest example

have been but the bahamas where the chinese government is building is huge. it's supposed to have four hotels a goal of a goal of core conference center i suppose the cost around four billion dollars well it was like a child yes it was actually i was being the chinese doing what the united states traditionally the dollar diplomacy you know mark you know they recognizing cuba i mean we couldn't have been something obama could have done to change things the american approach to the continent i mean that would have been a good symbol it least. you know it's interesting question i mean first. you know all of the left governments in latin america they thought that this was when obama was elected they thought this would be the first step yeah because they see this embargo is just completely ridiculous which of course it is. and

you know it's it's just a relic of this this bygone era as far as they're concerned with this this shows or this is another indication of how completely locked in the cold war mentality our government remains and you know obama himself you know he might have different views but it doesn't really have any practical significance what he thinks because he's not willing to sacrifice two dollars of political capital to change anything when he tried even to i'm sorry you know he when he when he try to even to to point ambassador to venezuela in two thousand and ten. you know right wing staffers in congress senator lugar's office collaborating with the state department they killed it and what did he do he didn't fight and they still haven't asked it or so that's the kind of thing we're dealing with here or even is that why mark you think you could even say the war on her share the story are you going to

say that iraq drugs as well will be obama's continuing that alex go ahead respond to that go ahead alex. i have to i have to agree i have to think with my colleague here sort of i will say that this much of the when obama was first elected they are full of hope that they believe that a detention center in one time will be close to none of those things that happened i will grant you that but to think obama hasn't done anything to to improve u.s. relations that's your thought that's that's incorrect obama has believed he was in two thousand and eleven some of the pro restrictions so people can fly to. the thing you know for me well on the last mile i did i say without question talks between the u.s. and cuban officials so these are small steps small big three of them both. in place i would agree to that but there are small steps forward there progress the steps that obama has been able to carry out and he should be not sure said that the

good like you said alex he has no vision here mark talk about the war on drugs i mean if i just want to say that i didn't say you i didn't say that he didn't do anything on cuba ok so yeah i recognize that he took a small step what i've said is that he's not willing to sacrifice any political capital in order to lift the embargo so i just want to make that cocaine i came i'm going to talk about the war on drugs a lot of people say that's a trojan horse for the united states in latin and south america it's more political than anything else yeah they obviously use it i mean this is a use it to build their relationships with police and militaries and to militarize the region and they are expanding their military presence for example in duress and that's one of the reasons i think they helped overthrow the. government in two thousand and nine was to keep their military the big military base they have and expand smaller ones there and they tried under the obama administration to expand

their military presence in colombia as well and all of this is done or most of it is done under the pretext of the war on drugs so yeah i think that's a major incentive for them not to adopt and to oppose reasonable more reasonable policies including decriminalization and other things that would would help end the violence there so they've been a major that's another horrible failure with with terrible life and consequences there and it is related to their strategy for trying to again reus. their control over region they have really lost control over in the last fifteen years alex you want to respond that the us. the us government where it's republican or democrat has poor millions billions of dollars probably by now because the war on terror. colombia be

a day to marry initiative as well the next goal i agree of doesn't it but when it comes to saying that the u.s. is starting to expand more of its influence is military presence not in america i mean that's more our global and more polemic i think certainly a day when month that was close in ecuador to be because of a record i wanted to in the us what need to scramble and try to find new addition a place where you can simply put some of its troops calm i was and was not. burdened that there haven't been that major media operations if anything because of the budget of stiction south korea the u.s. southern command me too but i'm starting just like in america and the caribbean has actually decreased it's in need of initiatives to keep relations with latin america because he simply doesn't have the money to deploy the troops to the region as much as you know the us had during the one nine hundred seventy s. and eighty's not going to give you the last word go ahead. well i gave

two specific examples of their attempts and partly successful they failed in colombia but they did attempt to expand their military presence washington attempted to expand its military presence and colombia and they did it say are expanding their military presence and on the order of so right gentlemen i think it is time we just ravaged the surface i'm afraid here many thanks to my guest today in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember cross-talk will. receive. interview.

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