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 News from Around the Americas | August 2005 
Like Old Times: US Warns Latin Americans against Leftists
 David S. Cloud - NYTimes
| | Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld |
Lima, Peru - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's visit this week to South America had the throwback feel of a mission during the cold war, when American officials saw their main job as bolstering the hemisphere's governments against leftist insurgencies and Communist infiltration.
During stops in Paraguay and Peru, Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides warned of what they consider to be troublemaking by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Washington's old cold war foe, Fidel Castro.
It was far different a year ago, when Mr. Rumsfeld was in the region calling for cooperation against Islamic terror groups. Then, he and other American officials warned sometimes skeptical governments that there was evidence that Islamic militants might be using the region's porous borders to move people, weapons and money.
Two senior Defense Department officials traveling with Mr. Rumsfeld said that post-Sept. 11, 2001, worries about Islamic militant groups operating in the so-called Tri-Border area, where the frontiers of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet, had receded. In their place, the officials said, is a more familiar set of concerns, including the Venezuelan and Cuban presidents.
As in the cold war, bending the region to Washington's way of thinking is proving difficult.
On Thursday, before heading back to Washington, Mr. Rumsfeld met with President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, who is in the final year of a five-year term and grappling with a cabinet shake-up, the latest in a series of blows to his government.
The American officials said they had some concern that the continuing strife made Peru vulnerable to destabilization by other countries or drug traffickers. Mr. Toledo's new defense minister, Marciano Rengifo, also attended the meeting.
Mr. Rumsfeld's goal in Peru and in Paraguay earlier was to stitch together support for isolating Mr. Chávez, who has become bitterly anti-Washington since the United States tacitly supported a coup that briefly ousted him in 2002. But in some ways the visit has served as a reminder of how resistant Latin America is to pressure from Washington.
The two American officials traveling with Mr. Rumsfeld said Mr. Chávez, sometimes with Cuban help, was quietly backing leftist movements in Bolivia and elsewhere in the region. The officials asked not to be identified because they were in the midst of discussions with governments in the region.
Coupled with chronic problems in Latin America of corruption, drug trafficking and gang violence, they said the efforts of Mr. Chávez and Mr. Castro were raising the threat of rising instability, the officials said.
Social protests in Bolivia have forced two presidents to step down in the last two years, and with a presidential election scheduled for December, American officials fear new instability.
"There certainly is evidence that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him this week.
Mr. Toledo voiced cautious concern when reporters asked if he shared the American view toward Venezuela's and Cuba's activities in the hemisphere. "I would like to express my concern," he said. "This is a shared responsibility in the region of trying to build and establish a democracy."
But Mr. Toledo appeared more interested in obtaining a free trade agreement with the United States to bolster his sagging political fortunes. Peruvian officials are also concerned about a resurgence in coca production in the last year and are worried about proposals in Congress to cut their anti-drug aid. Mr. Toledo and Mr. Rumsfeld said that the narcotics issue had been discussed in their meetings.
After ignoring the fiery Mr. Chávez for much of 2004, the Bush administration has been trying since earlier this year to find ways to isolate him. Mr. Chávez says his country poses no threat to the region and has accused the United States of trying to isolate Venezuela.
The governments of many of the biggest countries in the area are left-leaning themselves and see little benefit to confronting Venezuela, a major oil producer, or Cuba. Some are as skeptical of Washington's warnings about Mr. Chávez fomenting unrest as they were about its admonitions a year ago that Islamic militants were a serious threat.
"A guy who seemed like a comic figure a year ago is turning into a real strategic menace, but we can't respond to this alone," said a senior Defense Department official traveling with Mr. Rumsfeld.
That explains why Mr. Rumsfeld chose to go to Paraguay and Peru, neither of which had been visited by an American defense secretary before. A senior Defense Department official said both countries shared the Bush administration's view of Mr. Chávez.
President Nicanor Duarte Frutos of Paraguay, who met with Mr. Rumsfeld on Tuesday, recently ordered 700 Cuban doctors to leave his country after indications that they were involved in antigovernment activities, a senior American official said.
But close dealings with the American military remain controversial in much of the region. And there was at least some evidence that the American campaign against terrorism had worsened Latin Americans' longstanding fears of United States military intervention.
In a stop at the Pantheon of Heroes, Paraguay's shrine to its military leaders, Mr. Rumsfeld was met by a small but vocal band of 50 young protesters holding a sign that read "No to the Yankee troops" and displaying photos of American prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Behind a line of police officers in riot gear, the protesters chanted, "Murderer, murderer" as Mr. Rumsfeld stood at attention while a military band played "The Star-Spangled Banner." |
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