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 News from Around the Americas | March 2007 
In Uruguay, Bush Finds a Leftist He Can Embrace (and Name)
 Jim Rutenberg - International Herald Tribune
| | US President George W. Bush (R) and First Lady Laura Bush (2ndR) are greeted by Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez(L) and his wife Maria Auxiliadora Delgado de Vazquez at the Main House of Anchorena Park in Uruguay. Battling for the hearts and minds of Latin America, Bush on Saturday pointedly ignored protests and taunts by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez that have marked his tour of the region. (AFP/Jim Watson) |
Estancia Anchorena, Uruguay - Of all of the Latin American nations President George W. Bush is visiting this week, this one is the smallest, with a population that is half that of New York City.
But it had two things that provided a particular draw: a left-leaning president in the region who is still willing to buck the anti-American push of regional strongmen like President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and one who, at that, has a sprawling presidential retreat that is a cross between Camp David and Bush's Texas ranch.
In a press briefing that followed the first of two meetings at this official retreat, a pastoral setting with goats, cows and horses near the border with Argentina, Bush and President Tabaré Vázquez avoided their most contentious issues: Uruguay's objection to United States farm subsidies, and what has to be displeasure at the White House with its opposition to the war.
Bush renewed his pledge to create an overhaul of United States immigration laws that would include a guest worker program — a prospect that continues to languish in Congress but will certainly come up again in the trip. "I expressed to him that it is my interest to get a comprehensive immigration bill out of the United States Congress as soon as possible," he said.
And Vázquez, stuck to friendly, broad terms, recalling a visit to Uruguay by Bush's father in 1990, when the physician was the mayor of Montevideo, the nation's capital.
Most important, officials said, was to use the visit to raise up Vázquez, still a part-time oncologist, as an example of what Dan Fisk, the top Western hemisphere specialist on the National Security Council called on the way here on Air Force One on Friday "a country that is making the right policy choices."
Last month the United States and Uruguay signed a "Trade and Investment Framework Agreement," to strengthen economic and trade ties without addressing the thorny issues of tariffs and subsidies. But the framework is in defiance of Chávez, who is trying to push the region's Mercosur trade alliance toward a stronger anti-America stance.
Asked about his position of juggling growing relations with the United States and its membership with Mercosur at the press briefing Saturday, Vázquez said, "I favor the regional process — we are where we are, and we don't want to leave this place." But, he said, "Mercosur should be able to integrate other blocs, other countries in the world."
Neither he nor Bush mentioned by name Chávez, who is about 50 miles from here, in Buenos Aires, staging a counter rally to Bush's visit to the region.
Asked what he thought of Chávez's taunts that the president would not even say his name, Bush again refused to do so or answer the question directly, saying, "The trip is a statement of a desire to work together with people in our neighborhood." If he referred to Chávez's bombast at all, it was by stressing that "I would call our diplomacy quiet and effective diplomacy."
Chávez held a loud rally in Buenos Aires on Friday night in which he mocked everything from Bush's poll ratings to his attempts to reach out in the region and demanded "Gringo Go Home."
Bush's aides afterward complained about the attention the news media was giving to Chávez, whose reported influence in the region they said is overblown and resented by his neighbors.
But even as Vázquez has made a show of friendship with Bush, as he did Saturday, he has also seemed to send signals to Chávez and others in the region that he has his own issues with American power.
In remarks earlier this month in which he also spoke about Bush's visit, Vázquez declared his was an "anti-imperialist" government, borrowing the language of Chávez, who calls the United States an imperialist power.
Asked about that comment preceding his trip by a group of Latin American journalists, Bush said last Tuesday, "I would hope he would define my government as pro-freedom."
But officials here with Vázquez said that the president was not referring to Bush specifically, and was speaking in global terms. And if anything, Uruguay seems very much to be swinging the United States' way more than Chávez's, providing important symbolism — in spite of Uruguay's tiny size — for Bush this week before he moves on to a leg of his trip with other friendly nations: Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.
And in a potential salve to the images of anti-American protests receiving wide publicity, Bush and Vázquez had a lunch of barbeque beef and were even considering doing some fishing. |
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