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January 1989
Uncle Sam, stay home
By Carlos Fuentes

As the United States inaugurates a new president, this is a good time to look back on mistakes and lost opportunities in Latin America, so as not to repeat the former and so as to recapture the latter.

The primary reason for these recent failures is the United States’ unique obsession with events in Central America, particularly in Nicaragua. The last administration—despite eight years of feverish activity, rattling rhetoric, and millions of dollars spent—failed to overthrow the government in Managua. The administration also failed to defeat the rebels in El Salvador. Moreover, the Reagan approach failed to bend the independent will of President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica or to pressure him into abandoning either his own territories or his policies favoring the use of diplomacy over the use of force. It should be noted, too, that all the rhetoric and military spending failed to prevent violent outbreaks against the U.S. presence in Honduras; and in Panama, the Reagan administration put forth a blundering policy which, instead of overthrowing General Noriega, has overthrown the Panamanian economy.

General Noriega would now be out of power if the United States had respected the diplomatic initiatives of November 1987 by the former presidents of Venezuela, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Noriega had agreed to leave in May of 1988, without losing face and without U.S. pressure. But the United States decided that it, and not Latin America, should appear to be the determining factor in Noriega’s departure. The Bush Administration must seriously ask itself what it wants in Latin America: peace through security arrangements, diplomacy, and cooperation with independent governments; or war through proxy armies, subservient governments, and alienated populations. And it must ask with whom it is most likely to achieve what it wants.

We share a hemisphere of enormous contrasts and vast inequalities—not the least of which is the asymmetry of power between Latin America and the United States. This is why we in Latin America have sought mightily to arrive at diplomatic arrangements that would equalize our relationships with other countries and limit the power of the United States within mutually acceptable bounds. Each country in Central America is struggling to define its own national identity and its own strategies of problem solving. Change is the name of the game, and there is more to come. We are not your enemies; we simply know the ground better than you do; we remember more than you do.

More:
http://harpers.org/archive/1989/01/0058734