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Published on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 by Reuters
Bush Told U.S.-Imposed Policies Are 'Perverse'
by Kieran Murray
MONTERREY, Mexico - Latin American leaders told President Bush on Tuesday that "perverse" economic policies imposed by Washington had failed their countries, mired in debt and poverty.
Bush tried at an Americas-wide summit to win back the support of regional leaders after neglecting them over the last two years to focus on Iraq and security.
He instead heard stinging criticism that rampant free market policies had done nothing to ease poverty and had forced countries like Argentina into deep crisis.
Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the "Washington consensus" recipe of unfettered capitalism in Latin America in the last decade had not delivered growth and kept millions of people hungry in shanty towns and far-flung villages.
"After the 1980s -- the so-called lost decade -- the 90s was a decade of despair," he said, calling for new policies to tackle poverty directly.
Anti-war protesters burn an effigy of President Bush during a demonstration near the site of the Special Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2004.
"It was a perverse model that wrongly separated the economic from the social, put stability against growth and separated responsibility and justice," Lula said. "Economic stability turned its back on social justice."
A string of other leaders also said the region needed to change policies to give capitalism a more human face.
Bush is urging leaders at the 34-nation Summit of the Americas in the Mexican city of Monterrey to embrace market reforms and greater democracy and to make quick progress on a contentious Americas-wide free trade deal.
"Over the long-term, trade is the most certain path to lasting prosperity," he said, and called on his fellow leaders to "show the world that free societies and free markets can deliver real benefits to our citizens."
But several major Latin American countries have moved to the political left in the last few years and U.S.-backed policies are no longer an easy sell in the region.
Brazil and Argentina, which back free trade, are fiercely critical of U.S. trade policy, saying Washington's own massive agricultural subsidies effectively block access to the lucrative U.S. market for more efficient producers.
The Iraq war was widely unpopular in Latin America and more and more leaders are skeptical of the free-market economic reforms that were in vogue in the 1990s.
"The great destabilizer in the region is poverty and neo-liberalism," Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez said in a speech here. "Let's recognize we are on a very bad path," he told the summit leaders.
UNJUST CONTINENT
Even Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, a moderate leftist who leads one of the most open and successful economies in Latin America, pointed to weaknesses in the free-market economic model and the massive divide between rich and poor across the region.
"This isn't the poorest continent, but it might be one of the most unjust," he said.
Latin American nations defeated a U.S. proposal that the most corrupt governments in the Americas be barred from regional meetings. They said it was too vague about who would judge the record of others and some feared Washington would use it to isolate its rivals.
Bush attacked Cuban President Fidel Castro in a speech late on Monday, calling on his fellow leaders to back calls for democracy on the island.
"Dictatorship has no place in the Americas. We must all work for a rapid, peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba," he said.
In recent years, leftist leaders have been elected in Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. All three have established friendly ties with Castro, who has held power for 45 years despite U.S. efforts to oust and isolate him.
Castro is the only leader excluded from these summits but, apart from Bush, there was little criticism of him here.
Facing mounting problems in Latin America, Bush was anxious to play up his much improved relationship with Mexican President Vicente Fox.
The two men fell out last year when Mexico opposed the Iraq war but they were all smiles after meeting in private on Monday and aides said the past problems were now behind them.
Bush last week proposed a reform of immigration policy that could benefit millions of mainly Mexican illegal workers. Mexico in turn pleased Washington by tightening security at its airports for U.S.-bound commercial flights.
Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd |
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