Foreign Policy In Focus | "Focus on the Americas" Global Affairs Commentary | Would Latin America Be Better Off If Washington Just Left It Alone?

Editor's Note: This commentary comes to FPIF courtesy of the Americas Program at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC). For more commentary and analysis on inter-American affairs, visit the IRC's Americas Program at www.americaspolicy.org or FPIF's own Americas section at http://www.fpif.org/indices/regions/latin.html

Otto Reich—Swearing-In Ceremony as
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, March 13, 2002

It looks as if Latin America hasn’t dropped off the U.S. foreign policy agenda, after all.

On March 12, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an immigration measure benefiting certain Mexicans in the United States without documentation. It doesn’t come close to the “whole enchilada” that Mexico was pushing for before 9-11 bumped U.S.-Mexico relations onto the back burner, but at a minimum the measure sets a positive tone for Bush’s upcoming visit to Monterrey.

Also, on March 8 Democratic leaders Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt sent President George W. Bush a letter urging him to “re-engage Mexico” on “mutual policy goals.”

And next week Bush kicks off a state visit to Latin America, starting in Mexico, where he’ll meet with that country’s embattled leader, Vicente Fox. From Mexico Bush will travel to El Salvador and then to Peru, where he will meet not only with that country’s president but also with the presidents of neighboring Latin nations.

For observers concerned with U.S. policy in the Americas, these signs that Latin America is drifting back onto the White House radar screen should be bienvenidos, right?

The chronic problem with Washington’s relations with its hemispheric partners, since just about forever, has been on-again, off-again policymaking. Given that reality, recent developments at least present a window of opportunity, albeit finite, in which to nudge things forward, no?

Security concerns will overshadow all other issues in this next period of North-South rapprochement. Entrenched problems, such as poverty, social and economic inequities, and unsustainable development—themselves key factors underlying more immediate and visible problems, such as migration and the drug trade—will likely go untouched, despite the upcoming UN conference on development financing in Monterrey. More to the point, there are serious problems with what then promises to be the main thrust of U.S. policy in the region: anti-terrorism, increased militarization, and trade pacts that leave key structural issues un-addressed.

Add to that this hard-to-swallow pill: Washington’s point man in the Americas is Otto Reich, who in an earlier spin around the revolving door was a key player in the Reagan administration’s ill-considered anticommunist crusade in Latin America.

On March 11—as the entire decade of the 1980s rolled over uneasily in its grave—Reich was sworn in as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs at a State Department ceremony.

In recent years, Reich worked as director of the Center for a Free Cuba, a Washington-based special interest group obsessed with one issue: toppling Fidel Castro. He has lobbied consistently to tighten the economic embargo on the island, hoping one day to provoke an uprising. Not only has the policy of isolating Cuba and punishing its people helped breed discontent with U.S. diplomacy in Latin America, as a strategy for removing the Castro regime it has a lousy 40-year track record.

One of the players behind the notorious Helms-Burton Act, Reich not only opposes easing trade sanctions with Cuba, he opposes all forms of contact. He even denounced the Baltimore Orioles-Cuba baseball match, comparing it in the St. Petersburg Times to “playing soccer in Auschwitz.”

As a corporate lobbyist, Reich has been involved with the Bacardi rum company (which lost assets in Cuba during the revolution there) and the U.S.-Cuba Business Council, a nonprofit organization backed by Bacardi. In addition to lobbying for Bacardi, Reich has represented the British-American Tobacco Company. He also assisted the Lockheed Martin Corp. in its attempt to sell F-16 fighter planes to Chile, breaking a 20-year policy of U.S. restraint in keeping high-tech military equipment out of Latin America.

Reich is also vice-chairman of the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Program (WRAP), an apparel industry front group widely viewed as a PR vehicle used by clothing importers to avoid serious scrutiny of their factories in developing countries and counter citizens awareness campaigns by the anti-sweatshop movement.

And of course, Reich’s appointment invokes older ghosts. During the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration waged its covert wars in Central America, Reich headed a propaganda department in the State Department called the Office of Public Diplomacy. This unit was staffed with CIA and Pentagon psychological warfare specialists and reported to Oliver North. Its job: To mislead the American public by disseminating false information, discrediting reporters viewed unfavorably by the Reagan administration, and exploiting other propaganda tactics normally used to confuse and manipulate the populations of enemy countries. Congressional probes of the Iran-contra scandal later identified numerous illegalities and led to the closure of the Office of Public Diplomacy.

(One of Reich’s pilot new initiatives in his new role as undersecretary is to combat corruption in Latin America by denying dirty officials visas for entry to the United States. Looking back at his record in the 1980s, one can’t help but wonder how far south of the border he would get if the tables were turned.)

Sadly, Reich’s comments at his March 12 swearing-in ceremony confirmed rather than allayed most observers’ concerns about him. Instead of using the occasion to bury hatchets, build bridges, lay fears to rest, or simply set an even-handed tone for his tenure, Reich came off as unrepentant, gloating, and antagonistic.

Among those thanked in Reich’s opening remarks: His “unindicted co-conspirators” from the Reagan years. And the body of his speech was peppered with references to “totalitarian” Cuba, “God,” the Cold War and, yes, the “Evil Empire.” Reich even managed to work in a quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm—“All animals are equal but some are more equal than others”—in a cryptic reference to those associates who (apparently) gave him their full support in winning his appointment and those (one assumes) who didn’t do enough.

All in all, Reich’s speech revealed a man with little remorse for past mistakes, no regard for the human costs or political legacy of the Reagan administration’s policies in Central America, and with no small chip on his shoulder.

For example, when referring to critics who have raised red flags regarding his unmistakably rabid anti-Castro stance, Reich noted: “They said that I can’t make rational decisions because of my ideology! Well, they are not saying that anymore, because I had them all arrested this morning!” At best, this off-color joke suggests that Reich has questionable taste. At worst, it points toward a disturbing lack of judgement.

Reich seems to have totally discounted the fact that the president who nominated him came to office with no overwhelming popular mandate and that his own nomination was highly controversial—that, in fact, it was only possible thanks to an executive end run around congressional authority: Bush waited until Congress recessed to appoint Reich, thereby avoiding hearings on the matter.

Indeed, Reich displays little penchant for peacemaking—something one might expect from someone in his position. Instead, his March 12 discourse painted the picture of a man with strong, unmovable, and deeply ideological views. It showed a man with little regard for diplomacy; someone with little time for dialogue, debate, or brainstorming; someone who knows it all.

On top of these shortcomings, there are serious concerns related to Reich’s past links to anti-Castro activities. State Department cables show that while ambassador to Venezuela in the late 1980s, Reich closely monitored the case of Orlando Bosch, a Cuban-American terrorist who was jailed in Venezuela for the 1976 bombing of an Air Cuba plane. The Venezuelan government released Bosch while Reich was ambassador, and George Bush, Sr., pardoned the anti-Castro terrorist shortly afterwards.

Installing someone who has, even if only verbally, supported terrorist attacks against another country at a time when the United States is waging a global war against terrorism sends mixed messages at best—and reeks of hypocrisy and double standards at the worst.

With rising popular discontent over the inability of democratic and neoliberal reforms to produce tangible results across all Latin America, upsurgent instability in Venezuela, Argentina’s financial crisis, and the collapse of peace talks in Colombia, Reich’s shortcomings stand out in stark relief. As his March 12 speech showed, Reich is the wrong man, with the wrong instincts, pursuing the wrong interests.

Maybe Latin America would do better if it stayed off Washington’s radar screen—at least while Otto Reich holds the reins of U.S. regional policy.

Links:

“The Wrong Guy, by a Mile” | The Los Angeles Times, Jan. 10, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/

Recommended citation:
George Kourous, “Would Latin America Be Better Off If Washington Just Left It Alone?” Americas Program Commentary (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, March 14, 2002).

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