Mitt Romney, the Republican Party and Latin America Mike Allison - Al Jazeera
go to original September 22, 2012

Romney criticises Obama for not doing enough to secure the US-Mexican border from "undocumented migrants" and for not facilitating the movement of "documented workers" from the South. (Reuters)

With two months to go before the US elections, Mitt Romney and the Republican Party have begun to lay out what their domestic and foreign policies would look like should they take control of the White House. For those, though, who had hoped that Republicans had thought seriously about Latin America since they last occupied the White House, there's very little to suggest that a Republican administration led by President Romney will improve the United States' relationship with Latin America from where it stands today.  

Unfortunately, the Republican Party takes a more confrontational approach to Latin America than any other region of the world. The Republican Platform on US Leadership in the Asian-Pacific Community begins with a call to solidarity, "We are a Pacific nation with economic, military and cultural ties to all the countries of the oceanic rim, from Australia, the Philippines, and our Freely Associated States in the Pacific Islands to Japan and the Republic of Korea".

On the other hand, its discussion of Strengthening Ties in the Americas begins with the ominous, "We will resist foreign influence in our hemisphere". The Republicans are primarily concerned with what they consider the destabilising activity of Iran and Hezbollah in the region. However, at present, their fears do not appear to be shared by any other state in the hemisphere. The same goes for Cuba and Venezuela.

Republican voters might be concerned with threats emanating from Cuba and Venezuela, but the two countries do not garner the same amount of concern among the other countries of the region. Cuba and Venezuela are both currently participating in peace talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government of Colombia.

In terms of economic issues, Romney's main criticism of the current administration's economic approach to Latin America seems to be his belief that Obama failed to send US free trade agreements with Panama and Colombia to the Senate for ratification in an expeditious manner. Romney says that he would have done so earlier in his presidential terms had he been elected in 2008.

In terms of what he would set out to accomplish during his first year in office, Romney has promised to "launch a vigorous public diplomacy and trade promotion effort in the region - the Campaign for Economic Opportunity in Latin America (CEOLA) - to extol the virtues of democracy and free trade and build on the benefits conferred by the free trade agreements reached with Panama and Colombia, as well as those already in force with Chile, Mexico, Peru and the members of the Central American Free Trade Agreement".

Never mind that the benefits of free trade to the US and to the countries identified previously are contested, but few of the remaining Latin American countries - Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Cuba - are currently interested in the type of free trade that the US is exporting. It is not a matter of explaining the benefits of free trade to them yet again. The US would do better to strengthen existing agreements by working with our hemispheric trade partners to make trade freer and fairer for the region's most vulnerable populations.

Romney hopes that CEOLA might "set the stage for eventual membership in the Reagan Economic Zone for nations throughout Latin America and the creation of strong and mutually economic beneficial ties between the region and the United States". By adopting the name "Reagan Economic Zone", Governor Romney might have doomed this initiative before ever having assumed office.

Read more at Al Jazeera

Mike Allison is associate professor in the Political Science department at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

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