Brasilia, Brazil – President Bush, in tough remarks aimed at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, called Sunday for Latin America to choose between competing futures – a U.S.-supported “vision of hope” and another that “seeks to roll back the democratic progress of the past two decades.”
Such a democratic retrenchment, the president said, would be “playing to fear, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and blaming others for their own failures to provide for their people.”
Bush spoke before Brazilian business leaders, diplomats and students at the luxury Blue Tree Park Hotel in Brazil’s capital and did not mention Chavez by name.
But his barbs at the fiery, populist Venezuelan leader were clearly in response to an anti- American rally of more than 25,000 people that Chavez led Friday in Mar del Plata, Argentina, while Bush was attending a summit meeting there.
Bush’s remarks also were directed more generally at Latin America, where recent financial shocks have led to disenchantment in young democracies – Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Argentina, in particular – that have not delivered the social and economic justice expected at their births two decades ago.
The comments underlined the administration’s fears that the region might slip into the authoritarianism of the past or that other anti-U.S. leaders like Chavez might emerge.
The speech was both a promotion of Bush’s vision of democracy, a central theme of his second term, and an implicit response to criticism in the region that the United States is too unilateral in its actions. Bush reaffirmed U.S. support for the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Development Bank, the two main bodies of regional cooperation.
Bush, who was in the Brazilian capital on the third day of a four-day trip to Latin America, tried earlier Sunday to play down his administration’s differences with Brazil and three of its neighbors that led to the collapse of trade talks late Saturday in Mar del Plata.
Standing alongside the Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Bush acknowledged that to satisfy Brazil, he would have to reduce American tariffs on Brazilian products and cut back on billions in subsidies paid to U.S. farmers and agricultural businesses.