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Beyond Mexico

Why Latin America Is Important to U.S. Policy and the Catholic Church

by Alejandro Bermudez 

Sergio Arau’s poignant 2004 movie A Day Without a Mexican is a social parody of what would happen in California if there was a day … well, without Mexicans at all.

For non-Mexican Latinos, one of the best parts of the movie comes when the desperate wife of a local senator, looking to replace her missing Mexican nanny, calls her husband in joy to tell him, “Honey, I have found some Mexicans from El Salvador!”

The point is, not all Latinos are Mexicans.

This assertion would sound like an almost offensive platitude to an educated American, but unfortunately it is not. For too many Americans, and quite influential ones, everything south of the Rio Grande is a fuzzy bunch of countries that, if not Mexico, are pretty much like it. For non-Mexican Latinos, it would be just mildly annoying if this perception would be limited to popular culture. In fact, most Peruvians are more amused than offended when movies like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull portray Peru as Southern Mexico. The fact is that the famous Nazca lines mentioned in the movie are in the middle of a vast desert, almost 700 miles away from any jungle like the one where most of Indiana’s adventures take place.

But ignorance, when it reaches the level of policy making, is not only frustrating for Latino Americans but, in the long run, dangerous for the U.S.

Yes, Latin America shares the profound links of the Catholic faith and the Spanish language with Mexico. And as the land where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared and where thousands of Christians were martyred in the 20th century for confessing their faith, no one doubts that Mexico is the “elder sister” of Catholic Latin America.

But the rest of Latin America is not Mexico, and looking at it through the prism of Mexico’s current state tragically reduces the whole hemispheric policy to fighting drugs – which most Latin American countries do not produce – and illegal immigration. This approach completely misses the opportunity to build a solid, promising relationship that could bind together the nations that lie to the north and south of the Rio Grande.

Let me mention an example. In 1995, during congressional hearings on the U.S. war on drugs, the famous Congressman Dan Burton proclaimed that the U.S. military “should place an aircraft carrier off the coast of Bolivia and crop dust the coca fields.”

Bolivians responded by saying that they would happily accept a U.S. aircraft carrier if it came with, well, the coast. As things stand, Bolivia is landlocked and has been diplomatically fighting with Chile to regain the access to the Pacific it lost during the 1879 war.

Burton was then chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee and despite his less than perfect personal life, had a 100% rating from the National Right to Life Committee. In 2006 Burton also received the True Blue award from the Family Research Council. He would have been surprised to know that despite the large coca plantations in Bolivia, his chances of discovering the values of respect for life and the family that he defended were far more present in the poor Andean country than in nations like Great Britain, France or any other of the so-called “Western allies.”

Today’s “Western allies,” because of their economic and military might, are certainly more important, short term, to the U.S. global strategy. But the common values that make the U.S. part of the Western world are quickly becoming endangered in Europe, just like sympathy for the U.S. has seen a sharp drop there.

Latin America is, instead, a more promising partner. Even though they are still poor, some nations like Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru are seeing a significant growth. And every day is becoming clearer that Hugo Chavez’s crazy anti-American model is failing.

Besides, sympathy for the U.S. is still high in most Latin American countries. Usually the U.S. ranks first or second among the “friendly countries” in regional polls; something unimaginable in today’s Europe. In other words, if the Dixie Chicks ever go on a Latin American tour, they will never have to say they are embarrassed that their former President is from Texas to get a resounding round of applause.

In 1997, Pope John Paul II convoked, to the surprise of many, a Synod for America, which included representatives from all the American countries from the North to the South Pole. He refused to call it the Synod for the “Americas.” The result of such an unlikely meeting was a document aimed at unity in the Church: Ecclesia in America.

Few recognized the importance of his visionary move for the future of the Church in the hemisphere. Even fewer recognized the strategic and political brilliance behind it – the same brilliance that helped bring down the Berlin wall.

The hope is that sometime soon, a greater, if invisible barrier will come down and open the door to the strongest coalition the U.S. can expect from any set of countries around the world in the coming years.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)