Rick Santorum’s recent electoral victories aren’t welcome news in most of Latin America. Nor is the increasingly hostile rhetoric coming out of Republicans in Congress.
Santorum is one of the most hawkish candidates in the Republican presidential field. He has referred to Cuba in terms that could have been used on the bitterest days of the Cold War, calling Havana “the heart of the cancer that is in Central and South America.”
And he has criticized President Obama for having “a consistent policy of “siding with the leftists, siding with the Marxists” in the Western Hemisphere. That would surprise anyone in Honduras, since the Obama administration was quick to recognize the right-wing government that came to power in disputed elections following a 2009 military coup.
Santorum has also been trumpeting a threat from a supposed Iranian-Latin American connection. Here, he has taken the lead from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who recently held a hearing on the subject.
The main witness at the hearing was Norman Bailey of the American Foreign Policy Council, a conservative think tank. According to Bailey, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent tour of Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba had the purpose of establishing or reinforcing existing networks of terrorist cells and training camps connected to Hezbollah and local drug cartels.
Bailey stated that Iran has established Hezbollah-manned training camps in Venezuela to train Venezuelans to attack American targets. He went so far as to mention “unconfirmed” reports that Venezuela also hosts Iranian missile bases from which Iran could reach American territory. Despite his alarming tone, neither Bailey nor any of the other witnesses were able to present any hard evidence or intelligence reports to back their statements.
Most of what they claimed as supporting evidence referred to the alleged (and dubious) Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador with Mexican drug traffickers as hired guns, and to an alleged (and dubious) Venezuelan plot to conduct cyber-attacks on American targets using Mexican students.
Ros-Lehtinen has seized on these unproven allegations to successfully push for the expulsion of the Venezuelan consul in Miami. Now she is asking for the designation of Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism, which would open the door for hostile measures such as trade barriers, sanctions and penalties for other countries that cooperate with Venezuela.
What Ros-Lehtinen and Santorum fail to realize is that Latin Americans have long ago grown weary of U.S. interventions and are now resolving most regional issues with the intentional exclusion of the United States, a choice preferred even by some of Washington’s staunchest allies. A return to Cold War rhetoric and policies in Latin America would only serve to alienate them further.
Juan Blanco Prada, currently based in Brazil, analyzes Latin American issues. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.
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