Latin American Support For Palestine Grows

I think a good modern name for this would be “Monroe Doctrine FAIL!” The United States has been woefully ignoring Mexico, Central and South American politics since at least September 11 — that’s about a decade — except in short spurts when Hugo Chávez did something crazy or Fidel Castro could get enough wind to say something. Now, this is what you get, United States, a Latin America that cares very little for your foreign policy prerogatives.

This is what I’m talking about: Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador and Uruguay are poised to join Brazil and Argentina in recognizing Palestine’s 1967 borders as a state. That’s a lot of Latin American clout behind something that pisses off Israel, and by proxy the U.S., a whole lot.

But, really, it’s a simple formula:  The U.S. ignores Latin America, then Latin America grows its own way without U.S. interference, so when U.S.-led Israel-Palestine talks break down and world leaders have to choose sides, Latin American leaders choose they side they want to — not the side the U.S. would have them choose. Israel really has no clout in Latin America without U.S. influence, and since the U.S. has practically ignored Latin America in favor of the Middle East and Asia for so long, neither one of them is going to get their way.

Another way to look at this is that Latin America is starting to catch up to other regions in terms of political sway, backed by economic power, and if the U.S. doesn’t start turning its gaze southward again, by the time the other shoe drops it’ll be too late for this country to gain any influence back.