|
Avoid Castro overreaction
Charleston
Post Courier Editorial,
January 2, 2006.
Hope that Evo Morales, the aggressively
anti-American demagogue massively elected
to lead energy-rich Bolivia, will pursue
moderate policies when he takes office Jan.
22 dimmed last week when he made his first
visit abroad as president-elect. Mr. Morales'
unsurprising but decidedly provocative choice
was Cuba.
By sending his plane to bring Mr. Morales
to Cuba on the eve of the 47th anniversary
celebration of the revolution that brought
him to power, Castro made it clear he wants
to bring Bolivia into the alliance he has
formed with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela
and which he seeks to extend to other left-leaning
governments in Latin America. Castro was
also capitalizing on the message that Mr.
Morales sent to the Cuban people the day
after his election when he pledged to join
" el Comandante" Castro in his
"anti-imperialist struggle."
Care should be taken not to play into Castro's
hands by overreacting to the swing to the
left in Latin America. Chile, the most prosperous
nation in South America, has a socialist
government that has continued to apply the
free- market policies adopted under the
Pinochet military dictatorship and has close
ties of trade and friendship with the United
States. U.S. relations with other moderate,
left-of-center governments in Latin America,
like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, are
good. A distinction should be drawn between
countries that have left leaning but pro-democratic
governments and those, like Cuba and Venezuela,
which are anti-democratic.
Cuba's press made much of statements by
President-elect Morales in an interview
with Al-Jazeera, the Arab-language satellite
TV network, calling President Bush a "terrorist"
and accusing Washington of staging a "dirty
war" against him in an attempt to prevent
his election to the presidency. The Associated
Press said Castro told reporters in Havana,
" I think that [Morales' election]
has moved the world. It's something extraordinary,
something historic. The map is changing."
For the time being at least, Mr. Morales'
irresponsible rhetoric is best ignored.
The hemisphere's leftist governments pose
no immediate threat to the security of the
United States. Bolivia's first indigenous
president, should be given a chance to join
the pro-democracy camp and encouraged to
make sensible choices for the majority of
the Bolivian population which is Indian
and pitifully poor. Bolivia could prosper
by developing its natural resources wisely
and by keeping strict control over the legal
production of coca, the plant that is widely
used in Bolivia for medicinal purposes and
to cope with the high altitude. The danger
is that the new president, who was himself
a coca grower, might let in the cocaine
cartels and also adopt the statist policies
that impoverished Cuba and crippled economies
throughout the region.
Evo Morales doesn't merit a matching trip
on Air Force One to visit President Bush.
But it is worth trying quiet diplomacy to
remind him that Bolivia receives $150 million
a year in U.S. aid and that he can do more
for his people in partnership with the United
States and the other hemisphere democracies
than by aligning himself with the leaders
of totalitarian Cuba and volatile Venezuela.
| 
