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Latin America and the United States of America: an agenda set adrift
12/06/2008 By Augusto Varas
For geographical reasons, relations between the USA and Latin America are as inevitable as a common agenda for the region is necessary. Such an agenda must reflect the Western Hemisphere’s main problems, such as the inadequate treatment of immigrants and the eradication of the poverty which gives rise to such influxes of people; the demand for narcotics in the USA and drug trafficking at large; the democratisation of societies and civilian control of the armed forces; economic cooperation, protectionism and agricultural subsidies; and global warming and climate change.
In opinion of Augusto Varas a new US administration will only be able to tackle these matters in a cooperative way, and provided those who devise and implement Western Hemisphere policy modify the conceptual tools used to identify and diagnose Latin American problems; multilateral institutions must also be activated to carry out collective action, and the security perspective limited to matters of a purely military nature.
The inappropriate transformation of hemispheric concerns into threats to American security leads in turn to the militarisation of these issues and allows control of the agenda to fall into the hands of the American armed forces, something which has already begun to take place in the Western Hemisphere.
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Keywords
Civil society Democracy Elections Latin America & Caribbean United StatesRelated publications
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Bio author: Augusto Varas
Augusto Varas Fernández holds a Degree in Sociology from Universidad Católica de Chile and a Masters and Doctorate in Sociology from Washington University (St Louis), in the United States.
