From 1981-1989, President Ronald Reagan waged an unrelenting, eight-year campaign of democratic transition in our Southern hemisphere. Despite hostility in Congress and the press, he engaged every department and agency of our government in the effort, and his determination paid off. Democratic elections swept aside despots of the right and left from Central America to Tierra del Fuego, and by 1991 Cuba was the only dictatorship remaining on our side of the world. The flood of humanity seeking political freedom and economic opportunity across our southern borders slowed to a trickle. And then, so did American attention.
By 1994 -- the year Hugo Chavez got out of jail for his role in a failed coup attempt -- U.S. focus on Latin America was practically non-existent. Diminished international aid, decreased U.S. military presence, reduced attention on building democratic institutions and cuts in economic re-vitalization projects had become commonplace throughout the region. When Chavez won election in 1998, with fewer than 36 percent of the electorate bothering to cast a ballot, there were no alarms sounded in Washington's corridors of power, nor have there been many since.
Regrettably, Clinton-era policies toward the region have been altered little in the last six years, despite growing anti-American sentiment, increasing economic disruption and clear evidence that China, Russia and Iran have been moving to fill the void left by U.S. inattention. "The rise of leaders like Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Evo Morales in La Paz and the return of Daniel Ortega to Managua are the consequence of a belief in Washington that you can wash your hands of us once we hold an election. That's either arrogance, ignorance or both," an embittered Nicaraguan told me last week.
He has a point. Chavez and Morales were both elected, and both now rule by decree. Ortega's return to power was the consequence of our State Department's fatally flawed attempt to create a new political party in Nicaragua -- a trick the U.S. government has never been able to pull off in any country.
Whether Bush can reverse the anti-democracy, anti-free enterprise trend in Latin America remains to be seen, but it's worth the effort. Even his opponents in Congress should hope that he succeeds in convincing the leaders he visits that we want individual liberty and economic opportunity to succeed in their countries. If it doesn't, we won't be able to build a fence high enough or long enough to keep out those who will walk here seeking what they cannot find at home.