By Hector J. Hereter
CARACAS.- “Here you will see World Leaders and Leaders that want to rule the world” says CNN’s Christiana Amampour in one of the many network’s international promotions. Among the images flashing in the background are Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden and Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but not one of the producers in Atlanta would have the audacity to place an image of an U.S. President, not even that of the growing unpopular George W. Bush.
Well, like or not CNN’s editors,and the American public in general, the next elected White House resident will rule the world one way or another as it had happened since the end of World War II. Even the most insignificant decision taken in the Oval Office will have a ripple effect on the rest of the world, impacting most of all Latin America, the so called “U.S. backyard”.
A backyard that has been neglected for as long as the actual Republican Administration has being in office, letting to grow wild weed and other bushes that make a difficult path for any American to find its way through the several adversarial off-springs in the region, such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia. Even its allies in the region, like Colombia, Perú, Chile and El Salvador feel neglected for the lack of attention to their problems and economic interests, creating a power vacuum not seem since the end of the cold war.
As one Venezuelan economist explains it: “The State Department’s near sighted policy has created frictions even with their most important allies like Colombia and Perú. Washington ambivalence is driving crazy those power brokers in Bogotá and Lima”.
And the vaccum is there, but as it’s stated by the law of physics in this dimension cann’t exist empty spaces, so Venezuela following a simple design of Real Politik of power through financing has come to fill that space.
All terrain lost by the Soviets since the fall of Communist regime has being recovered back, not as much for their own effort, but by those off springs that see an opportunity to break away from Washington influence.
So far Hugo Chavez’s regime has spent more that 3 billion dollars in arms manufactured by Moscow, and he and President Dmitry Medvedev announced that Venezuela would purshase $30 billion in military goods from Russia over the next six years, including planes, submarines, tanks and Kalashnikovs.
More recently Moscow annaunced the deployment of Russian vessels in Venezuela’s main Navy bases and President Hugo Chavez said recently that Venezuelan and Russian ships could soon hold joint naval exercises in the Caribbean, an historical turning point due the fact that there has not been European military presence in the Americas since the Hipanic-American war back of 1898.
So there is not doubt that US has lost a lot of solid terrain, even bigger compared to what happened right after the invasion to Bay of Pigs in 1961.
Some came for freedom, some came for gold
But why Latin America being an important strategical point for the US’s interest has been neglected for so long by the power players in Washington? Why Latin Americans are perceived as the “little people” and treated as such creating a great resentment upon those that should be Washington’s strongest allies?
The answer could be found in the very own US heart: the Nation’s Capitol. On the Rotunda’s circling overhead there are two paintings that hold the clue of our cosmic differences.
In one of the eight paintings on the top bordering the dome we can see the Protestant pilgrims on the deck of the ship Speedwell before their departure for the New World from Delft Haven, Holland, on July 22, 1620. The prominence of women and children suggests the importance of the family in the community. At the left side of the painting is a rainbow, which symbolizes hope and divine protection.
On a second fresco in the opposite side of the dome, Christopher Columbus is shown landing in the West Indies, on an island that the natives called Guanahani and he named San Salvador, on October 12, 1492. The captains of the Niña and Pinta follow, carrying the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella. The crew displays a range of emotions, some searching for gold in the sand. Natives watch from behind a tree.
For many these could be very nice portraits of our beginnings as nations, but a more inquisitive observer will detect differences such as the Pilgrims were whole families, while Columbus expedition was integrated by male only.
The Pilgrims came to a untamed land to set new rules and scape from being persecuted for thinking different from the European "status quo". They didn't come looking for gold as their Spanish counterparts did, they came for freedom and start a country from anew.
But at the same time by having the choice of selecting a mate genetically the same, the country’s fate was established to be a white race dominant landscape for the years to come. Divisions were well settled; a self awareness of what group everyone belonged.
While further South, in the Conquistadores domains, the choices for selecting a partner from the same race were very dim or nonexistent.
Therefore, after being aboard for three months in a very cramped vessel from Spain, once the set foot on the new land they didn’t waist time in selecting a new woman to be their partner in the territories just discovered or conquered.
Those Spaniards, that were free from a wife waiting for them back home and willing to break their necks if they found out their husbands were in extramarital affairs with an native woman, bore offsprings that became the birthmark of the Latin American nations. A cosmic race. A sum of all the races that walked the planet if we take into consideration that the Conquistadores brought their own mixtures of Arabs and Africans genes running through their veins. A new cosmic race was born. While North of Rio Grande waited for more than 500 years for the Christopher Columbus phenomenon to make effect.
No white, nor black.
All along the National Democratic Convention in Denver in August, CNN’s anchorman Wolf Blitzer, kept saying that “we are witnessing an historical event, this is the first time a major US political party nominates a black man”. Well, we would like to correct Mr. Blitzer because Obama is no white nor black.
Americans that are accustomed to classify people’s identity by the color of their skin Obama may be black, in other words, a “kid from the other block” but for us in Latin America Obama resembles the neighbor’s kid, since he belongs to that racial mixture very common in many Spanish speaking countries, mostly in the Caribbean basin.
Cultural sensitivity
Republicans like to say that Obama lacks the international experience to be Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation on the world, and it may be true since Obama has never sat in a States Department’s office or participated in an world military strategy as his ticket partner Joe Biden, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. But the Democratic Presidential Candidate will be the first White House resident if elected, different no just because the color of his skin, but for his cultural sensitivity that not other previous President had.
Born out a all white American woman and a black man from deep inside Kenya; taught the principles of life by his Indonesian stepfather, attending school in Jakarta, nurtured by his grandparents in Hawaii, a state that holds many traces of the races that ran through the Pacific and the forefront to Asia, Obama has a cosmic view of the world.
During the primaries Obama said that he will redesign US international relations by initiating new conversations with adversaries in the world arena such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and Korea, a proposal strongly criticized by his opponent at the time and today one of his biggest allies, Hillary Clinton. She said that it “was crazy to go to a bargaining table without an previously set agenda”.
Maybe to explore what the adversary thinks is the best way to set a new agenda and discard those that have being in place for more than 50 years with not evident benefits, such as is the case with Cuba, and the agendas imposed by the hardcore anti Castro lobbyists from Miami.
Obama, because of his background where there is not a well established frontier between black and white, have learned how to negotiate on both sides of the racial spectrum. At Harvard, long confused about his identity, learned to negotiate across color lines, and whites began to see him as redemptive figure.
If he is elected as the 45Th President, he promised to be more than that, he said that he wants to be one that build new bridges with other nations around the world, sort of a Pontiff if we like, because this Latin word (Pontifice) means “bridge builder”, and the Pope is not the only that can hold that adjective. It is possible that we are standing in the threshold of new era, just as Columbus and his men crossed 516 years ago and became America´s bridge to the rest of the world.
hhereter@yahoo.com
CARACAS.- “Here you will see World Leaders and Leaders that want to rule the world” says CNN’s Christiana Amampour in one of the many network’s international promotions. Among the images flashing in the background are Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden and Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but not one of the producers in Atlanta would have the audacity to place an image of an U.S. President, not even that of the growing unpopular George W. Bush.
Well, like or not CNN’s editors,and the American public in general, the next elected White House resident will rule the world one way or another as it had happened since the end of World War II. Even the most insignificant decision taken in the Oval Office will have a ripple effect on the rest of the world, impacting most of all Latin America, the so called “U.S. backyard”.
A backyard that has been neglected for as long as the actual Republican Administration has being in office, letting to grow wild weed and other bushes that make a difficult path for any American to find its way through the several adversarial off-springs in the region, such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia. Even its allies in the region, like Colombia, Perú, Chile and El Salvador feel neglected for the lack of attention to their problems and economic interests, creating a power vacuum not seem since the end of the cold war.
As one Venezuelan economist explains it: “The State Department’s near sighted policy has created frictions even with their most important allies like Colombia and Perú. Washington ambivalence is driving crazy those power brokers in Bogotá and Lima”.
And the vaccum is there, but as it’s stated by the law of physics in this dimension cann’t exist empty spaces, so Venezuela following a simple design of Real Politik of power through financing has come to fill that space.
All terrain lost by the Soviets since the fall of Communist regime has being recovered back, not as much for their own effort, but by those off springs that see an opportunity to break away from Washington influence.
So far Hugo Chavez’s regime has spent more that 3 billion dollars in arms manufactured by Moscow, and he and President Dmitry Medvedev announced that Venezuela would purshase $30 billion in military goods from Russia over the next six years, including planes, submarines, tanks and Kalashnikovs.
More recently Moscow annaunced the deployment of Russian vessels in Venezuela’s main Navy bases and President Hugo Chavez said recently that Venezuelan and Russian ships could soon hold joint naval exercises in the Caribbean, an historical turning point due the fact that there has not been European military presence in the Americas since the Hipanic-American war back of 1898.
So there is not doubt that US has lost a lot of solid terrain, even bigger compared to what happened right after the invasion to Bay of Pigs in 1961.
Some came for freedom, some came for gold
But why Latin America being an important strategical point for the US’s interest has been neglected for so long by the power players in Washington? Why Latin Americans are perceived as the “little people” and treated as such creating a great resentment upon those that should be Washington’s strongest allies?
The answer could be found in the very own US heart: the Nation’s Capitol. On the Rotunda’s circling overhead there are two paintings that hold the clue of our cosmic differences.
In one of the eight paintings on the top bordering the dome we can see the Protestant pilgrims on the deck of the ship Speedwell before their departure for the New World from Delft Haven, Holland, on July 22, 1620. The prominence of women and children suggests the importance of the family in the community. At the left side of the painting is a rainbow, which symbolizes hope and divine protection.
On a second fresco in the opposite side of the dome, Christopher Columbus is shown landing in the West Indies, on an island that the natives called Guanahani and he named San Salvador, on October 12, 1492. The captains of the Niña and Pinta follow, carrying the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella. The crew displays a range of emotions, some searching for gold in the sand. Natives watch from behind a tree.
For many these could be very nice portraits of our beginnings as nations, but a more inquisitive observer will detect differences such as the Pilgrims were whole families, while Columbus expedition was integrated by male only.
The Pilgrims came to a untamed land to set new rules and scape from being persecuted for thinking different from the European "status quo". They didn't come looking for gold as their Spanish counterparts did, they came for freedom and start a country from anew.
But at the same time by having the choice of selecting a mate genetically the same, the country’s fate was established to be a white race dominant landscape for the years to come. Divisions were well settled; a self awareness of what group everyone belonged.
While further South, in the Conquistadores domains, the choices for selecting a partner from the same race were very dim or nonexistent.
Therefore, after being aboard for three months in a very cramped vessel from Spain, once the set foot on the new land they didn’t waist time in selecting a new woman to be their partner in the territories just discovered or conquered.
Those Spaniards, that were free from a wife waiting for them back home and willing to break their necks if they found out their husbands were in extramarital affairs with an native woman, bore offsprings that became the birthmark of the Latin American nations. A cosmic race. A sum of all the races that walked the planet if we take into consideration that the Conquistadores brought their own mixtures of Arabs and Africans genes running through their veins. A new cosmic race was born. While North of Rio Grande waited for more than 500 years for the Christopher Columbus phenomenon to make effect.
No white, nor black.
All along the National Democratic Convention in Denver in August, CNN’s anchorman Wolf Blitzer, kept saying that “we are witnessing an historical event, this is the first time a major US political party nominates a black man”. Well, we would like to correct Mr. Blitzer because Obama is no white nor black.
Americans that are accustomed to classify people’s identity by the color of their skin Obama may be black, in other words, a “kid from the other block” but for us in Latin America Obama resembles the neighbor’s kid, since he belongs to that racial mixture very common in many Spanish speaking countries, mostly in the Caribbean basin.
Cultural sensitivity
Republicans like to say that Obama lacks the international experience to be Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation on the world, and it may be true since Obama has never sat in a States Department’s office or participated in an world military strategy as his ticket partner Joe Biden, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. But the Democratic Presidential Candidate will be the first White House resident if elected, different no just because the color of his skin, but for his cultural sensitivity that not other previous President had.
Born out a all white American woman and a black man from deep inside Kenya; taught the principles of life by his Indonesian stepfather, attending school in Jakarta, nurtured by his grandparents in Hawaii, a state that holds many traces of the races that ran through the Pacific and the forefront to Asia, Obama has a cosmic view of the world.
During the primaries Obama said that he will redesign US international relations by initiating new conversations with adversaries in the world arena such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and Korea, a proposal strongly criticized by his opponent at the time and today one of his biggest allies, Hillary Clinton. She said that it “was crazy to go to a bargaining table without an previously set agenda”.
Maybe to explore what the adversary thinks is the best way to set a new agenda and discard those that have being in place for more than 50 years with not evident benefits, such as is the case with Cuba, and the agendas imposed by the hardcore anti Castro lobbyists from Miami.
Obama, because of his background where there is not a well established frontier between black and white, have learned how to negotiate on both sides of the racial spectrum. At Harvard, long confused about his identity, learned to negotiate across color lines, and whites began to see him as redemptive figure.
If he is elected as the 45Th President, he promised to be more than that, he said that he wants to be one that build new bridges with other nations around the world, sort of a Pontiff if we like, because this Latin word (Pontifice) means “bridge builder”, and the Pope is not the only that can hold that adjective. It is possible that we are standing in the threshold of new era, just as Columbus and his men crossed 516 years ago and became America´s bridge to the rest of the world.
hhereter@yahoo.com
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