The Foreign Service Journal, September 2008

just one week’s spending in Iraq. Meanwhile, the region is diversifying its relations and faring well, posting some of its best economic growth rates in decades. Sales of food products, minerals and other basics to China, India and Europe helped the region grow by 5.6 percent last year, even as the U.S. housing market tanked. Oil-exporting Venezuela is pick- ing up some of the slack by buying Argentine debt, pro- moting a new development bank called Banco del Sur and providing long-term loans for oil sales in the region, among other measures. It also bought up a struggling Uruguayan cooperative bank known as Cofac, financed the development of the sugar cane industry, and reached an agreement with state-oil company Ancap to tap Venezuela’s massive oil reserves in the Orinoco belt. Despite the recent economic growth, many Latin Americans remain dissatisfied with democracy. After the end of anti-communist dictatorships in the 1980s, includ- ing many backed by Washington during the Cold War, hopes ran high that democracy could bring prosperity and slash poverty. But progress has been slower than expected, with economic gains unequally distributed and corruption widespread in some countries. The latest annual survey by respected pollster Latinobarometro found only 54 percent of respondents support democrat- ic governments — a finding that suggests limited impor- tance will be placed on the U.S. election results. The next president of the United States faces a serious challenge in Uruguay and across Latin America: to gain the respect and trust of the majority of the region’s 562 million residents and build support for democracy. A fail- ure to integrate the United States with the rest of the Americas could strengthen the populist and socialist gov- ernments now actively working to diminish the U.S. role in the region. It could also push Latin America to accel- erate the pursuit of ties with Europe and Asia. But most of all, a failure to bond with the rest of the hemisphere would leave the United States more isolated. n F O C U S 36 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8