IN LATIN AMERICA TOO THE PROBLEM IS GEORGE W. BUSH, THE LEAST POPULAR AMERICAN SINCE RICHARD NIXON

I grew up in a working class family in Brooklyn. The word "Nixon" was used as a synonym for "shit" (the noun). One of my earliest memories was watching him, then vice-president, via TV on a wildly unpopular trip to Latin America. In Lima and a week later in Caracas he was pelted with eggs, stones and rotten vegetables. He was booed and spat on everywhere he went where there were real people and not just fascist power elites. Riots followed our much hated vice-president from city to city, country to country. It disturbed me that a representative of my country would be treated with such contempt on the one hand but on the other hand these people were showing him no more contempt than I was taught to have for him here. Soon after JFK vanquished Nixon in an election and soon after that the charismatic and open-minded young president started the Alliance For Progress. Our neighbors to the south loved JFK. Our neighbors to the east, west and north did too.

The relationship between Latin America and the U.S. is a very rocky one, and a pretty predictable one. When an administration comes to power that treats the countries south of the Rio Grande as partners and respects them as friends, things seem to go well. When an administration comes to power in the U.S. that treats Latin America with condensation and contempt, things go badly. Do I have to tell you how they are going now?

Like everywhere in the world right now, sympathy for the U.S. is very, very low. The era of mutual good feeling from 8 years of the popular Clinton Administration has been replaced with fear and loathing comparable to the feelings prevalent when Nixon's mere presence caused violent riots. Since Bush came to power nearly every large country has elected leaders who have made a point of being more friendly towards Fidel Castro than towards George W Bush. And it isn't just Hugo Chavez who believes Bush is Satan. Besides Venezuela, the leaders of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Ecuador have all taken populist positions that include standing up to the hated Bush. Most Latin Americans feel it was with the connivance of Bush that Felipe Calderón managed to steal the Mexican election from working class hero Andrés López Obrador in something that looked suspiciously like a combination of Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004.

Why should anyone care? There are a lot of reasons, although perhaps anyone who needs to ask would be most mindful of the fact that Venezuelan oil is essential to the functioning of the American economy. Trade with Latin America is huge and growing. Latin America, although not the largest, is the fastest growing U.S. regional trade partner.  Between 1992 and 2003, total U.S. merchandise trade (exports plus imports) with Latin America grew by 154% compared to 88% for Asia, 89% for the European Union, 78% for Africa, and 102% for the world. Antipathy towards the United States because of extremist Bush Regime policies are beginning to take a toll across the vast region. I saw it myself after just 5 weeks in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.

Last week the Economist reported that Rafael Correa, the newly elected leftist president of Ecuador is getting ready to toss America out of a crucial base, possibly in favor of China! 250 American servicemen operate a small base in Manta on Ecuador's Pacific coast from which the U.S. flies and maintains AWACS. Correa says he wants the Americans out by 2009 when the lease is up. The U.S. Military wants to stay. They recently spent $71 million on making improvements to the base.

Pre-9/11, Bush had claimed that Latin America was his big foreign policy priority; it seemed easy for him; a no brainer after all his youthful nights in border town Mexican whorehouses. He's ignored the region almost entirely since then except in terms of his discredited and hated "free trade" and globalization policies, widely seen in Latin America as another way for the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor. "America's friends in Latin America," writes Jorge Castaeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who is one of America's friends, "are feeling the fire of this anti-American wrath. They are finding themselves forced to shift their own rhetoric and attitude in order to dampen their defense of policies viewed as pro-American or US-inspired, and to stiffen their resistance to Washington's demands and desires. In many cases, American demands and desires are contrary to Latin interests, and should be resisted. But in other cases, opposition to America's preferences is wrought by public sentiment and goes against the instincts of leaders who know better."

The solution Latin Americans expect is not unlike the solutions everyone in the world expects-- Bush's retirement from government. It can't come soon enough... anywhere.