Experts Divided on Rice’s Concern About Latin America

Latino and other analysts and

community leaders are express

ing contradictory views on what the appointment of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State will mean in a second Bush administration for U.S.-Latin American relations.

Rice, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate when it reconvenes in January, would replace Colin Powell, a political moderate who has paid close attention to hemispheric affairs.

Rice, provost at Stanford University from 1993 to 1999, is considered to be more focused on Europe and the Middle East.

Miguel Díaz, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., does not question her competency and awareness of the strategic importance of Latin America.

In terms of immigration policy, he says, “She’s going to follow the lead of Powell, going toward immigration reform slowly. In Congress, there is no appetite for “the whole enchilada, as (Mexico President Vicente) Fox has put it. We are going to have to do it piecemeal.”

Issues topping her Latin American agenda, he says, will include the political struggles in Haiti, trade and immigration.

“Her biggest challenge will be to win back the hearts and minds of Latin America,” severely tested over the war in Iraq, he says.

Rep. Mario Díaz Balart (R-Fla.) calls Rice “incredibly intelligent, extremely accomplished and more than capable of fulfilling the duties,” of Secretary of State.

Given her record and areas of expertise, her appointment means nothing for Latin America, according to Moisés Naím, the Venezuela-born editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

As the United States has been “distracted” with strategic concerns in the Middle East and North Korea, “Latin America doesn’t pose the same type of urgency,” says Naím. “There is a lot of goodwill toward Latin America and concern about drugs, immigration, the destabilizing activities of leaders such as Venezuela’s (President Hugo) Chávez and Cuba President Fidel Castro, and the emergence of new insurgent groups that are destabilizing democracies. However none of these reaches a level of threat that can compete for the high-level attention that other emergencies and global priorities have from Washington,” he adds.

J. Michael Waller, professor of international relations at the Washington-based Institute of World Politics, observes that Latin America is one part of the world to which Rice hasn’t ...