Well, I’m a national of both Paraguay and the USSA, and I certainly am in favor of expanding Mercosur and Nafta throughout the Americas, including Cuba.
The steel and agricultural price-support policies of the USSA are an affront to common sense and human dignity, of course, and Latins would love to react to them by snubbing the Amerikans. I think such action, however, to be short-sighted and foolish. In my personal life, I do limit my trade with Fedex and Sears because of their snubbing Bill Maher, and with Walmart for censoring pornography, and with Home Depot because of their drug-screening of employees, for example. My boycotting of such concerns is effective mostly as a statement, however, but it does make me feel righteous!
But I realize that a person can’t avoid dealing with ethical cripples, particularly when any branch of the gummint is concerned. But with gummint, I take great pride in concentrating on gaming the systems, such as medicare, medicaid, insurance, affirmative action, social security, unemployment, law enforcement and taxes that they have set up to steal my wealth and limit my freedoms.
This should be the enlightened policy of the Latin states in dealings with the USSA. It would be best for Latins to knock down all their own trade barriers, realizing that USSA trade perversions primarily hurt Amerikans. On the other hand, the Latins should go out of their way to frustrate all Amerikan attempts to increase the hegemony of the USSA. There should be no participation in the drug war, except, perhaps, to encourage wealth building by producing and selling drugs to the crippled Amerikans. Likewise, anti-terrorism and nuclear prolifieration policies of the Amerikans should be frustrated at every opportunity. Latins should withhold cooperation with the USSA in global-warming, interpol, United Nations, OAS and other international concerns, except where free trade is concerned.
I would like to see Latin countries expand their common market accords to include the free migration across borders, as is more or less the case in the EU and of course among the Amerikan states. The case of Cuba is not difficult. Latins should clearly relieve themselves of any obligation they have felt to promote the agenda of Miami’s Cuban community and open themselves up to free trade with Cuba. And if the USSA seeks to retaliate, Latins should gain the burro’s attention by using their demonstrated aerospace technology to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, as North Korea has.
I can’t speak for all my fellow Latins, but I was with friends in Rio as the Twin Towers fell. Professionals all – architect, history professors, government bureaucrats – the Brazilians cheered along with me, not because of the carnage, but because the carnage had finally been visited upon the Great Satan, who had conspired with Paraguay’s Stroessner and numerous other Latin dictators and had contributed to so much repression and death throughout Latin America since Eisenhower. Regardless of what Brussels says, Henry Kissinger is still considered a war criminal and subject to arrest or worse if he sets foot anywhere in the Southern Cone.
The pervasiveness of this attitude is a fact not appreciated by most Amerikans. I would like to encourage my fellow Latins to comment on the anti-american sentiments they have witnessed throughout Latin America. This might serve as a useful wakeup call to those Amerikans who think they are hated only by the Muslims and Arabs of the world.