Chileno,
Great post, but I’m still convinced that the U.S. intelligence agencies are pretty much on top on what the Iranians are doing in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. I do not have evidence to prove that, but logic and common sense tells me that Americans operating on their neighborhood have a natural advantage against the Iranians in the intelligence games.
Besides, some if not most of the assets that the CIA recruited during the cold war years should still be around. Now there’s another matter that I also disagree with you:
“I agree the US, to its detriment, has ignored Latin America -particularly in the past 8 years.”
During the last 8 years the U.S. signed and/or procured free trade agreement with each and every Latin American country that wanted one. The Colombia FTA is being held up by the democrats; The FTA with Panama because of that politician that killed a U.S. soldier.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the U.S. is Latin America largest trade and investment partner and that didn’t happen by chance. It happened because both the U.S. and Latin America working to further their own self-interest made it happen.
What exactly didn’t happen during the last 8 years that gave rise to this myth of U.S. neglect of Latin America? O.k., I remember that Condi Rise once cancelled a meeting because some other crisis required her attention somewhere else. I imagine that the Latin American dignitaries that were stood up are still mad about it. Is that it..?
I mean, if we Latin American are to be taken seriously, we have to stop sweating the small stuff and see the big picture. We have excellent trade ties and although nobody speaks about it, we’ve benefited for ages from the U.S. security umbrella. Nobody dares to come to our neighborhood to cause problems because the big, bad Yankee cop lives here.
