Living in Buenos Aires primarily amongst Argentine people (almost all of my friends here were born in Argentina and most speak almost no English), I see directly how the US is viewed from Latin America in general. I cannot describe this completely in a short column like this, but I can safely say that everyone here has some opinion of the US and its people. Mixed into that is both intrigue and hate.

North American culture is inescapable around the world. From pop music, to movies and television, to blue jeans and t-shirts, to McDonalds, the US has already conquered the world. I said before that few of my friends here speak English. Well, they all know some, not just from the required classes in grade school but from listening to popular music and watching tv and movies subtitled in Spanish. This is not such a bad thing, because there are artists and movies made in the US that are worth paying attention to. The Simpsons and the Ramones are universally liked here.

Cultural imperialism, economic imperialism, and political imperialism are all modes by which the US dominates the world. They are interconnected, but I would like to focus more on political imperialism. Cultural imperialism is seen both positively and negatively while political and economic imperialism have provoked the strongest resentment against the US. Here I am trying to focus on political imperialism.

George W. Bush is currently touring Latin America to try to mend relationships in a week. Also he is competing against the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez for economic and political alliances. This opinion column from the NY Times gives a good taste of the view from Latin America toward the US: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/opinion/11baez.html

There is a great history of the US fucking with almost every country in Latin America. I searched for an origin in this in the Monroe Doctrine. Curiously, it seems to have begun officially with Theodore Roosevelt. There have been ups and downs, benevolent examples and horror stories, but it is perceived here that the US has been instrumental in supporting the murderous and oppressive dictatorships in Latin America. I remember September 11, 2001, that day just after the attack one of the theories was that it was retaliation for the CIA’s role in overthrowing Salvador Allende’s democratic government in Chile for the dictator Augustin Pinochet. That happened on September 11, 1973. What happened in Argentina in 1977, followed by the Dirty War in which the government “disappeared” 30,000 of its own people up till 1983, is seen here as supported by the US government.

Well, this history, coupled with the “ugly American tourists” you see in the streets here, the inescapable cultural imperialism, the role of US banks in the financial collapse of 2001, and on top of it all a current US president who is seen as horrible and insensitive in so many ways and was re-elected. It is impossible to avoid resenting any of this.

Ultimately, the US is not the most evil empire that has existed in the world. And the governments of Latin America, though more democratic today, are still quite corrupt. It is nonconstructive and untrue to point a finger at the US for everything that ails, but the US government has done little recently to counter this image. No matter what stupid things Hugo Chavez has said, George W. Bush casting him as the evil force will do very little to undo the legacy of the US in Latin America.