The United States and Israel appear to be heading toward increasing their focus on Latin America after years of neglect that resulted in closer ties between the region and Iran, and gains for the Palestinians.
The shift comes amid Iran’s deepening influence in the region, as well as the successes of a Palestinian diplomatic offensive that has seen eight Latin American nations agree to recognize a Palestinian “state” in recent months.
President Obama’s visits last month to Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador followed a visit to Israel in February by Chilean President Sebastian Pinera.
Israeli Foreign Ministry officials and U.S. Jewish groups that focus on Latin America say the West’s attention to the area should have come sooner.
“Latin America has suffered benign neglect both from the United States and Israel,” said Dina Siegel Vann, the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Latin American Institute.
“When you have a vacuum it will be filled,” she said, referring to Iran’s courting of Latin American countries that chafe under U.S. domination of the hemisphere, chief among them Venezuela. “This is the point of view of many Latin American Jewish communities who feel that they have not been treated as a priority.”
An Israeli Foreign Ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity acknowledged the neglect, saying it was primarily a function of resources diverted to peacemaking since the launch of the Oslo process in 1993.
That has been redressed in recent months with several high-profile visits to the continent, including Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Brazil visit in July 2009, and then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s return visit a year ago.
Arab diasporas
The outreach is coordinated with the local Jewish communities. Vann noted some successes, including the visit to Israel last month of Chile’s president and last year of Panama’s president, Ricardo Martinelli.
Jewish lobbying helped moderate Chile’s recognition of Palestine with enough qualifications that the recognition was almost moot, Vann said.
“They spoke about Israel’s right to exist within secure borders, they said negotiations have to continue and that an agreement has to be part of bilateral negotiations,” she said. “In the end, the Israelis were happier with it than the Palestinians.”
Vann and her boss, AJC director David Harris, recently returned from a tour of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to address issues of concern to Jewish communities.
The highest-profile effort is Obama’s tour of Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador. Obama did not publicly address the Middle East when he met with Dilma Roussef, his Brazilian counterpart. The visit focused on trade with Latin American nations.
Nonetheless, the joint Obama-Roussef statement pointed to an effort to bridge differences that erupted last year over Brazil and Turkey refusing to join the international effort to isolate Iran over its nuclear weapons program.
The statement underscored closer defense cooperation in recent months.
Daniel Mariaschin is executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International. He said he understood from his administration contacts that Obama in private meetings sounded out Roussef to see if she plans on continuing the tilt of her predecessor, Lula, toward setting Brazil apart from the U.S. policy on the Middle East.
Lula, Roussef’s mentor, was behind Brazil’s decisions to recognize Palestine and to attempt, with Turkey, to strike a separate nuclear inspections deal with Iran. Brazil predominates in South America, and its decisions had a domino effect, particularly on recognizing Palestine.
That’s typical of a region that often has sought to distinguish itself from its powerful northern neighbor, Mariaschin said.
“There’s an interest in showing … that these countries in Latin America are of an independent mind,” he said.
Other factors have played into the pro-Arab tilt of an area that once was perceived as a redoubt of pro-Israeli sentiment.
Among them are substantive Arab diasporas in the region. These include possibly the world’s largest Palestinian diaspora in Chile and a Lebanese community in Brazil that may outnumber the Lebanese in Lebanon.
Another factor is the tendency of Latin America nations to follow each other’s leads. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez courted Iran to needle the United States, which had sought his ouster in the early 2000s because of his nationalization of the oil industry.
“More often than not, there’s a tendency among Latin Americans to vote as a bloc” in international bodies, Mariaschin said.
The Iranian influence on Latin America was especially troublesome, he said. It not only hindered efforts to set up a united front against the prospect of a nuclear Iran, but also reportedly resulted in infiltration of Iranian terrorists into the region.
U.S. lawmakers, led by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chair of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, have pressed the Obama administration to drive Iranian influence away from Latin America.
The threat is real, Vann said, particularly in the little-policed “triangle” where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet.
Western intelligence circles say Iran was behind attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and its AMIA Jewish community center in 1994.
Vann cautioned against overstating Iran’s danger, however. Skepticism in the region of such claims stems from how the evidence the Bush administration used to justify the Iraq war turned out to be unfounded.
“They truly don’t believe Iran is a threat, and they draw parallels with Iraq and WMD,” she said, using the acronym for weapons of mass destruction. “We have to be careful not to magnify the problem.”
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