Haitian Market. Photo by Jim Harney.
As nongovernmental and faith-based organizations deeply committed to a just U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean, we are gratified that you have often articulated the importance of establishing a new approach for U.S. engagement in the world. We urge you to include the relationship with our Latin American neighbors as a vital arena for policy renewal.
U.S. policy toward Latin America in past years has often been perceived as erecting barriers rather than reaching out for a partnership based on mutual respect and common interests. A good neighbor relationship should not be primarily characterized by arming, equipping and training the region’s militaries. Today, half of U.S. aid to Latin America is dedicated to the military and police, while economic aid to the region has stagnated.
This misguided approach has left Latin American countries contending with the challenge of tremendous poverty, while inequality-among the most skewed in the world-is on the rise. In this time of crisis and opportunity, we call on you to embrace a U.S. policy agenda that is more just, compassionate, effective, and mutually respectful.
Aid
We urge you to redirect U.S. aid towards public health, education, disaster relief and prevention, microcredit, violence prevention, and small-scale agriculture.
The global economic crisis will likely take a heavy toll on Latin American and Caribbean nations. The high price of food means that many more people in the region face not only poverty and unemployment, but hunger. The recent devastation of crops and food supplies by multiple hurricanes in the Caribbean exacerbates this danger, especially for Cuba. This regional food crisis may require emergency assistance.
In addition, the United States should substantially increase aid for rural development, focusing on small-scale agriculture, helping to diversify rural economies, and emphasizing food security and production for local and regional markets. USAID should prioritize careful consultation with civil society organizations as it designs, implements, and evaluates programs.
As you seek funding for this and other priorities, we urge you to draw from military aid accounts that are overfunded, including the Defense Department’s section 1206 account, whose authorities should in any case be shifted back to the State Department.
Trade
We ask you to build a fair trade policy shaped and evaluated by its ability to improve the lives of poor and middle-class workers and farmers in the United States and throughout our hemisphere, shifting away from the misconceived “free trade” agreements of the past.
We welcomed your pledge to open a dialogue to make trade work for everyone. Trade deals should provide special and differential treatment for developing countries, including adequate safeguards for their domestic producers, in order to ensure food and livelihood security and promote rural development. They should encourage the strengthening, not lowering, of labor and environmental standards as part of the core agreement.
Unfair trade agreements, pressure to embrace a rigid model of open and unregulated markets and abandonment of investment in small-scale agriculture have further impoverished Latin American citizens, driving them to cross our borders in search of a better life.
We ask you to support continuation of regionally focused trade preference programs that promote export diversification and broad-based economic development-the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) and the Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA)-and restore Bolivia’s designation as a beneficiary country under the ATPA.
Human Rights
We urge you to put human rights front and center in your policy towards Latin America. The Obama Administration should stand with human rights defenders wherever they face threats and attacks for calling for justice.
The United States should also stand with Latin Americans who are struggling to achieve justice for past abuses-because truth and an end to past impunity pave the way to future justice. The U.S. government should focus aid and diplomacy on regional human rights problems, strengthening the rule of law and supporting independent and effective judiciaries. But this focus must be fair, impartial, and balanced.
On the one hand, countries that have been considered allies have received a free pass; this must end. On the other hand, concern for human rights and democratic institutions should be pursued in an effective manner, and should not escalate into bellicose rhetoric and policies. Democratically-elected governments should be respected.
Guantanamo
We urge you to close Guantanamo, treat all detainees according to international humanitarian law, and reestablish safeguards to prevent torture and abuses by our own forces.
If we want to put human rights front and center, we must first live up to our own ideals. Abu Ghraib did tremendous damage to the United States’ image in Latin America, and Guantanamo continues to do so. Closing Guantanamo will help to repair this damage and help reestablish moral authority for the United States.
Colombia
We ask you to change policy to address the most severe human rights and humanitarian crisis in the hemisphere-in Colombia, where hundreds of thousands of people flee their homes from violence in a war without end.
If the United States wants to begin to actively support peace in Colombia, it must stop endlessly bankrolling war. The United States should employ tough diplomacy to insist that the Colombian army end abuses, especially extrajudicial executions and collaboration with abusive paramilitary forces.
Your administration must demand substantial progress on ending violence towards trade unionists, as well as towards other human rights defenders, including Afro-Colombian and indigenous community leaders, and ensure justice in these cases, the lack of which is one important reason to reject a free trade agreement with Colombia.
We urge you to double support for humanitarian aid for those displaced by war, both long-term aid through USAID and emergency relief through PRM for refugees and internally displaced persons.
Cuba
We urge you to support the lifting-for all Americans-of the travel ban that divides the U.S. and Cuban people-because it is the right policy, and as a demonstration to our Latin America neighbors that a new day has dawned in our relationship with the region.
We also urge you to explore diplomacy and dialogue with Cuba. The relationship between the United States and Cuba is at a potentially transformational moment. Coinciding with new visions for change in this country, change is also occurring in Cuba. We should move beyond the past eight years, which have brought a reduction in citizen contacts, increased enforcement of cruel U.S. sanctions, and accelerated curtailment of Americans’ fundamental right to travel.
Your administration’s approach to Cuba will be seen by our Latin American allies as a symbol of Washington’s new diplomacy-based approach to the entire region.
Haiti
We ask you to redirect U.S. policy towards Haiti to support a long-term strategy aimed at strengthening infrastructure capacity and addressing the current humanitarian crisis.
A long-term strategy is needed to support broad-based movements for democracy that exist as well as sustainable, domestic solutions for development. In a country where over 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, we should support the complete and immediate cancellation of Haiti’s debts.
We must also address the discriminatory treatment of Haiti in the area of immigration policy. The recent succession of hurricanes devastated the already fragile country, which needs our support to rebuild as well as our cooperation in granting President René Préval’s request for temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians living in the United States.
The United States should support the strengthening of critical governance structures in the areas of education, health, infrastructure, citizen security, and income-generation.
Indigenous and Afro-Descendant Peoples
We ask you to pay special attention to the indigenous and Afro-descendant populations who are struggling to overcome centuries of discrimination and are organizing for their livelihoods, land rights, and civil rights.
Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants comprise over 40 percent of the region’s population and an overwhelming majority of the poor. Vibrant social movements throughout Latin America-which in recent years have been elected to, or influenced, governments-are challenging neoliberal economic policies and natural resource strategies that have failed to reduce poverty and inequality.
We urge your administration to listen to the perspectives of these movements and ensure that aid programs and policies respect and strengthen their rights.
Counternarcotics
It’s time to take a fresh look at our failed, expensive counternarcotics policy that leaves U.S. citizens without adequate access to drug treatment programs and, in Latin America, leads the army into the streets and fields.
Just since 2000, the United States has spent $6 billion in Colombia; yet the level of coca production in Colombia and the Andean region remains just as high as at the program’s start. Inhumane aerial spraying programs in Colombia that destroy farmers’ food crops and forced eradication without adequate alternatives throughout the Andes produce neither good will nor results.
We ask you to:
1) end the aerial spraying program and invest in voluntary, community-based eradication programs that help poor farmers switch permanently away from illicit drug crops;
2) substantially increase investment in effective drug-treatment and prevention programs in the United States;
3) cease providing support for military roles in domestic law enforcement throughout the region; and
4) use executive authority to restore the ban on importation of military-style firearms that are then flowing from the United States to Mexico, and contribute to drug-related violence in the region.
Immigration
Your administration should end the single-minded focus on border enhancement, which has put a symbolic as well as a physical wall between the United States and Latin America. It is time for a more thoughtful approach that includes and involves border communities in the decisions affecting them-and recognizes the need for immigration reform.
Expensive, poorly thought-out fencing and other forms of enforcement have harmed communities and environments on both sides of the border and have driven migrants to cross in remote and dangerous sections of the border without achieving gains in national security.
We ask you to do the hard political work to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. Such reform will recognize the aspirations and contributions of the millions of members of our communities who have only sought to build a better life for their families and establish a path to citizenship.
Finally, we encourage you to listen to the voices of ordinary Latin Americans. As organizations with close relationships with such partners, we know that their voices often present a wiser account of reality than do the government and corporate counterparts whom our diplomats engage. Their stories and unique perspectives must be heard in Washington if we are to help our neighbors lift millions out of grinding poverty and build more equal and just societies.
We look forward to working with you to re-direct U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean in a way that renews our historic commitment to defending human rights and unites us with our neighbors in a shared commitment to bring millions of people new levels of hope, justice and prosperity for all.
To reply to this letter, send reply to: Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director, Latin America Working Group, lisah@lawg.org , 424 C Street NE, Washington, DC 20002.
Reverend John L. McCullough
Executive Director& CEO
Church World Service
Joy Olson
Executive Director
Washington Office on Latin America
Oscar A. Chacón
Executive Director
National Alliance of Latin American & Caribbean Communities (NALACC)
Raymond C. Offenheiser
President
Oxfam America
Nicole Lee
Executive Director
TransAfrica Forum
Gabriela Lemus
Executive Director
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
The Reverend Dr. Michael Kinnamon
General Secretary
National Council of Churches USA
The Reverend Raquel Rodriguez
Director for the Latin America and Caribbean Desk
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)/Global Mission
Catherine Gordon
Representative for International Issues
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Marie Dennis
Director
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
John Arthur Nunes
President and CEO
Lutheran World Relief
Karen Hansen-Kuhn
Policy Director
ActionAid USA
Ms. Kimberly C. Stietz
Director of International Policy
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)/ Washington Office
José Artiga
Executive Director
SHARE Foundation: Building a New El Salvador Today
Phil Jones
Director
Church of the Brethren Witness/Washington Office
T. Michael McNulty, SJ
Justice and Peace Director
Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM)
Brooks Wicker
President
Alliance of Baptists
Laura Carlsen
Director
CIP Americas Program
Julio Gamero
Executive Director
Project Counselling Service
Kelly Nicholls
Director
U.S. Office on Colombia
The Reverend Mari Castellano
United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
James E. Winkler
General Secretary
General Board of Church and Society
United Methodist Church
James R. Stormes SJ
Secretary for Social and International Ministries
Jesuit Conference
Adam Isacson
Director of Programs
Center for International Policy
Rolando L. Santiago
Executive Director
Mennonite Central Committee U.S.
Stan Hastey
Minister for Mission & Ecumenism
Alliance of Baptists
Beth Myers
Executive Director
STITCH
Bob Guild
Consultant
Marazul Charters, Inc.
Peter G. Bourne
Chairman
MEDICC (Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba)
Delvis Fernández Levy
President
Cuban American Alliance Education Fund, Inc.
Stephen Coats
Executive Director
US Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP)
Pamela Bowman
Legislative and Research Coordinator
SOA Watch
John Cavanagh
Director
Institute for Policy Studies*
Max J. Castro
President
ENCASA US-CUBA (Emergency Network of Cuban-American Scholars and Artists for
Change in U.S.-Cuba Policy)
Silvia Wilhelm
Executive Director
Puentes Cubanos, Inc.
Cuban American Commission for Family Rights
Frank Pratka
President
Baltimore-Matanzas Sister City Association
Amanda Martin
Executive Director
Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA
Ricardo A. Gonzalez
President
Madison-Camaguey (Cuba) Sister City Association
Freddie Schrider
Business Manager
Rights Action
James Counts Early
Director, Cultural Heritage Policy
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
InterAmerican Consortium for Basic and Clinical Science
Bill Martinez
Attorney/Producer
Martinez & Associates
Rubén G. Rumbaut
Cuba Academic Initiative, Multi-Campus Program
University of California, Irvine
William F. Barr
Board Member
Alliance of Baptists
The Reverend Dr. H. James Hopkins
Pastor, Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church – Oakland, CA
Past President, Alliance of Baptists
*organization given for identification purposes only
To reply to this letter, send reply to: Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director, Latin America
Working Group, lisah@lawg.org , 424 C Street NE, Washington, DC 20002; tel. (202) 546-7010; fax (202) 543-7647.
