BUENOS AIRES — The Bush administration's self-proclaimed "year of engagement" with Latin America kicked off last week with broadsides against Venezuela and Iran, a diplomatic tiff with Argentina and analysts wondering whether it all wasn't a little late in the game.
"A veritable diplomatic offensive by a government that has only concentrated on Iraq," wrote veteran correspondent Gustavo Sierra in the Argentine newspaper Clarin after a visit here by R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of State for political affairs, and Thomas A. Shannon, the administration's top diplomat for Latin America.
The pair also visited Brazil, and U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales made a separate visit last week to Argentina and Brazil. The White House confirmed that President Bush would venture to Latin America in March, with stops scheduled in Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.
The moves are widely seen in South America as an effort to counter the influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has wooed his fellow leaders with oil subsidies, foreign aid and a steady diet of invective targeting "the devil" Bush.
It has become conventional wisdom here, even among U.S. allies, that the Bush administration's fixation on Iraq and the Middle East has left Latin America, once the focus of Cold War conflicts, largely ignored, except for U.S. insistence on aggressive drug-interdiction and free-trade policies.
Chavez has gleefully exploited that void, which many think will widen as a politically debilitated Bush assumes lame-duck status.
The White House effort "is catch up and see what we can salvage," said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia.
U.S. officials embraced the "year of engagement" theme after recent elections put leftists in charge in much of the region, including pro-Chavez presidents in Ecuador and Bolivia. Conservative and pro-U.S. administrations were elected in key allies Colombia and Mexico.
The Bush administration says it has an ability to work across the ideological spectrum.
"Coming out of 2006, we thought it was very important to start 2007 very quickly with as many trips into the region at as high a level as possible," Burns said in Washington before leaving for South America.
Although U.S. diplomats insisted that the initiative was not intended to counter Chavez's spreading influence, the subject has inevitably flared.
