"Bush Aide Seeks Better US Image in Latin America," by Pablo Bachelet - the Miami Herald, 18 April 2006
Karen Hughes, the Bush administration's chief image strategist, is well aware that many Latin Americans hold a dim view of U.S. policies. So she has launched a campaign to make her government simpático.
Better known for her efforts to improve the Muslim world's view of Washington and as a Bush confidante, Hughes is boosting the region's student exchange programs, allowing ambassadors to speak out more, deploying new public relations specialists and revising aid programs to make a bigger impact.
The State Department's under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, Hughes returned last month from her second trip to the region, which included stops in Brazil, Panama, El Salvador, Chile and Colombia.
There, she underscored the central U.S. message to Latin Americans: We are friends, we are neighbors, and we can do more for our people working together.
''We recognize that we have problems in our own country and in many countries throughout Latin America that are similar,'' she told The Miami Herald in an interview. ``And we want . . . to deliver on democracy for our citizens.''
But turning around Latin America's opinions of the U.S. government won't be easy.
Over recent years, many countries in the region have swung away from the free-market policies strongly pushed by Washington. And its people have elected a string of leftist presidents like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales....
Three out of every five Latin Americans distrust the United States, a recent regional poll by the Chile-based Latinobarómetro firm showed. And only one in four members of the Latin American elites held a favorable view of Bush, according to a poll last summer by The Miami Herald, University of Miami and Zogby-International.
Marta Lagos, who heads Latinobarómetro, said many Latin Americans see Washington's foreign policy as arrogant and uncaring of the region's troubles.
''It's not about communications,'' she said of Hughes' public relations efforts. ``It may do something but it may not be enough. [Latin Americans] want to be considered equals.''
Critics also say that U.S. diplomats have fallen out of touch with the realities in the region.
''[Embassy] guest lists generally represent former government officials, retired ambassadors and senior military figures, and social elites,'' said Riordan Roett, who heads the Latin America program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. ``It is hard to find those who represent labor unions, indigenous groups, student movements, non-governmental organizations.''
Hughes, a Texan credited with helping to catapult President Bush's political career in the 1990s, spends most of her time and effort on the Muslim world. But when she took her job last summer, he asked her to make Latin America one of her priorities, she said.
Hughes' aides say she feels at ease in the region. She lived in Panama as a girl when her father, Harold Parfitt, was the last U.S. governor of the U.S. Canal Zone from 1975 to 1978. Her Spanish, though rough, is still strong enough for her to tackle the occasional media query in that language.
''A lot of South America, the tropical breezes, the beauty and the Spanish feel like home to me,'' Hughes said.
Hughes, 49 years old and a former TV journalist, says most Latin Americans still like the United States -- the Zogby poll showed 71 percent of Latin American elites held a positive view of the United States, though not its president -- but acknowledged many believe Washington is ignoring them.
The way she sees it, the Bush administration is doing plenty, but most Latin Americans just don't know about it. She wants to make aid ''more visible and higher profile'' and ''then communicate that more effectively,'' she said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a House panel this month that ''in some ways we, I guess, don't toot our own horn'' on U.S. aid programs.
Few Latin Americans are aware, Hughes noted, that the Bush administration had doubled development assistance to Latin America, from $862 million in 2001 to a requested $1.7 billion for the 2007 fiscal year. But the aid is ''scattered,'' she added, and does not get the recognition it deserves....
To combat anti-U.S. attitudes, Hughes said, Latin America has been getting more money for student and youth exchange programs, as part of a worldwide effort to bring young people into the United States.
The Bush administration will spend $41 million in Latin America this year on such programs, up from $35 million in 2004.
''I'm focused particularly on young people and those who influence them,'' she noted.
She's also deploying more State Department public diplomacy officials, who manage the exchange programs and handle public relations, to troubled countries like Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia.
And she wants all U.S. ambassadors everywhere to speak out more. Diplomatic envoys now don't have to ask permission from Washington before speaking to the media.
In one of her most ambitious moves, she set up a rapid-response unit in the State Department, which scours news headlines around the world and quickly puts out guidelines so U.S. diplomats can promptly respond to international news events.
''I think it's important that they understand what the people of Latin America are waking up and hearing and reading about,'' she said. ``What that does is tries to get the United States government, literarily, on the same page.''
The suggestion that US diplomats need a DC-based rapid response unit to tell them what local publics "are waking up and hearing and reading about" bewilders me. Reviewing local media -- and just plain talking to people about what's going on -- were primary activities at every embassy I served at (well, in the USIS section, anyway).
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