Obama's Victory Dance in Argentina
Thursday, 14 April 2016 00:00 By Michael Corcoran, Truthout | News Analysis
President Obama and Argentine President Mauricio Macri visit the Parque de
la Memoria to honor victim's of Argentina's dirty war, in Buenos Aires,
Argentina, March 24, 2016. (Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)
US President Barack Obama recently went to Argentina to welcome its newly
elected right-wing president, Mauricio Macri. Obama appeared to be in a
celebratory mood -- while he was there he danced the tango. It made for a
nice photo op. Media outlets in the United States loved the image, and
praised "Argentina's reemergence" as a chance for the country to "rejoin the
Western world."
While in Argentina, Obama was effusive in his praise of Macri; the two stood
together touting this new alliance and the prospects for new trade deals and
security agreements. Macri is replacing the populist, Bolivarian-style
leader, Cristina Kirchner. This change instantly turns Argentina from one of
the United States' most important foes in the region into an important ally.
Obama must have been well aware that Macri, despite having been in power for
just 114 days, has relentlessly engaged in what the Guardian described as a
"rapid succession of controversial presidential decrees."
THE ELECTION OF MACRI IS AN OMINOUS SIGN THAT THE RETURN OF US HEGEMONY IN
THE REGION IS LOOMING.
Macri's unsettling record includes gutting a historic media law protecting
against monopolies, drawing the ire of Pope Francis by arresting the
prominent human rights activist Milagro Sala, sneaking through Supreme Court
justices and giving himself broad new powers by declaring a state of
emergency. All of this was done within the first 100 days of his presidency,
while the opposition-led Congress was away on recess. Still, Obama showered
Macri with praise for his "contributions to the defense of human rights in
the region."
There is a reason why Obama organized an official state visit so early in
Macri's term. The new leader took control of the country from a Kirchner
administration that was allied with the continent's other left-leaning
"pink-tide" governments and therefore was at odds with US interests in the
region. The change for the United States is not just getting a new ally and
trade partner. According to Fairfield University Prof. Jennifer Adair, Obama
has assessed this transition in Argentina as evidence that "the era of
anti-Americanism had ended." As a result, Macri's victory is a potential
"watershed moment" for US foreign policy in Latin America, Adair told
Truthout.
For about 15 years, these left-wing governments had real success in escaping
the clutches of neoliberalism and offering alternatives to the Washington
Consensus, the view that "all countries should adopt" major tenets of
neoliberalism: deregulation, trade liberalization and privatization, among
others. The economic power of the United States has rarely been so fiercely
resisted in recent years. But a significant rightward shift has since
emerged -- and the election of Macri is an ominous sign that the return of
US hegemony in the region is looming.
"They want the whole of South America back the way they used to have it,"
said economist Mark Weisbrot in an interview with CounterSpin. These
geopolitical ambitions help explain Obama's unfortunate decision to offer
Macri his support and enable his abuses of power.
Embed from Getty Images
Argentina's Media Wars
Perhaps no abuse is as discouraging as Macri's relentless attack on the
country's foundation for a free and diverse media. Since taking office,
Macri has gutted the country's historic 2009 media law -- officially called
the Audiovisual Communication Services Law -- that protected the country
from media monopolies. He has also dismissed the officials who enforced the
media law and stopped the left-leaning cable channel teleSUR (a content
partner of Truthout) from airing on public television.
On April 8, a hearing on the impact of Macri's dismantling of the law was
held in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
"It's important that the Inter-American Commission know about these
modifications and can monitor the consequences that this type of measures
will have," said Diego Morales, director of the Center for Legal and Social
Studies' Litigation and Legal Defense Department, in an interview with
Truthout. The IACHR is empowered to investigate the impacts of the change of
the law, but its recommendations are advisory and nonbinding.
The hearing is just the latest clash over the law, which survived a judicial
challenge in 2013, and was the result of massive social mobilization and
struggle. The law has been hailed by Frank La Rue, the former UN special
rapporteur on freedom of expression, as "an example for the entire
continent." Reporters Without Borders was also supportive of the law, saying
it would "reinforce freedom of information and the public debate, because it
allows a broader spectrum of public opinion to express itself legally."
The law was crucial in Argentina where media consolidation was especially
problematic. Argentina's largest media conglomerate, the Clarín Group, owned
158 licenses and had a 47 percent market share of cable television,
according to the Financial Times. "They own newspapers, TV channels, ...
cable operators, publishing houses, news channels, content production
companies and internet companies, all nationwide," said Fernando Krakowiak,
a journalist at the left-leaning newspaper Pagina/12, in an interview with
Truthout. "Their political influence is overwhelming.
The new law reduced the number of stations and licenses a company could
have, dictating that a single company could have no more than 24 cable
television licenses and 10 free-to-air radio or television licenses. The law
required anyone with more licenses than allowed to go through a divestment
procedure, although Clarín's failed judicial challenge "frustrated the full
implementation of the law," Krakowiak told Truthout.
He said he "agreed with the audiovisual media law," which is true of most of
the nation's journalists, according to a 2011 poll from the Argentine
Journalism Forum.
"MACRI WANTS TO TAKE THE MEDIA BACK TO WHAT IT WAS IN THE 1990S. THEY WANT
TO LIMIT THE DEBATE."
The momentum from Argentina had encouraged many of its neighbors to attempt
similar reforms. "Latin America has made a breakthrough [from] the
neoliberal model, which proposed the exclusion of the masses and
concentrated economic and political power and resources in a few hands,"
said Martín Sabbatella, who was in charge of enforcing Argentina's media
law, in a 2013 interview with the Guardian. "The media in Latin America were
for years in the hands of a few powerful people. It's time to give a voice
to invisible people."
Indeed, at the April 8 hearing, IACHR commissioner Francisco José Eguiguren
Praeli said Argentina's law helped bring about media reform in Uruguay,
which passed its own legislation in December 2014. Reporters Without Borders
praised the reform in Uruguay as having even stronger safeguards and said it
could "be a source for inspiration" for future improvements in media law.
But with Macri's decree, things have changed dramatically. In an interview
with Truthout, Philip Kitzberger, a leading media scholar in Latin America,
said the decree "completely lifted any limits on audience caps license
numbers," and "eliminated any public service responsibility obligations" for
radio and television.
"They can now be treated like any commodity that can be traded on the
market," said Kitzberger, a professor at Torcuato di Tella University. "All
of the changes will doubtlessly promote further concentration in the already
concentrated media market."
Many of these tactics from Macri seemed to be aimed directly at the region's
leftist governments. This is most clearly seen in Macri's announcement that
he would pull teleSUR -- the cable network that was founded and sponsored in
2005 by most of the pink-tide countries, including Argentina -- off the air.
Now, Macri is simultaneously empowering private media empires, like the
Clarín Group, while attempting to remove the left-leaning teleSUR from the
air.
"When the Clarín Group was covering Michael Jackson's funeral, we were
covering the 2009 coup in Honduras," Patricia Villegas, the president of
teleSUR, told Truthout. "Macri wants to take the media back to what it was
in the 1990s, covering clothes and fashion and sports. They want to limit
the debate. TeleSUR wants to cover news, opinion and a debate."
Villegas said the station is still airing in much of Argentina but has lost
about 30 percent of its access to the region. Since the announcement,
Argentines have held demonstrations and, according to Villegas, have been
going to teleSUR's website in record numbers. "They want to see what teleSUR
is covering," she said.
Kitzberger has long studied the use of media in the continent's politics,
authoring a 2010 paper for the Journal of Politics in Latin America, in
which he analyzed the role of "media activism on the part of leftist
government in Latin America." In it he reaches this prescient conclusion:
"The [politicization] of media and communication realities in the midst of
these [political and economic] transitions will deeply affect the future
shape and role of the media in Latin American democratic politics in
unpredictable ways."
US Media Portray Media Empire as Victim
As the media wars were raging in Argentina, the dominant media in the United
States portrayed the massive media conglomerate, the Clarín Group, as the
poor victim of an overzealous socialist regime. "US news stories covering
the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the media law tended to read like
press releases for [the Clarín Group], leading with the consequences it will
have on the monolithic media conglomerate," said Ramiro S. Fúnez, a Honduran
journalist writing for the North American Congress on Latin American
Affairs.
In 2013, The Washington Post's editorial board described the Clarín Group's
flagship paper, Clarín, as being a "newspaper under siege," and decried the
country's Supreme Court for upholding a law "aimed at destroying one of
South America's most important media firms."
The Post seemed to portray the mere concept of media ownership restrictions
as some kind of statist crackdown on the press. Yet, the restrictions made
by Kirchner's law are nearly identical to the ownership restrictions
introduced in 1996 in the United States under the Telecommunications Act,
which prohibited any single network from controlling stations with a
national audience of more than 35 percent of television households. The 35
percent rule was changed to 45 percent in 2003, but these restrictions do
continue to exist in the United States. Using The Post's logic, Rupert
Murdoch's News Corp. could be portrayed as a victim of draconian media laws,
a laughable assertion to be sure.
But this sentiment was echoed many times over by other outlets, including
The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and the Miami Herald, whose
columnist Roger Noriega chided the law as "an attack on independent media"
that is "lifted from the playbook of leftist caudillos in Venezuela,
Ecuador, Bolivia and elsewhere." Again, there was no mention of US media
policy, which demonstrates the paper's doctrinal assumption that if
something is done by someone outside of Washington's favor, it is an
egregious assault on democracy, no matter what it actually is or who else
does it.
Macri as a Media Darling
Of course, as fallacious as this coverage is, it is entirely predictable.
The major US media outlets have been proven to have a deeply ingrained
institutional bias against geopolitical foes of the United States,
especially in countries like Venezuela, Honduras and Bolivia, whose leaders
have challenged US hegemony. This is in stark contrast to the way they often
cover -- or fail to cover -- the human rights abuses of US allies, including
in Latin America.
The media trend certainly applies in the case of President Macri who has
been warmly embraced by Western media. The aforementioned Washington Post
editorial claimed that Macri gave "the country a chance to rejoin the
Western world -- and dealt a blow to Latin America's already flagging
socialist camp."
The "60 Minutes" feature on Macri was filled with unabashed adulation. "In a
flash, Argentina has become pro-American," the show said as it introduced
the United States to the man who would purportedly save Argentina from "a
morass of debt, inflation and economic isolation." Showing Macri with his
wife and daughter, Lesley Stahl gushed: "Watching them ... you can't help
but think of the Kennedys and Camelot."
Stahl did not bother to mention the controversial arrest of Milagro Sala,
which was carried out at the urging of Macri's ally, Gov. Gerardo Morales.
Since then Macri's administration has dismissed efforts for her release and
has ignored widespread concern and outrage expressed by Pope Francis,
Amnesty International, the United Nations and the Center for Legal and
Social Studies (though not a word from the White House). For that matter,
The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal also failed to cover the
story at all. Sala did get one mention in The New York Times, but it was in
an op-ed written by human rights advocates from Argentina, meaning the news
department did not think her arrest warranted a single mention.
Why Macri Matters
It is no accident that the US press and government share such enthusiasm for
Macri and such a shameful indifference to the victims of his undemocratic
rule. In fact, in light of Macri's policies in favor of the corporate media
in his country, it makes perfect sense. Just like the Clarín Group, the US
media are owned and operated by the wealthiest people in the country -- the
very same 1% that spends hundreds of millions of dollars funding campaigns
for most of Congress and almost every presidential candidate, to say nothing
of the money lost in the darkness of Citizens United that we may never see.
It is no wonder then why the interests of these wealthy elites are shared by
US politicians and officials. This billionaire class has done very well in
the last few decades as neoliberalism has ruled the global economy. After
losing most of its grip on Latin America -- a region that has been dominated
by US interests for many decades -- the prospects for opening the region
back up to Western economic subjugation, harsh austerity measures and more
"free trade" policies would be a major victory for Washington. It would
neutralize the organized resistance to neoliberalism that provided, for a
fleeting moment anyway, the hope for economic alternatives. Under this
scenario, organizations that aim to challenge US power, however modestly,
will weaken. The Union of South American Nations and the Bank of the South,
for instance, have both included Argentina. Macri's election already hurts
the organizations considerably.
THE BOLIVARIAN PROJECT IS MORE THAN JUST A SOCIALIST NUISANCE. IT IS AN OPEN
REBELLION AGAINST US POWER.
Perhaps more importantly, stemming the left in Latin America would also
serve to help the United States compete against its major geopolitical
rivals, like China and Russia. In recent years Venezuela has engaged in
numerous arms deals with Russia. Likewise, Venezuelan-Chinese relations
increased radically during Hugo Chávez's presidency. According to the
Venezuelan Trade Ministry, trade went from less than $500 million annually
before 1999 to more than $7.5 billion when it peaked in 2009, making
Venezuela China's second-largest trade partner, behind the United States.
According to Venezuela Analysis, this relationship is a "crucial part of
Venezuela's project for a 'multi-polar world order.'" That phrase refers to
the belief that the "uncontested supremacy of the United States," as Dilip
Hiro describes it, will not persist in the 21st century.
This is not an idea that advocates of US exceptionalism welcome. As Charles
Krauthammer wrote in a 1991 essay in Foreign Affairs, "the center of world
power is the unchallenged superpower, the United States, attended by its
Western allies." In a 2002 follow-up, he doubled down, "unashamedly, for
maintaining unipolarity, for sustaining America's unrivaled dominance for
the foreseeable future." Now, more than 25 years after the Cold War's end,
the debate rages on. Observers such as Russian President Vladimir Putin see
a United States already on the decline: Putin has argued that the "myth
about the uni-polar world fell apart once and for all in Iraq."
But many advocates of US exceptionalism, in the highest levels of government
and academia, remain as steadfast as ever. These include President Obama,
who in his 2012 State of the Union said, "Anyone who tells you that America
is in decline, or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're
talking about." The magazine Foreign Policy reported that Obama's words were
influenced greatly by an essay in the New Republic by arch unilateralist
Robert Kagan about the "myth of American decline." Kagan has since expanded
this defense of unipolarity into a book called The World America Made.
In decline or not, since nation-states don't willingly cede their place as
the center of world power, the Bolivarian project is more than just a
socialist nuisance. It is an open rebellion against US power. This helps
explain US policy in the region, from coups in Venezuela and Honduras (the
latter with the complicity of Hillary Clinton, who may well attend the next
state dinner in Latin America), to its current embrace of Macri, who just
helped bring the second-largest country on the continent back under the US
umbrella.
Under these circumstances it becomes entirely predictable, if unsettling,
that the United States would favor its own geopolitical and economic power
more than the rights and dignity of the nation's people. "Argentina was at
the forefront. This election might be a landmark moment," Jennifer Adair
said. "We could be seeing the ebbing of the pink tide [and] an alarming
return to the right-wing austerity policies of the past ... It sort of feels
like déjà vu.
"The Bad Old Days"
The past is a sensitive subject in Latin America. During his visit, Obama
spoke about how the United States was complicit in the country's "dirty
wars" of the 1970s, which was a nearly decade-long stretch of state
terrorism that killed thousands of activists, unionists and students. Obama
announced the US government would release classified documents from that
time.
Releasing documents would not be an entirely empty gesture. Those documents
should see the light of day. But the documents largely reveal what we
already know to be true -- that the United States has a long and bloody
history in Latin America. What is of far greater concern is the future.
Recent events, however, leave little room for hope that the United States
will change its ways. This does not appear likely to change in the next
presidency, especially as the region's organized resistance is weakening. As
Robert Naiman wrote in a Truthout article describing Clinton's support for
the Honduran coup regime, "There is a 200-year legacy of US military
intervention and subversion in Latin America that didn't stop in January
2009. It's hard to have confidence that former Secretary Clinton will end
this legacy as president when she used her power as secretary of state to
turn the clock backwards."
The day Obama landed in Argentina, Gastón Chillier and Ernesto Semán
published a New York Times op-ed titled "What Obama Should Know About
Macri's Argentina." It is one of the few reports in the mainstream media
that included pointed criticisms of Macri's tenure as president. They wrote:
A presidential visit to Argentina that neglects to notice how Mr. Macri's
government is undermining human rights and democratic institutions -- and
instead pours empty praise on his policies -- will rightly be read as a
return to the bad old days.
The next day Obama was doing the tango. Hopefully, he can forgive those in
Argentina who were in no mood to join him in the celebration.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
MICHAEL CORCORAN
Michael Corcoran is a journalist based in Boston. He has written for The
Boston Globe, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, Extra!, NACLA
Report on the Americas and other publications. Follow him on Twitter:
@mcorcoran3.
RELATED STORIES
Kirchner Promotes UNASUR and CELAC, Criticizes NSA spying at UN Security
Council
By Alex Main, Center for Economic Policy Research | Report
Argentina Faces US Contempt Hearing and Daily $50,000 Penalty for Failure to
Pay Hedge Funds
By Staff, Jubilee USA | Press Release
Argentine Social Movements Strike Back Against Monsanto
By Translated by Nancy Piñeiro, Darío Aranda, teleSUR | Op-Ed
________________________________________
Show Comments
Hide Comments
<a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref";>View the discussion
thread.</a>
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Obama's Victory Dance in Argentina
Thursday, 14 April 2016 00:00 By Michael Corcoran, Truthout | News Analysis
font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
reference not valid.
President Obama and Argentine President Mauricio Macri visit the
Parque de la Memoria to honor victim's of Argentina's dirty war, in Buenos
Aires, Argentina, March 24, 2016. (Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)
US President Barack Obama recently went to Argentina to welcome its
newly elected right-wing president, Mauricio Macri. Obama appeared to be in
a celebratory mood -- while he was there he danced the tango. It made for a
nice photo op. Media outlets in the United States loved the image, and
praised "Argentina's reemergence" as a chance for the country to "rejoin the
Western world."
While in Argentina, Obama was effusive in his praise of Macri; the two stood
together touting this new alliance and the prospects for new trade deals and
security agreements. Macri is replacing the populist, Bolivarian-style
leader, Cristina Kirchner. This change instantly turns Argentina from one of
the United States' most important foes in the region into an important ally.
Obama must have been well aware that Macri, despite having been in power for
just 114 days, has relentlessly engaged in what the Guardian described as a
"rapid succession of controversial presidential decrees."
The election of Macri is an ominous sign that the return of US hegemony in
the region is looming.
Macri's unsettling record includes gutting a historic media law protecting
against monopolies, drawing the ire of Pope Francis by arresting the
prominent human rights activist Milagro Sala, sneaking through Supreme Court
justices and giving himself broad new powers by declaring a state of
emergency. All of this was done within the first 100 days of his presidency,
while the opposition-led Congress was away on recess. Still, Obama showered
Macri with praise for his "contributions to the defense of human rights in
the region."
There is a reason why Obama organized an official state visit so early in
Macri's term. The new leader took control of the country from a Kirchner
administration that was allied with the continent's other left-leaning
"pink-tide" governments and therefore was at odds with US interests in the
region. The change for the United States is not just getting a new ally and
trade partner. According to Fairfield University Prof. Jennifer Adair, Obama
has assessed this transition in Argentina as evidence that "the era of
anti-Americanism had ended." As a result, Macri's victory is a potential
"watershed moment" for US foreign policy in Latin America, Adair told
Truthout.
For about 15 years, these left-wing governments had real success in escaping
the clutches of neoliberalism and offering alternatives to the Washington
Consensus, the view that "all countries should adopt" major tenets of
neoliberalism: deregulation, trade liberalization and privatization, among
others. The economic power of the United States has rarely been so fiercely
resisted in recent years. But a significant rightward shift has since
emerged -- and the election of Macri is an ominous sign that the return of
US hegemony in the region is looming.
"They want the whole of South America back the way they used to have it,"
said economist Mark Weisbrot in an interview with CounterSpin. These
geopolitical ambitions help explain Obama's unfortunate decision to offer
Macri his support and enable his abuses of power.
Embed from Getty Images
Argentina's Media Wars
Perhaps no abuse is as discouraging as Macri's relentless attack on the
country's foundation for a free and diverse media. Since taking office,
Macri has gutted the country's historic 2009 media law -- officially called
the Audiovisual Communication Services Law -- that protected the country
from media monopolies. He has also dismissed the officials who enforced the
media law and stopped the left-leaning cable channel teleSUR (a content
partner of Truthout) from airing on public television.
On April 8, a hearing on the impact of Macri's dismantling of the law was
held in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
"It's important that the Inter-American Commission know about these
modifications and can monitor the consequences that this type of measures
will have," said Diego Morales, director of the Center for Legal and Social
Studies' Litigation and Legal Defense Department, in an interview with
Truthout. The IACHR is empowered to investigate the impacts of the change of
the law, but its recommendations are advisory and nonbinding.
The hearing is just the latest clash over the law, which survived a judicial
challenge in 2013, and was the result of massive social mobilization and
struggle. The law has been hailed by Frank La Rue, the former UN special
rapporteur on freedom of expression, as "an example for the entire
continent." Reporters Without Borders was also supportive of the law, saying
it would "reinforce freedom of information and the public debate, because it
allows a broader spectrum of public opinion to express itself legally."
The law was crucial in Argentina where media consolidation was especially
problematic. Argentina's largest media conglomerate, the Clarín Group, owned
158 licenses and had a 47 percent market share of cable television,
according to the Financial Times. "They own newspapers, TV channels, ...
cable operators, publishing houses, news channels, content production
companies and internet companies, all nationwide," said Fernando Krakowiak,
a journalist at the left-leaning newspaper Pagina/12, in an interview with
Truthout. "Their political influence is overwhelming.
The new law reduced the number of stations and licenses a company could
have, dictating that a single company could have no more than 24 cable
television licenses and 10 free-to-air radio or television licenses. The law
required anyone with more licenses than allowed to go through a divestment
procedure, although Clarín's failed judicial challenge "frustrated the full
implementation of the law," Krakowiak told Truthout.
He said he "agreed with the audiovisual media law," which is true of most of
the nation's journalists, according to a 2011 poll from the Argentine
Journalism Forum.
"Macri wants to take the media back to what it was in the 1990s. They want
to limit the debate."
The momentum from Argentina had encouraged many of its neighbors to attempt
similar reforms. "Latin America has made a breakthrough [from] the
neoliberal model, which proposed the exclusion of the masses and
concentrated economic and political power and resources in a few hands,"
said Martín Sabbatella, who was in charge of enforcing Argentina's media
law, in a 2013 interview with the Guardian. "The media in Latin America were
for years in the hands of a few powerful people. It's time to give a voice
to invisible people."
Indeed, at the April 8 hearing, IACHR commissioner Francisco José Eguiguren
Praeli said Argentina's law helped bring about media reform in Uruguay,
which passed its own legislation in December 2014. Reporters Without Borders
praised the reform in Uruguay as having even stronger safeguards and said it
could "be a source for inspiration" for future improvements in media law.
But with Macri's decree, things have changed dramatically. In an interview
with Truthout, Philip Kitzberger, a leading media scholar in Latin America,
said the decree "completely lifted any limits on audience caps license
numbers," and "eliminated any public service responsibility obligations" for
radio and television.
"They can now be treated like any commodity that can be traded on the
market," said Kitzberger, a professor at Torcuato di Tella University. "All
of the changes will doubtlessly promote further concentration in the already
concentrated media market."
Many of these tactics from Macri seemed to be aimed directly at the region's
leftist governments. This is most clearly seen in Macri's announcement that
he would pull teleSUR -- the cable network that was founded and sponsored in
2005 by most of the pink-tide countries, including Argentina -- off the air.
Now, Macri is simultaneously empowering private media empires, like the
Clarín Group, while attempting to remove the left-leaning teleSUR from the
air.
"When the Clarín Group was covering Michael Jackson's funeral, we were
covering the 2009 coup in Honduras," Patricia Villegas, the president of
teleSUR, told Truthout. "Macri wants to take the media back to what it was
in the 1990s, covering clothes and fashion and sports. They want to limit
the debate. TeleSUR wants to cover news, opinion and a debate."
Villegas said the station is still airing in much of Argentina but has lost
about 30 percent of its access to the region. Since the announcement,
Argentines have held demonstrations and, according to Villegas, have been
going to teleSUR's website in record numbers. "They want to see what teleSUR
is covering," she said.
Kitzberger has long studied the use of media in the continent's politics,
authoring a 2010 paper for the Journal of Politics in Latin America, in
which he analyzed the role of "media activism on the part of leftist
government in Latin America." In it he reaches this prescient conclusion:
"The [politicization] of media and communication realities in the midst of
these [political and economic] transitions will deeply affect the future
shape and role of the media in Latin American democratic politics in
unpredictable ways."
US Media Portray Media Empire as Victim
As the media wars were raging in Argentina, the dominant media in the United
States portrayed the massive media conglomerate, the Clarín Group, as the
poor victim of an overzealous socialist regime. "US news stories covering
the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the media law tended to read like
press releases for [the Clarín Group], leading with the consequences it will
have on the monolithic media conglomerate," said Ramiro S. Fúnez, a Honduran
journalist writing for the North American Congress on Latin American
Affairs.
In 2013, The Washington Post's editorial board described the Clarín Group's
flagship paper, Clarín, as being a "newspaper under siege," and decried the
country's Supreme Court for upholding a law "aimed at destroying one of
South America's most important media firms."
The Post seemed to portray the mere concept of media ownership restrictions
as some kind of statist crackdown on the press. Yet, the restrictions made
by Kirchner's law are nearly identical to the ownership restrictions
introduced in 1996 in the United States under the Telecommunications Act,
which prohibited any single network from controlling stations with a
national audience of more than 35 percent of television households. The 35
percent rule was changed to 45 percent in 2003, but these restrictions do
continue to exist in the United States. Using The Post's logic, Rupert
Murdoch's News Corp. could be portrayed as a victim of draconian media laws,
a laughable assertion to be sure.
But this sentiment was echoed many times over by other outlets, including
The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and the Miami Herald, whose
columnist Roger Noriega chided the law as "an attack on independent media"
that is "lifted from the playbook of leftist caudillos in Venezuela,
Ecuador, Bolivia and elsewhere." Again, there was no mention of US media
policy, which demonstrates the paper's doctrinal assumption that if
something is done by someone outside of Washington's favor, it is an
egregious assault on democracy, no matter what it actually is or who else
does it.
Macri as a Media Darling
Of course, as fallacious as this coverage is, it is entirely predictable.
The major US media outlets have been proven to have a deeply ingrained
institutional bias against geopolitical foes of the United States,
especially in countries like Venezuela, Honduras and Bolivia, whose leaders
have challenged US hegemony. This is in stark contrast to the way they often
cover -- or fail to cover -- the human rights abuses of US allies, including
in Latin America.
The media trend certainly applies in the case of President Macri who has
been warmly embraced by Western media. The aforementioned Washington Post
editorial claimed that Macri gave "the country a chance to rejoin the
Western world -- and dealt a blow to Latin America's already flagging
socialist camp."
The "60 Minutes" feature on Macri was filled with unabashed adulation. "In a
flash, Argentina has become pro-American," the show said as it introduced
the United States to the man who would purportedly save Argentina from "a
morass of debt, inflation and economic isolation." Showing Macri with his
wife and daughter, Lesley Stahl gushed: "Watching them ... you can't help
but think of the Kennedys and Camelot."
Stahl did not bother to mention the controversial arrest of Milagro Sala,
which was carried out at the urging of Macri's ally, Gov. Gerardo Morales.
Since then Macri's administration has dismissed efforts for her release and
has ignored widespread concern and outrage expressed by Pope Francis,
Amnesty International, the United Nations and the Center for Legal and
Social Studies (though not a word from the White House). For that matter,
The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal also failed to cover the
story at all. Sala did get one mention in The New York Times, but it was in
an op-ed written by human rights advocates from Argentina, meaning the news
department did not think her arrest warranted a single mention.
Why Macri Matters
It is no accident that the US press and government share such enthusiasm for
Macri and such a shameful indifference to the victims of his undemocratic
rule. In fact, in light of Macri's policies in favor of the corporate media
in his country, it makes perfect sense. Just like the Clarín Group, the US
media are owned and operated by the wealthiest people in the country -- the
very same 1% that spends hundreds of millions of dollars funding campaigns
for most of Congress and almost every presidential candidate, to say nothing
of the money lost in the darkness of Citizens United that we may never see.
It is no wonder then why the interests of these wealthy elites are shared by
US politicians and officials. This billionaire class has done very well in
the last few decades as neoliberalism has ruled the global economy. After
losing most of its grip on Latin America -- a region that has been dominated
by US interests for many decades -- the prospects for opening the region
back up to Western economic subjugation, harsh austerity measures and more
"free trade" policies would be a major victory for Washington. It would
neutralize the organized resistance to neoliberalism that provided, for a
fleeting moment anyway, the hope for economic alternatives. Under this
scenario, organizations that aim to challenge US power, however modestly,
will weaken. The Union of South American Nations and the Bank of the South,
for instance, have both included Argentina. Macri's election already hurts
the organizations considerably.
The Bolivarian project is more than just a socialist nuisance. It is an open
rebellion against US power.
Perhaps more importantly, stemming the left in Latin America would also
serve to help the United States compete against its major geopolitical
rivals, like China and Russia. In recent years Venezuela has engaged in
numerous arms deals with Russia. Likewise, Venezuelan-Chinese relations
increased radically during Hugo Chávez's presidency. According to the
Venezuelan Trade Ministry, trade went from less than $500 million annually
before 1999 to more than $7.5 billion when it peaked in 2009, making
Venezuela China's second-largest trade partner, behind the United States.
According to Venezuela Analysis, this relationship is a "crucial part of
Venezuela's project for a 'multi-polar world order.'" That phrase refers to
the belief that the "uncontested supremacy of the United States," as Dilip
Hiro describes it, will not persist in the 21st century.
This is not an idea that advocates of US exceptionalism welcome. As Charles
Krauthammer wrote in a 1991 essay in Foreign Affairs, "the center of world
power is the unchallenged superpower, the United States, attended by its
Western allies." In a 2002 follow-up, he doubled down, "unashamedly, for
maintaining unipolarity, for sustaining America's unrivaled dominance for
the foreseeable future." Now, more than 25 years after the Cold War's end,
the debate rages on. Observers such as Russian President Vladimir Putin see
a United States already on the decline: Putin has argued that the "myth
about the uni-polar world fell apart once and for all in Iraq."
But many advocates of US exceptionalism, in the highest levels of government
and academia, remain as steadfast as ever. These include President Obama,
who in his 2012 State of the Union said, "Anyone who tells you that America
is in decline, or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're
talking about." The magazine Foreign Policy reported that Obama's words were
influenced greatly by an essay in the New Republic by arch unilateralist
Robert Kagan about the "myth of American decline." Kagan has since expanded
this defense of unipolarity into a book called The World America Made.
In decline or not, since nation-states don't willingly cede their place as
the center of world power, the Bolivarian project is more than just a
socialist nuisance. It is an open rebellion against US power. This helps
explain US policy in the region, from coups in Venezuela and Honduras (the
latter with the complicity of Hillary Clinton, who may well attend the next
state dinner in Latin America), to its current embrace of Macri, who just
helped bring the second-largest country on the continent back under the US
umbrella.
Under these circumstances it becomes entirely predictable, if unsettling,
that the United States would favor its own geopolitical and economic power
more than the rights and dignity of the nation's people. "Argentina was at
the forefront. This election might be a landmark moment," Jennifer Adair
said. "We could be seeing the ebbing of the pink tide [and] an alarming
return to the right-wing austerity policies of the past ... It sort of feels
like déjà vu.
"The Bad Old Days"
The past is a sensitive subject in Latin America. During his visit, Obama
spoke about how the United States was complicit in the country's "dirty
wars" of the 1970s, which was a nearly decade-long stretch of state
terrorism that killed thousands of activists, unionists and students. Obama
announced the US government would release classified documents from that
time.
Releasing documents would not be an entirely empty gesture. Those documents
should see the light of day. But the documents largely reveal what we
already know to be true -- that the United States has a long and bloody
history in Latin America. What is of far greater concern is the future.
Recent events, however, leave little room for hope that the United States
will change its ways. This does not appear likely to change in the next
presidency, especially as the region's organized resistance is weakening. As
Robert Naiman wrote in a Truthout article describing Clinton's support for
the Honduran coup regime, "There is a 200-year legacy of US military
intervention and subversion in Latin America that didn't stop in January
2009. It's hard to have confidence that former Secretary Clinton will end
this legacy as president when she used her power as secretary of state to
turn the clock backwards."
The day Obama landed in Argentina, Gastón Chillier and Ernesto Semán
published a New York Times op-ed titled "What Obama Should Know About
Macri's Argentina." It is one of the few reports in the mainstream media
that included pointed criticisms of Macri's tenure as president. They wrote:
A presidential visit to Argentina that neglects to notice how Mr. Macri's
government is undermining human rights and democratic institutions -- and
instead pours empty praise on his policies -- will rightly be read as a
return to the bad old days.
The next day Obama was doing the tango. Hopefully, he can forgive those in
Argentina who were in no mood to join him in the celebration.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Michael Corcoran
Michael Corcoran is a journalist based in Boston. He has written for The
Boston Globe, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, Extra!, NACLA
Report on the Americas and other publications. Follow him on Twitter:
@mcorcoran3.
Related Stories
Kirchner Promotes UNASUR and CELAC, Criticizes NSA spying at UN Security
Council
By Alex Main, Center for Economic Policy Research | Report Argentina Faces
US Contempt Hearing and Daily $50,000 Penalty for Failure to Pay Hedge Funds
By Staff, Jubilee USA | Press ReleaseArgentine Social Movements Strike Back
Against Monsanto
By Translated by Nancy Piñeiro, Darío Aranda, teleSUR | Op-Ed
Show Comments
