THIS IS AN UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Hello, I'm John Milewski, and this is Wilson Center NOW, a production of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Today my guest is Benjamin Gedan, director of the Center's Latin America
He joins us to discuss Secretary of State Marco Rubio's recent visit to some of our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. Benjamin, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for the invitation, John. So, Benjamin, when we were speaking prior to the trip, you mentioned that it was significant that Marco Rubio's first trip was to Latin America. So I did a little research in 2001 when Colin Powell went to Mexico, but only for one day, along with President Bush.
And then he went on an extended trip to the Middle East. You have to go back to 1912 to find a secretary of state who made an extensive trip to Latin America that was Philander Chase Knox, a former Pennsylvania senator who traveled to Panama, then spent a month crisscrossing Latin America from Nicaragua to Venezuela. With that historic reference point in mind, why is it historic or why is it significant that Marco Rubio chose this as his first international travel?
No, absolutely. It's the first time in 20 years, as you point out, that a secretary of state has traveled to Latin America for his or her first overseas trip and only the fourth time in history. That's a big deal for those of us who see a lot of importance in the U.S. relationship with Latin America. It rarely gets this amount of high level attention and almost whatever the agenda is.
I think it's welcome that the United States at least is acknowledging how much what happens in Latin America affects the United States directly. And before we dive into some of the substance of the trip on the stylistic level, you know, he did his press conferences in Spanish. And how significant is that? Does that really matter to the people on the ground?
It matters not only the public display of his linguistic skills, but the fact that privately he was able to have conversations in Spanish. Senator Rubio, now Secretary Rubio, has spent a career focused on not only foreign policy broadly, but on Latin America. And I think that's a huge asset right now. He has relationships in the region. He speaks Spanish.
He comes from Cuban origins. And he recognizes what the United States has at stake in many of these relationships. So you also said in prior to the trip that we would have hints afterwards of what inter American relationships will look like during the next four years. So what do you what do you the tea leaves say? What did you observe?
Yeah, here it was a bit less surprising and maybe even more traditional, which is to say that migration dominated his agenda almost in every stop. And he traveled to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala. Migration took center stage, and the major announcements from all those visits were plans for greater cooperation to accept deportees from the United States or take steps nationally to inhibit the flow of migrants toward America.
That, as I said, was something, frankly, that dominated the U.S. agenda under the last administration and even much more intensely now. So some have observed that this administration's approach to relations is less about, you know, we're friends, let's work together and more transactional. What can you do for me? Whose side are you on? What with with that in mind, how do you analyze this trip?
Yeah, I would almost say the transactional overstates it because having dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, there's not much on the other side of that transaction. The United States has been using and its relationship with Mexico and other countries in the region, the threat of tariffs, even in the case of Panama, the threat of an invasion in order to extract concessions mostly related to migration.
And so transactional sort of suggests that both sides are offering something for a short term understanding. Right now, it's a bit more the U.S. intimidating its neighbors in order to get what it wants in the short term. Are they intimidated? So far, yes. I mean, there's a huge power imbalance, as you could imagine. These are asymmetrical relationships. The United States, not only militarily but economically, dominates much of this region, particularly Central America and the Caribbean.
And so these governments have a lot to lose in antagonizing the new U.S. authorities. So, you know, Senator Rubio or Secretary Rubio now heads to on his trip. And in the meantime, in the background, we have a mini trade war with Colombia that lasted 24 or 48 hours. We have overtures about the Panama Canal. What did that how did that affect his reception on the ground and how did he handle it, walking into what could be some really, really tense situations?
I mean, mostly what he was able to offer was the reversal of the suspension of aid programs. So he would go stop to stop and say, okay, we're going to lift the suspension on existing U.S. assistance to one or several of these countries as a gesture of goodwill. And in return for these commitments to work with the United States on migration.
There were some other issues, admittedly on the agenda. The United States, for example, the Dominican Republic, worked cooperatively against Venezuela. There was the capture of a Venezuelan plane that would be then seized and brought to the United States. There were promises in Guatemala to work together on law enforcement. So there are still some issues that have elbowed their way onto the agenda.
But overwhelmingly, it was a conversation about what are the U.S. interests in stopping migration and how can these countries get in line. Have you had a chance to review any of the local press coverage from the various stops along the way? And if so, you know, how how was it covered? Was it positive? Was it negative? Was that neutral?
And anything that emerged as a pattern? I think there was some level of excitement that he was speaking Spanish and that he was visiting the region so early. As I said, I do think that's a great sign of U.S. re-engagement in the Americas. I think there was a sense of relief in many of the countries that so far they're evading what occurred with Colombia, what has occurred with Mexico, which is either some clashing between the governments or even the imposition of tariffs.
And so I think for right now, much of the region is trying to keep its head down, show that it can be a reasonable partner to the United States and avoid any backlash from Washington. Panama was one of the stops, and that perhaps was the most delicate situation given President Trump's overtures about the Canal. How did that leg of the trip go?
That was turbulent. His meetings, by all accounts, went very well. He's a professional diplomat, having worked in foreign policy his whole career. We discussed his ability to speak Spanish, his relationships in the region, and it seemed like he was working out agreements with the Panamanians. Well, short of President Trump's demands for the canal to be turned over to the United States, but steps that would have satisfied the United States, the Panama was taking seriously some of President Trump's concerns.
However, after his meetings, there were much more aggressive statements from the State Department and from the White House that ultimately siphoned a lot of the goodwill away from that relationship. And what what is the aftermath in terms of actual agreements? Is there anything of significance, substance? I know there was the offer about housing prisoners in was that in El Salvador, I believe?
Was there anything of substance that emerged? And when if if any time soon, will those things begin to manifest? Yeah, I think from the perspective of the State Department, the biggest wins from this trip were these commitments from El Salvador to welcome not only Salvadorans being removed from the United States, but also third country nationals that for one reason or another, can't be returned to their home countries and to how is Venezuelan gang members arrested in the United States in this new mega prison that El Salvador has built to house its own gang members?
Even a suggestion that United States citizens might be deported and sent to El Salvador to be detained. And then in Guatemala, a big increase in the number of deportation flights that the country would be willing to absorb and reintegrate those Guatemalans into the Guatemalan society. Is it? You know, and some have observed that with some of the agreements with Mexico and Canada to delay those tariffs, that some of these promises are easier to make and harder to actually deliver on, and then how we measure their effectiveness.
How does that notion apply to any agreements that were made during this trip? I'd say there are long term costs to this transactional, short term approach to these relationships, but these are substantial benefits for a migration agenda. So seen narrowly through the focus of the ability of the United States to meet its new ambitious targets for deportation.
It does help to have partners in the region so willing to accept these deportation flights and willing also to accept third country nationals, something Guatemala, in addition to El Salvador, has offered to do. The white noise that lingers in the back of all of this discussion that we haven't mentioned explicitly yet is the China factor and how much of this is about China's growing influence in the region and the U.S. is attempt to counter that?
Were any inroads made in that regard? I mean, in many ways, the United States is serving China's interests in the region. China, in the middle of the big dispute between the U.S. and Colombia, announced that it had its best relations with Colombia in decades. The United States, by narrowing its foreign assistance in the region. Open spaces for China to become a better partner.
The change in the United States approach to the region portrays China as a more consistent partner on a variety of issues. So I think it's probably a net loss to the United States in terms of its competition with China, except in Panama, where the government, at least for now, seems willing to take steps to minimize its relationship with China, to respond to the threats of the United States regarding the canal.
You know, I'm going to do some brazen cross promotion here and tell our viewers and listeners that Benjamin will also be our guest this week on our sister program. Need to know where we're going to be focusing specifically on the Panama issues. So check that out. You can find that in all the same places, you find this program and we'll go into more detail.
Benjamin on on that program. So now that this trip is over and it was significant symbolically and perhaps in other ways, what is the agenda look like for the Trump administration, for the United States in the region moving forward? Where are the areas that there needs to be focus? Immigration is obviously one that will always be there, but are there specific countries, specific situations that you'll expect this administration to address?
Yeah, there's a lot that's unknown. The White House hasn't announced the senior advisor on the National Security Council for Latin America, the State Department hasn't announced the senior Latin America diplomat for the region. So I think there's a lot that we don't know about how the U.S. will approach the region. One of the big questions is on so-called near shoring.
Will the United States continue, as it has in recent years, encourage big international U.S. companies to invest in Latin America instead of, for example, in China and elsewhere in East Asia? Or whether it be more of a focus on bringing that investment back to the United States. Will there be countries in the region the U.S. is forced to respond to, even if it's not on the priority list?
I think in those areas, crisis prone countries such as Haiti, Ecuador as well, that's in the middle of an election process and is losing, it appears, in its war against organized crime. And you and I were a panelist, co panelists on an old podcast, America's 3/6 Aid, dearly departed podcast. And one of our frequent themes was a check on the health of democracy in the region.
What does the temperature look like in that regard? And do you expect that to be a priority for Secretary Rubio or the Trump administration? Actually, I would put the defense of democracy on a list of priorities that are falling off the U.S. agenda in the Americas. Certainly, the issue is as relevant as it has been. But you didn't hear much discussion of that from Secretary Rubio.
He certainly talked about Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, countries where democracy has collapsed and where that individual Secretary Rubio has a long history of advocating for return to democracy. He didn't mention in El Salvador, however, which is spent more than two years living with constitutional rights, suspended and in fact, quite the opposite. There was a celebration of the war on crime in El Salvador, despite the cost to the country's democracy.
He seemed to stand by the president of Guatemala, who's hanging on by a thread and faces lots of threats to the democratic legitimacy and his presidency. But again, it's not clear issues such as democracy, the fight against corruption and environmental defense will remain at all on the U.S. Agenda for the Americas. Benjamin, thank you, as always. A concise but insightful overview of all kinds of countries and all kinds of situations happening right here in the Western Hemisphere.
We appreciate your time and your expertise. Happy to do it. Thanks, John. Okay. Our guest has been Benjamin Gedan, director of the Wilson Center Latin America Program. You can find more from them by visiting Wilson Center dot org. We hope you enjoyed this edition of Wilson Center now and that you'll join us again soon. Until then, for all of us at the center, I'm John Milewski.
Thanks for your time and interest.
