So Condoleeza Rice is wrapping up her five day trip to Latin America and how did mainstream media cover it? Let’s look first at the recent decision on the Secretary General of the Organization of American States.

It’s no secret that the Bush administration was supporting Luis Ernesto Derbez, the Mexican Foreign Minister. Yesterday, however, Derbez withdrew when it appeared that Chilean Foreign Minister Miguel Insulza was going to be confirmed. So, how did two major media outlets handle the story? The Miami Herald headline reads as follows: “Rice seals deal naming new head of the OAS.” The New York Times headline states “O.A.S. to Pick Chile Socialist U.S. Opposed as Its Leader.” I know that the writers do not select the headline, but here is the text from Pablo Bachelet’s article in the Herald relating to the headline:

The agreement, brokered in part by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made Chile’s socialist Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza virtually certain to win the post of secretary general when the OAS meets Monday in Washington.

[…]

U.S. officials portrayed the deal not as a loss for the U.S.-backed Derbez but as a victory for Rice, saying she worked hard to bring about the deal and worked with Insulza on the wording of his lengthy statement. Rice delayed her departure Friday from Santiago to El Salvador — the next stop in a five-day Latin American swing — by several hours to seal the deal.

Here’s what Larry Rohter’s and Joel Brinkley’s article in the Times says on the same matter:

American officials traveling with Ms. Rice, who was in the Chilean capital, described her as having brokered the deal that allowed Mr. Insulza to claim victory.

But some South American diplomats suggested Friday that the shift in the United States position was a calculated retreat in response to warnings to Ms. Rice in Brazil and Colombia earlier in the week that Washington was risking a potentially embarrassing loss.

Rohter and Brinkley’s article goes on to make several comments that showed they dug into the issue a little deeper:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited South America last month in what was seen as an effort to stitch together an anti-Chávez coalition, but got nowhere. Ms. Rice came to the region this week with much the same mission and received the same chilly reception from governments for whom the principles of nonintervention and sovereignty are nearly sacred.

“It’s counterproductive both to see what she is saying on Venezuela and what they are doing at the O.A.S., but the U.S. just doesn’t seem to get the political and diplomatic reality,” said Riordan Roett, director of the Western Hemisphere program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

If Washington wants South America to act as an interlocutor with Mr. Chávez, he added, “it would have been easy to drop our support for Derbez and push for a consensus at the O.A.S.”

Indeed, there is ample evidence to indicate that much of Latin America, especially as led by Brazil, is seeking its own path. Brazil has two major victories in the WTO on US agricultural subsidies: one on cotton and one on sugar. Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba are looking to China for trade opportunities. Brazil in particular, with vast iron reserves and now a very close second to the US in soybean production, is not looking only to China, but also to India. Even The Economist acknowledges in this subscription only article that Brazil “is too big and ambitious in its own right to accept American leadership.” Good for them. What’s wrong with treating this huge nation as an equal on these matters?

On the subject of Hugo Chávez, even though I have said that I don’t like to write about Venezuela much these days, I would like to point out these comments in the Center for International Programs blog, Plan Colombia and Beyond. I am most assuredly not a fan of hers, but these comments by Chávez about Secretary Rice are offensive:

Chavez has saved some of his most biting sarcasm for Rice, whom he refers to as “Condolencia,” which means “condolence.” In speeches, he has called her “pathetic” and illiterate and made oblique sexual references to her. “I cannot marry Condolencia, because I am much too busy,” he said in a recent speech. “I have been told that she dreams about me,” he said on another occasion.

I certainly don’t question Chavez’s legitimacy as elected leader (several times) of Venezuela, but if Bush made the same comment say about Michelle Bachelet or Soledad Alvear, two former cabinet members (and one of whom is the likely presidential candidate) of Chile’s center-left government he would be condemned - and rightfully so. Chávez shouldn’t get a pass for this.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration seems determined to head down the same dead end with Venezuela, no doubt much to Hugo Chávez’s delight.