Over barbecue, Bush talks trade with Uruguay leaders

ESTANCIA ANCHORENA, URUGUAY — Over lamb chops and cuts of beef, President Bush chatted amiably Saturday at this presidential retreat with a former leader of a legendary band of leftist guerrillas known as the Tupamaros.

“I respect you and I’m proud to be in your country,” Bush told Jose “Pepe” Mujica, who is now Uruguay’s minister of agriculture and livestock, according to a White House aide.

Mujica, the aide said, was pleased to give Bush an expansive overview of this tiny nation’s agricultural needs. This is the same Mujica who, in comments to the press here, acknowledged feeling odd about the notion of cozying up to a U.S. president.

“If I weren’t a minister, I’d be marching against Bush,” Mujica, a political prisoner for more than a dozen years under the former military dictatorship who long ago renounced violence, told the Argentine daily Clarin before Bush’s arrival. But, he added, “negotiating is not selling one’s soul or changing one’s ideas.”

Just as some Latin American leaders are moderating their reflexive Yanqui-bashing, so too is the White House reaching out to the resurgent left in Latin America -- with the notable exception, of course, of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Bush’s chief nemesis in the region.

In the president’s first two stops in Latin America, here and Brazil, the White House has sought to showcase its ability to work with the new generation of left-wing leaders, men such as Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The White House views them as potential allies against Chavez, although both maintain cordial relations with the anti-American Venezuelan leader.

The president’s trip to Uruguay bared a kind of identity crisis among the leftist government. Many seemed incredulous that Bush could even be invited here.

“Senor Bush is the most execrable, murderous, bellicose representative who exists in the world,” Vazquez’s minister of social progress, Marina Arismendi, declared before the president’s arrival.

Others took a more pragmatic approach.

“A better commercial relationship with the United States is fundamental,” Finance Minister Danilo Astori told reporters here.

Bush arrived late Friday in Uruguay, a country of 3.4 million that elected Vasquez president two years ago. Vazquez heads a coalition known as the Broad Front, which includes former leftist guerrillas and communists. The experience of the 1973-85 military dictatorship still is recalled vividly here.

Vazquez and his ministers met with Bush and White House officials at this Camp David-like retreat 125 miles west of Montevideo, the capital. The menu was a traditional asado, or barbecue, with a special emphasis on lamb -- one of the products Uruguay would like to export more to the United States.

Protests, violent at times, greeted Bush’s arrival to Uruguay, just as protesters took to the streets in Brazil on the president’s first stop on his five-country, six-day swing through Latin America, his longest official trip to the region. The protests are likely to continue in Colombia, where Bush is scheduled to visit today, and in Guatemala and Mexico.

Despite the deep distrust of Washington among their core constituents, Brazil’s Lula and Uruguay’s Vazquez clearly see the advantages of maintaining good relations with the hemisphere’s economic colossus, even as they maintain trade alliances with Chavez.

Brazil sees a potential windfall in trade in biofuels with the U.S. The two countries have launched a partnership to produce the vegetable-based fuel.

Uruguay is keen to open up U.S. markets for products such as meat, textiles and even software. U.S. officials made no promises, and an industry representative told a local newspaper, “We know Bush is not Santa Claus.”

But Vazquez also hopes that the U.S. negotiations can improve his country’s status in the regional trading bloc known as Mercosur, dominated by neighbors Brazil and Argentina. Many here view Vazquez as pressuring Brazil and Argentina to grant trade concessions, with the implied threat of Montevideo signing a separate trade deal with Washington -- a development that could signal the beginning of the end of Mercosur.

“Tabare Vazquez is involved in a very elaborate chess game,” said Gerardo Caetano, a historian and political analyst in Montevideo.

During his trip to the region, Bush has repeatedly declined to engage Chavez directly, even refusing to use his name. Rather, he has sought to portray Washington as reaching out to allies across the ideological spectrum.

“Uruguay is an example of the stability that can come with democracy,” Bush told reporters here. “I’ve come to South America and Central America to advance a positive, constructive diplomacy that is being conducted by my government.”

The presidents of countries such as Uruguay and Brazil appear happy to embrace the new White House diplomacy, even as protesters sack McDonald’s franchises, burn U.S. flags, torch effigies of the American president and shout “Out Bush!” and “Yankee Go Home!” on major thoroughfares.

[email protected]

[email protected]