Go where the beef is

Sir, I really do not understand how, in “Latin Lessons”, July 10, you can even think about achieving a better US engagement in Latin America by entering the field of establishing comparison between the simple propagandas of “the $20m being spent on a four-month-long humanitarian health care mission, involving a visit by the Comfort hospital ship to 12 countries, to the scale of the health care plans launched by Mr chávez and his Cuban ally, President Fidel Castro”. That is like assessing the cultural efforts of Brittan in terms of how long the British Museum lends out their Tutankhamen collection to the world.

Of course the real dealings with Latin America have to occur in the real areas you mention such as energy, trade and of course migration, and there, if the US was to find a more constructive approach to Latin America, it needs primarily to start looking for a more constructive and consistent approach among themselves, in Washington at least.

The Inter-American Development Bank recently reported that the working migrants of Latin America remitted to their home countries $62.3bn in 2004 and if these represented 15% of what the workers earned, we are then talking about a yearly figure of around $415bn, of which the US contributes almost all, and clearly this beats anything that what Castro and chávez can come up using the money obtained by selling Venezuelan oil.