An expedition to Panama is planned for next year which will coincide with the country’s 100^th anniversary.  It hopes to find the body of a former English Member of Parliament for Plymouth who is believed to be lying at a depth of 129 feet in Caribbean waters near Panama’s historical coastal town of Portobelo.  There is no mystery surrounding this expedition, no political intrigue or skulduggery of the imaginary sort written about in John Le Carré’s Tailor of Panama, and the MP, known less for his parliamentary skills than for his seamanship, has been dead for over 400 years.  He is none other than Sir Francis Drake who was the first Englishman to sail around the world and the idea is to coincide the recovery of his body (believed to be in a lead casket) with the 400^th anniversary of Elizabeth I’s death, the English monarch who knighted him in 1581.   Prior to his Voyage of Circumnavigation in 1577, which lasted nearly 3 years, Drake had already made 2 expeditions to the West Indies and Nombre de Dios in Panama.  His exploits on behalf of Elizabeth I are legendary.  He attacked Spanish ships and those of Spain’s allies pilfering large amounts of treasure and in March 1579 he seized enough silver that the queen’s share of the bounty paid the country’s national debt for a year.  In 1595 on board The Defiance, however, he set out on what was to be his last voyage which ended at the beginning of 1596 off the coast of Panama when he died of dysentery. 

Drake reminds us of the influence Europe has had in Latin America for centuries.  Those Englishmen who followed in the foot steps of Drake (along with millions of poor but enterprising souls from other parts of Europe who sailed to Latin America over the last century and a half) have left their mark.  Paraguay, for instance, was moulded by the British in the early 18^th century for geo-political reasons (a parallel being Panama and the Americans) and Simón Bolivar’s revolution which, from 1819 onwards, replaced Spanish and Portuguese colonial administrations in Latin America, was furtively helped along by Britain which saw this as a way of reducing Spain’s influence abroad and in Europe.  Determined and ambitious British businessmen travelled to Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Mexico in the 19^th century, filling the void left by the retreating European powers.  They built a lot of the region’s infrastructure, including railways and public utilities.   However, at the turn of the 20^th century, as America’s influence was increasing, Britain’s was waning worldwide and her oil interests were nationalised by Mexico before the second world war and then, after it, Venezuela followed suit.  In Argentina President Perón nationalised the British-run railways.  American President James Monroe in 1823 had already pronounced (what would afterwards be known as the Monroe Doctrine) that the American continents were “henceforth not to be considered as subjects for colonisation by any European Powers”.  Monroe reinforced his doctrine by pledging that the United States would help any Latin American country whose sovereignty was threatened by nations from outside the hemisphere. But critics feared that the United States would not restrain itself from interfering in the internal affairs of its southern neighbours.  Indeed, besides the virtual creation of Panama to further American interests, the United States also engaged in a series of military interventions in the 1920s and 1930s, even taking temporary power in several Caribbean countries whose governments had not paid their debts.   Now, it is monetary not military intervention which North America engages in.

Not-So-Sanguine Sanguinetti

Today, sadly, it’s not just Drake who is in deep water.  Since the recent financial emasculation of Argentina, Latin America has suddenly been spot-lighted again as a precarious investment risk.  Already, Latin American debt to foreigners, when contrasted with its exports, is very substantial; admittedly, many of the continent’s large countries have a small export base relative to their size.  The International Monetary Fund reckons that in 2001 Latin America’s debt-to-export ratio was 213% (Africa’s ratio is 185%).  Debt-service payments are also an enormous burden to bear with a ratio of debt service to exports of 51% in 2001, more than twice as high as other regions of the world.   Former Uruguayan President, Julio Maria Sanguinetti, has voiced concern about the problems caused, in his view, by the manner in which multilateral lenders and the US government have dealt with Argentina’s problems.  At a meeting in June of the Circulo de Montevideo in Washington he warned that Latin America “is falling again and again into financial crises that erode its faith in the value of democracy”.  Democracy has travelled a perilous path since Bolivar’s revolution, having had to contend with generals who were dismissive of civilian politicians and who believed that the military were far better qualified to govern.   The army took over in Brazil from 1964 until 1985 and, except for one break, it was a similar situation in Argentina from 1966 until 1984.  The story was the same in Peru (1968-1980), Uruguay (1973-1984) and Chile (1973-1989).  But despite the 4-day farce in April this year when a coup and counter-coup in Venezuela, worthy of a Monty Python script, saw a chastened President Hugo Chávez ultimately reinstated, few fear that Latin America’s generals will venture forth from their barracks again.   President Chávez has had to temper his Bolivarian revolutionary programme of reform and has, apparently, consigned his paratrooper’s fatigues and red beret to the wardrobe.  Perhaps he realises that think tanks and not army tanks are the way forward today in Latin America.