Which Presidential Candidate is Worse for Latin America?

In an interview with journalist Abby Martin, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador said that Latin America would be better off if Trump won the US presidential election in November. He was relatively gracious and diplomatic about it, praising Hillary Clinton for her positive attributes, and ended by saying that for the sake of the US and the world, he hoped that she would win. But Correa, who has done a great job in improving the lives of his compatriots and carrying out progressive reforms during his presidency, is highly educated and intelligent. He has learned much from the region's experience with the Bush and Obama administrations. So it is worth taking his claim seriously, because it says some important things about US policy in Latin America.

The basic idea is that the US is going to play a terrible role in Latin America no matter who is president, so it is better for Latin Americans to have a US president who is widely disliked, like George W. Bush was, than someone who is charming and mediagenic like President Obama. In the short run, it is hard to counter this claim. In fact, it is quite possible that the region would have been better off if John McCain (2008) or Mitt Romney (2012) had defeated Barack Obama, and Obama is in general less hawkish than Hillary on foreign policy. The Obama administration's policies in Latin America were no better than those of George W. Bush. The administration helped consolidate the military coup in Honduras, and did the same for the parliamentary coup in Paraguay.

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