There is nothing called Latin America and Latin American literature doesn’t exist, said eminent Mexican essayist and novelist Jorge Volpi while speaking at a recent conference in Delhi on Connected Histories, Shared Present: CrossCultural Experiences between Latin America, the Caribbean and India.
Volpi is of course right. But the term Latin America is here to stay. Former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez once tried to replace Latin America with ‘IndoIbero-Afro-America’. But there were no takers for the convoluted term.
Geography has been both kind and unkind to the Latin American and the Caribbean region. Because of its geographic isolation, historic subordination to the US and distance from the Eurasian landmass, Latin America was for long considered the secondary region.
There is a diplomatic saying that if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. And when great powers sat down for dinner, Latin American countries, they thought, would be their food rather than guests.
Legend has it that the great powers once considered giving Brazil a permanent seat on the UN Security Council because of its collaboration with the Allied Powers, but the invitation never arrived.
There was another factor. In the 1950s, a sense of pessimism prevailed in most parts of Latin America which a bard captured in the following words: Hoy es como ayer en un mundo sin manana (Today is like yesterday in a world without tomorrow.) India had its own manana challenge in the early days of its independence.
For the same reason, forging meaningful ties with the region also remained largely beyond India’s imagination. India knew its limitations. So did the Latin American and the Caribbean region.
Both India and Latin America took to heart what Dwight Eisenhower had once said, “You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plough is a pencil and you are a thousand miles from the corn field”.
Today India’s footprint on the global stage is growing. And the world’s new gaze is also falling on Latin America and the Caribbean. And India is willing to play ball with the region.
Today India dreams big. But does India have a road map? External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is visiting Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic and Guyana later this month.
Last year he visited Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. India’s president and vice-president have also undertaken several visits. In recent years. There have been 37 visits to India from the Latin American region including seven presidents.
In 2019, Jaishankar made a major foreign policy statement. He said it was time for India to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw neighbours in, expand the neighbourhood, and expand traditional constituencies of support. Latin didn’t figure in his statement. Prime Minister Modi’s visits so far have been primarily to attend global summits in the region.
India’s ties with Latin America face a big redesign challenge. A vibrant foreign policy requires not just new imagination but also constant reaffirmation. Latin America is hugely diverse. Using the musical terminology, it is not salsa, ranchera, mariachi, cumbia and ron, it is also Latino punk.
Latin America is too complex a region to be captured by a single narrative. Single foreign policy issues like the signing of trade agreements, alliance formations, and voting patterns at the United Nations do not explain foreign policy behaviour of a country or region. India needs new paradigms, tools and strategies for Latin America. India’s global rise and Latin America’s growing assertiveness require a new cooperation paradigm. Cooperation instruments should be adapted to each group instead of the ‘one size fits all’ policy.
If India wants to dramatically improve ties with Latin America and push its multilateral agenda, it will require to work through plurilateral groups of like-minded countries and piecing them together in a kind of “variable geometry”.
‘Everything everywhere all at once’ could be a successful sci-fi action adventure, but not a foreign policy paradigm. The Latin American and the Caribbean region is not a homogenous, selfcontained frozen entity.
The successful model can be a three-pronged co-operation : (1) horizontal, (2) special relations with the strategic partners and (3) traditional north-south inter-regional cooperation. With some countries India can have cooperation a la carte, a privileged dialogue and free trade, while inter-regionalism framework would be more viable for others.
While what India should do is important, what we shouldn’t do is even more important. First, the goblin mode is not an option. Second, linear optimism is not enough. Greater economic and political interactions only promise us a bigger, better version of the present. Third, juggling balls on a high wire is undesirable even while dealing with China’s challenge.
At a time when our trade and economic exchanges have acquired new salience, both snake-oil profiteering and cherry-picking are a big ‘no.’ Old matrix of donor-recipient relations is also no more relevant. There is no one donor who is not receiving and there is no one recipient who is not giving.
India’s benign image is an advantage. But a lot of ground work is required. India needs a precise fit between its goals and its strategies.
Foreign policy is also an imagination. It needs a sense of play and suppleness. It also requires cognitive repair from time to time to move beyond the rigidities of the paradigm.
There are three critical assets of a great power: reliability, credibility and alliance cohesion. India has the ingredients of becoming a great power. So have Brazil and Mexico and maybe some others.
By using soft power tools, economic levers, technological advantage and a right ideology, India can strive to become a smart power. But India should not pretend to be a ‘vishwaguru.’ Self-praise is the first sign of insecurity. One hopes the upward trend in trade between India and Latin American and Caribbean region isn’t like early morning river mist. It rises momentarily and then dissipates with the first sigh of a contrary breeze.
It is too early to say that the cavalry has well and truly arrived. As Mark Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they get a punch in the mouth.
(The writer is director, Institute of Social Sciences, Delhi)