Canada and Latin America: The New Look

Abstract

strikingly new phase since 1989. Not merely through the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) negotiations but, more broadly as an activist in the Organization of American States (oas), a peacekeeper in Central America, and a protagonist in the Haiti debacle Canada has become an active participant in inter-American affairs. More has been written about Mexico by Canadians in the last three years than in the whole of the previous century. And within the Department of External Affairs and International Trade, Latin America has definitely moved up to occupy a higher rung on the foreign policy ladder and is now widely perceived as a region of potential rather than of problems. The Latin American Strategy a proposal produced by the department in 1989 which recommended oas membership and a number of related actions succeeded in rekindling largely dormant relationships and is now being amplified. There is, in short, a sense of expectation and modest accomplishment. But there is not yet a coherent policy more a set of partial policies or building blocks. Despite all the positive signs since 1989, Canada's relations with Latin America retain a certain fragility, as if the historic lack of a long-term political commitment still impedes an irreversible reorientation of Canada's relations with the Americas.