The OAS election and the US

There have been a number of analysts saying the OAS election is a loss for the US. It's true the Bush administration does not pay nearly enough attention to Latin America and has made plenty of mistakes. However, the recent OAS elections did not turn out badly for the US. This may have been strategy. More likely, it was dumb luck. Five points I've seen in the news and on blogs:

1. Myth: The election of Insulza is a major loss for the US.
In some ways, the US 'won' four months ago. In the “invisible primary” to decide the candidates for Secretary-General, candidates came from Chile, El Salvador and Mexico. Those are three of the closest US allies in the region. All three come from countries that support free trade and generally support the US (as opposed to say, China or Cuba or the EU). Insulza is nominally a 'socialist', but he is part of the more pragmatic left. Had there been a candidate from Venezuela or the Caribbean, we may have had a problem. In this case, we did not oppose any of the three.

2. Partially True: Our backing of Flores hurt his candidacy.
There were three other factors. First, Flores was the most conservative of three fairly centrist candidates. Second, many countries felt that Central America had gotten its shot with former Costa Rican President Rodriguez. Third, Flores supported the invasion of Iraq, which most of the region opposed. Flores would have lost whether or not the US backed him, but the US backing definitely did not help.

3. Myth: Derbez was the US's candidate.
The US backed Flores. By the time Flores dropped out of the race, Derbez had the backing of Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Central America, a number of Caribbean nations and even Canada. We slightly preferred Derbez to Insulza and jumped on the bandwagon with our neighbors. Our backing was lukewarm at best and after the tie vote we were most interested in finding a consensus and moving past the elections.

4. Myth: Insulza was a pro-Chavez candidate.
If the US had backed Simon Bolivar to be the OAS Secretary-General, Hugo Chavez would call him an imperialist puppet and support his opponent. There was no pro-Chavez candidate. The best moment of the campaign was when Chilean President Lagos went to Venezuela to tell Chavez to stop backing his candidate so vocally.

5. Partially True: The message from the OAS election is the US has lost influence in the region.
Yes, the OAS is no longer a US puppet institution. But the message from the election is that the Bush administration doesn't really care. We barely campaigned for Flores and even less so for Derbez. We haven't proposed a major set of reforms for the OAS. We haven't asked the OAS to build democratic institutions. Instead of working for a stronger OAS, we've ignored it. Our apathy is the message that I think most of the region takes from this election.