Why reports of Chinese spy base in Cuba are met with shrugs in Latin America, where US influence is waning

On October 23, 1962, US secretary of state Dean Rusk convened the Council of the Organization of American States for an emergency meeting in Washington. Following an agreement between Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, he told the members, two American aircraft discovered the construction of nuclear missile facilities in Cuba.

Rusk tried to convince the Latin American partners that a crisis of this kind threatened the whole region and that all OAS members should intervene to prevent Havana from going ahead. They agreed. In a major victory for Washington, Uruguay's Jose Antonio Mora, secretary general of the OAS, announced later that day that Latin American countries would take "multilateral measures" to contain Soviet advances.

Academics and government officials recalled this story in recent weeks after The Wall Street Journal, citing leaked US intelligence, reported that China was on the verge of establishing a spy base on Cuban soil. According to The Journal, the two countries have also discussed setting up a joint military training facility, adding to Washington's concerns about Chinese troops 145km (90 miles) from its shores.

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Several days later, the White House confirmed the existence of the base, which it said had been in Cuba since 2019.

In many Latin American countries, however, the reports did not even appear in the media. Except for Cuba, none of them released statements commenting on the news. The ministries of foreign affairs in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico - the five main economies in the region - did not respond to requests for comment.

Although the situations are not directly comparable - stationing spies and training troops in Cuba would not immediately threaten most countries in the region, unlike nuclear weapons - experts said this was a sign that Washington was losing ground for Latinos' hearts and minds.

The reasons for the apparent apathy, they explain, are the growing importance of relations with China for most Latin American countries and the widespread perception that in the last 20 years, Washington has stopped caring about the region to concentrate its efforts first on the Middle East and now in the Indo-Pacific.

Meanwhile, Beijing has filled the void by expanding its diplomatic presence and investment, overtaking the United States as the largest trading partner in many of the region's biggest economies.

China has signed free trade agreements with Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru and is in advanced negotiations with Uruguay. In addition, 22 Latin American countries have already joined the Belt and Road Initiative - Chinese President Xi Jinping's US$1.1 trillion infrastructure plan - and in 2021 Brazil became the main destination for Chinese investment in the world.

Leland Lazarus, a former US consul general in Shenyang, China, and now a China-Latin America scholar at Florida International University, said it was "disconcerting" to admit that the United States had taken for granted its historical influence over the region. The focus on the so-called war on terror in the early 2000s and the recent emphasis on relations with nations in Southeast Asia, he said, cost Washington "power and prestige".

Lazarus said that while the foreign policy focus of great powers such as Russia and China was largely directed towards their immediate neighbours, this was not exactly a priority for Washington.

"No matter how strongly US officials emphasise our historical, familial and linguistic ties, you just have to look at our strategic documents to see that [Latin America] is not the main priority," he said.

Thiago Bessimo, co-founder of the Brazilian think tank Observa China, pointed out that in the 20th century, Latin American countries' trade relations with the Soviet Union were almost nil, and the US supported coups to prevent communism in the region. But the importance of trade with China today, he said, meant that forceful diplomatic reactions to a military deal between Beijing and Havana were extremely unlikely.

Bessimo said that while China was perceived as an essential partner for the import of commodities and a key financier for infrastructure works, constant domestic crises had led to the impression that "the United States is a country in relative decline".

Unlike the Soviet Union, he said, "there is no evidence that China seeks to export its political or economic system". The United States, however, "is known for using controversial issues in the domestic politics of other countries as a pretext for possible bargains".

"China presents an alternative," Bessimo said. "When Washington asks for something in return for a loan, for example, it is now common for Latin Americans to talk to China ... At the end of the day, Latin America's priority is economic growth and political stability. Any other geopolitical concern unrelated to these two issues is a problem for the great powers to solve, not us."

This also seems to be the majority opinion among the Latin American left-wing parties of the Foro de Sao Paulo organisation. Founded in 1990, the forum currently comprises the governing parties in Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela, as well as political organisations in 19 other Latin American and Caribbean countries.

In the framework document that preceded the forum's annual summit in Brasilia on Thursday, leftist leaders of the associated parties called China "a factor of stability and balance for the region". They also stressed China's "non-interference in the internal affairs of Latin American countries".

The document said that relations between Latin America and Beijing were based on "mutual respect" and had not been affected by conflicts of interest, as China "has not attacked or illegally occupied any Latin American territory, has not imposed unilateral sanctions, promoted coups d'etat or established military dictatorships". The US, on the other hand, was described as an "empire in a structural crisis" and a country that "practices expansionism, militarism, war ... and deepening environmental overexploitation" in Latin America.

Although these opinions were not yet the majority in the region, it would be a mistake to ignore them, said Parsifal D'Sola, executive director of the Andres Bello Foundation, a think tank in Bogota, Colombia, that studies relations between China and Latin America.

He said that even in strongholds of American influence, such as Colombia and Mexico, relations with China were increasingly important and these countries' leaders did not want to choose sides. To regain the prestige and influence it once had in the region, the US "must be at the forefront of an international agenda that addresses first and foremost the problems and needs of Latinos" and does not have as its main objective the containment of Chinese influence.

D'Sola also said that instead of trying to mobilise regional leaders around the potential threat to these countries' security posed by the Chinese presence, Washington must accept that "China is here to stay, it is not going anywhere and its influence will grow regardless of what the United States does".

"If you want to contain that influence, a good place to start is to leverage American resources in the region, particularly in areas where the US has historically been strong, such as advising on infrastructure development, entrepreneurship and innovation," D'Sola said.

"Latin America is huge. How you view competition between the US and China, or how you assess a spy base in Cuba as a real risk, really depends on where you stand. So this engagement has to be country focused instead of regionally focused, as China is increasingly doing."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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