President Bush Hopes to Re-energize Relations in Latin America

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• MARGARET WARNER:

  The president's Latin American trip comes seven years after candidate George W. Bush campaigned on a promise to put Latin America at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

  GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States: Those who ignore Latin America do not fully understand America itself. And those who ignore our hemisphere do not fully understand American interests.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  His first foreign trip as president was to Mexico, and his first White House state dinner was for then-Mexican President Vicente Fox.

• GEORGE W. BUSH:

  Some have described the century just passed as the American century. Now we look forward. We have a chance to build a century of the Americas, in which all our people, north and south, find the blessings of liberty.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  But after 9/11, the war on terror took priority, and Latin America took a distant back seat.

  Now, with a growing number of leftists being elected to Latin American presidencies and with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez trying to rally them into an anti-U.S. bloc, President Bush has turned his attention back to the region.

  This morning, he flew to Sao Paulo, Brazil, the first stop on a five-nation tour. He'll also visit Uruguay, to promote free trade; Colombia, where the U.S. is spending billions to fight drugs; Guatemala, where a leftist candidate is running for president; and Mexico, where immigration is the dominant issue.

  Left-leaning presidents already lead two of those countries: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, and President Tabare Vazquez Rosas in Uruguay.

  Earlier this week, Mr. Bush acknowledged that the region's desperate poverty had turned many Latin American voters against U.S.-style free trade and free market economics.

• GEORGE W. BUSH:

  The fact is that tens of millions of our brothers and sisters to the south have seen little improvement in their daily lives, and this has led some to question the value of democracy.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  And he promised the U.S. would help address the huge income gap in the region.

  Notably missing from the president's itinerary is oil-rich Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, has vowed to build a socialist utopia. Chavez regularly lambastes the Bush administration, even calling President Bush "the devil" before the U.N. General Assembly last September.

  And on his television show last weekend, Chavez again accused the Bush administration of plotting to kill him.

  HUGO CHAVEZ, President of Venezuela (through translator): They have assigned special units of the CIA, true assassins, who go around, not only here in Venezuela, in Central America, in South America.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Bush officials have leveled plenty of criticism at Chavez, too.

  CONDOLEEZZA RICE, U.S. Secretary of State: I do believe that the president of Venezuela is really, really destroying his own country.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Chavez has nationalized U.S.-owned electricity and telephone companies in Venezuela. And he's threatening to take control of four big oil development projects being pursued there by U.S. and foreign companies.

  He's also using Venezuela's vast oil revenues to spread money and subsidized oil and gas to neighboring countries, from Cuba to Argentina. Chavez is even bidding for public support in the United States, offering subsidized heating oil to poor Americans through the Venezuelan-owned oil company, Citgo.

• AMERICAN CITIZEN:

  I thank Venezuela for what they do for the poor here. They're the only ones who give this.

• MARGARET WARNER:

  Chavez is greeting the Bush trip by orchestrating anti-U.S. protests across Latin America, and Chavez himself will lead a huge rally tomorrow evening in Argentina, while Mr. Bush is in neighboring Uruguay.