Opening up new markets for American businesses - small, medium and large - is important work. Rather crucial stuff, in fact. Removing barriers to more investment and economic opportunity in Latin America is no small matter either. And so, watching on MSNBC today the Molotov cocktail-flinging, window-smashing, masked protestors wrecking local small business in another "anti-globalization" protest was enough to get me thinking about that big hemispheric trade confab down south, what's next, who cares, and why.

The sober and thoughtful Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and football hero Diego Maradona may have successfully incited riots today at the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentinia, but it is clear that on the hot button issue, the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), they and their inchoate followers are at the margins of the discussion.

Mexican President Vincente Fox says 29 of 34 nations at the summit favor moving forward on FTAA, which would stretch from Alaska to the southern tip of Chile. Venezuela and the Mercosur trade group members Brazil, Argentinia, Uruguay and Paraguay are reported to be opposed to FTAA itself, or at least to setting a timetable for beginning high-level discussions on FTAA. Fox believes their objections will not torpedo FTAA, but he worries that a schedule for talks may not be set at this weekend's summit, as is necessary.

Despite socialist or leftist administrations either atop the governments or leading in the polls in a modest handful of Latin American countries, a majority of Latin Americans favor democracy, market economies and the private sector, according to a new poll by the Chilean firm Latinobarometro. Columnist Marcela Sanchez has more, in the WaPo, including some pointed advice for Bush on engaging with Latin American democracies.

Indeed, the average Latin American is much less concerned with protesting against Washington, the war or Bush than in keeping his job and seeing his economic situation improve. More than in a battle of ideas, he or she is engaged in a day-to-day struggle to succeed in a democratic system.

New economic, social and political experiments, like the kind Chavez is pushing, are not gaining a foothold in Latin America. After 10 years of polling, the Chilean firm Latinobarometro concluded last week that Latin Americans are sold on democracy as a way of life. And even though in the last three years popular approval of democracy has not budged from 53 percent, Latin Americans are not actively seeking out alternatives. In fact a large majority say market economies (63 percent) and the private sector (59 percent) are what will help their countries develop.

As Marta Lagos, head of Latinobarometro put it, "people in Latin America are no longer interested in buying the dreams offered by extreme ideologies.'" Rather, she said, "they want to buy refrigerators." More than the Iraq war, it is Bush's failure to recognize the maturation of democracy south of the Rio Grande that has increased popular disapproval. Regional democracies, most of them in their third decade of existence, have grown beyond the simplicity of left-right, either-or choices. Still, Bush's war against terror and his obsession with Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro suggest to Latin Americans that his administration's frame of reference is still purely ideological and unevolved.

Food for thought, all of it, as the TV pictures of fires and smashed windows in Mar del Plata play on into the night.

UPDATE, 11/6/05: More talks are expected on FTAA, but there was not much progress to report as the summit closed.

TECHNORATI TAGS: FTAA, RIOTS, BUSH, VINCENTE FOX, LATINOBAROMETRO

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 4, 2005 05:24 PM