President Bush is heading to Latin America where he will visit Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. It is a courtesy visit when he will discuss inequality and poverty. It’s a noticeable change in tone; for the last 6 years he has only talked about the fight against terrorism and economic agreements.

Bush has announced major cutbacks in overseas aid to the continent; in the last 2 years aid totalled 722 million dollars. Currently he has asked congress for 443 million dollars. Such cutbacks affect development funds but monies earmarked for the fight against drug trafficking and rebels have not decreased. For example, Peru is losing 20 million in aid, Ecuador one million; Brazil’s aid is reduced from six to one million.

For some observers this is further proof that the Bush administration is leaving aside Latin America to concentrate on the Middle East. His visit is merely to soften the blow. However it is difficult to imagine the US government would really wish to neglect Latin America, all the various economic treaties tell us the opposite. In short the US budget cannot be extended and Latin America is not in a hopeless situation, on the contrary, economic results, generally are rather good.

Colombia is the only country where overseas aid has not been reduced and Bush’s visit is happening at a critical moment for relations between the two countries. Uribe is seen as the best ally. However since the scandal of links between paramilitaries and the elected politicians (the Washington Post calls it the Para gate) has been mentioned in the US Congress, speeches against the Colombian government are becoming more and more frequent. The Speaker of Congress even arranged a meeting with some NGO’s to get another view on negotiations between the Colombian government and the paramilitaries. The resignation of the Colombian Minister for Foreign affairs because of family links with paramilitaries has not gone unnoticed. Some Democrats have already announced that voting for the Free Trade will be more complicated, likewise for the Plan Colombia.

The Under - Secretary of State even announced that his government would be happy if a humanitarian exchange with FARC were to take place. Uri be opposes this strongly.

The latest is the remark made by the Colombian Vice-Minister for Work who said that trade union members (under death threats) were exaggerating such threats and that this would lead to violence and blood shed. Such a remark, commonly used here, has not impressed one member of the House of Representatives who demanded a withdrawal of such a remark. As he said, it is typically this type of remark that leads us to doubt human rights in Colombia.

However, relations between the two presidents are still good and their discussions will not concentrate on paramilitaries. So Bush’s visit to Colombia will not amount to much. The people he has to convince that the Colombian government is not linked to paramilitaries is the American Congress, not, its president and that promises to be a much tougher task.