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Weekly Report - 02 December 2010 (WR-10-48)

The empire with no clothes: <em>WikiLeaks</em> and US-Latin American relations

Criticism, concern, silence, even indifference. The release of just the first few hundred of 250,000 classified US State Department memos and cables by WikiLeaks on 28 November elicited a varied response from Latin American governments. Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez said the US was left “naked". He is right. The fact that so much could be accessed and leaked might complicate international diplomacy for the US. Where he is wrong is in supposing that only the US was stripped bare. Many Latin Americans have a visceral suspicion of US duplicity and will be surprised nothing more compromising has emerged - at least not yet. That some of their own governments are guilty of hypocrisy is more of an eye-opener, especially at a time when they are striving to deepen integration, and reduce US influence in the region, through the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).

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