Every Canadian prime minister discovers "Latin America" and then forgets about it. Perhaps Stephen Harper will be different, although it's hard to know why.
Pierre Trudeau zipped down there every so often to see Fidel Castro of Cuba, Caribbean leaders or Mexican presidents. On his so-called "peace mission" in 1981, he went to Brasilia, and, loving travel to exotic places, to Manaus in the Amazon Valley.
Brian Mulroney quite rightly got Canada into the Organization of American States, which Ottawa had previously shunned because it feared being caught between the United States and other members.
Jean Chrétien was in office when the original Canada-U.S. free-trade deal was expanded to include Mexico. He then declared the era of the "three amigos" - Canada, the United States and Mexico. Mr. Chrétien led a heralded "Team Canada" trade mission to Latin America.
Paul Martin visited Haiti, where he tried to bash heads to get politicians to work together. He travelled to Chile and Brazil as part of his attempt to create a G20 group of countries.
And yet, despite these spasms of interest, Canadian governments have never sustained it. They have echoed the late New York Times columnist James Reston's quip about his own country: that Americans would do anything for Latin America except read about it.
The Canadian news media, like their federal government, aren't really interested in Latin America either. Papers, including this one, have opened, then closed, bureaus in Mexico and Brazil. Occasionally, a correspondent will be sent on a swing through a part of the region, or a country, but silence then descends over its coverage for months, even years.
For the media, Latin America remains out of sight, out of mind, except for volcanoes and other natural disasters, or a major political event such as an election.
It's easy to be critical, as Mr. Harper implicitly was, of the previous governments' lack of sustained attention - although, as the record shows, he is hardly the first prime minister to visit the region. His own itinerary was rather bizarre. The idea of going to South America and making a big deal of rediscovering the continent without visiting Brazil (and Argentina) is a bit like heading to Europe and missing Germany and France.
Brazilian sources explained this obvious gap by saying Canadian protocol officials had complained that two Canadian prime ministers had visited Brazil in the last decade but no Brazilian president had been to Canada (although a Brazilian foreign minister was recently in Ottawa). Protocol therefore dictated that Canada await a Brazilian presidential visit. Also, the Governor-General was just in Brazil for the Pan American Games.
If that explanation holds, it's pathetically weak. Who cares who's visited whom? British prime ministers Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher made only one bilateral visit to Canada each during their long stretches in office, but that didn't hold up relations. Mr. Chrétien practically made China his second home; he didn't count how many times a Chinese leader had been to Canada.
No, the real reason for Canada's lack of sustained attention to Latin America is two-fold. First, there is no such thing as Latin America. Second, Canada's foreign-policy interests are not seriously engaged in the hemisphere, except for a few issues in a few places. To describe Latin America is Canada's "back door" is simply wrong.
Latin America is often lumped in with the Caribbean, as it was in the Prime Minister's travel itinerary for understandable logistical reasons. But South America and the Caribbean are worlds apart in country size, language (except for Cuba and the Dominican Republic), political traditions and trade. Jamaica, for example, has about as much in common with Chile as Thailand does with Pakistan.
Moreover, the South and Central American countries have not come together economically. The Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) remain a long way from having created a strong free-trade area. (See this week's Economist for confirmation.) Hemispheric free trade, including the United States and Canada, has gone nowhere.
Canada has no military-security links with the continent, as it has with Europe. Serious threats today come disproportionately from terrorists bred in Muslim countries.
The Latin American economies are small compared to those in Europe and Asia. To imagine trade expansion there that would eclipse possibilities in Asia is illusory. More trade and investment, yes; the focus of trade policy, no.
Every Canadian government, whatever its intentions, has discovered this reality. Trade with Mexico has grown only modestly, at least compared to the high hopes at the time of NAFTA. Mr. Harper correctly and coldly proposed a free-trade pact with Caribbean countries, but many of them don't even trade freely among themselves.
Mr. Harper was right to propose a deal with them. He was right to drop into Haiti, given its demographic importance to Canada. He was right to visit Chile, an outstanding democracy with honest laws, and a Canadian free-trade partner. He was right, like his successors, to visit the region and to proclaim that it would become more important to Canadian foreign and economic policies.
Reality, however, has mocked similar pronouncements in the past.