(I'm just going by what I heard on NPR (National Public Radio), what I read by the New York Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Der Spiegel, etc.) That is how, as if by a tacit entente, the mainstream media traditionally report on these matters. The mainstream media in the United States, and, for that matter, much of Europe, as well, portrayed Bush's Latin American trip as an attempt by his administration to counter the sinister President Hugo Chávez's growing aegis in the region-his meddling in the affairs of the countries of the region, his dalliance with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his cavorting with Cuba's (now ailing) Fidel Castro. 11, 2001, and despite promises early on in his administration that he intended to be an amigo to Latin Americans, a better neighbor, and which, no doubt, played well with his conservative Hispanic supporters in the United States, to which he owed his win in 2000. The mainstream media played up the event as an attempt by the president of the United States to improve relations with a region that his administration had neglected following the attacks of Sept. Bush's tour of Latin America that took place from March 8 through March 14, and encompassed stops in Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico. (Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images)Īccording to the American Heritage Dictionary, besides being Homer's second epic poem-retelling the wanderings and adventures of the cunning king of Ithaca, Odysseus, a leader of the Greeks, after the fall of Troy-the word' odyssey' has taken on the generic meaning of 'an extended adventurous wandering,' and it is in this sense that this essay seeks to examine President George W. Bush's Latin American Odysseyīush listens to questions from the press under a portrait of Simón Bolívar at the presidential palace in Bogota.

Diogenes with his lamp