UNFORTUNATELY, The Sun's May 8 editorial ("In our own back yard") dredges up the ''yard'' metaphor to refer to the region where President Clinton is discussing a plethora of issues -- drug trafficking, trade and immigration -- of importance to the United States and Latin America.
Unlike the media, the president is savvy enough to avoid speaking of Latin America as if it belonged to the United States.
From the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 to the present, U.S. leaders have used geographical proximity to argue that Washington is the ''natural protector'' of Latin America. This misguided assumption has been compounded by using the ''yard'' metaphor to justify decades of intervention and territorial gain.
President Reagan, in an effort to sell his disastrous Central American policy in the 1980s, often referred to the region as belonging in our ''front yard,'' therefore more of a threat than if it were in our ''back yard."
Either way, it is important that we now bury the myth that this region -- Latin America -- is located in our yard. Latin America is not located in a yard owned by the United States, or anyone else.
The independent countries of Latin America may be in the same neighborhood (Western Hemisphere) as the United States, but certainly not in our ''back yard.'' Some scholars who have examined the way U.S. policy toward Latin America is made argue that yard is the international equivalent of calling an adult African-American male ''boy."
Clearly, the chances of improving our relations with our neighbors to the south will only occur when the press and politicians refrain from using mythical (and incorrect) terminology a basis for meaningful discourse.
David Dent
Baltimore
