Obama and the Americas

Barack Obama came to power in the midst of a deep economic and social crisis in his country and, as if that were not enough, inherited two costly and unpopular wars. Consequently, few countries expected him to dedicate much attention to Latin America and the Caribbean; none of them constituted an imminent danger to the security of the United States, says professor Abraham F. Lowenthal, of the University of California. And as known, after Sept. 11, Washington only looked at their neighbors under the prism of terrorism.

However, once chosen, things changed. That the problems of Latin America were not “urgent” did not mean they were not “important.” This perception soon became evident due to Mexico’s aggravated problems. The violence created by the drug trafficking added to the slowdown of their economy — by the way, blame the American crisis — and made the urgency apparent. And, as a logical consequence, it took Obama admitting the great importance of the Americas to his country: They need the strong labor force of their immigrants and their energetic resources; without his collaboration they cannot confront transnational matters such as climate change and drug trafficking.

Obama’s government understood the stubborn fact that he should do something. Distinct from his predecessors, of course, we are talking of nothing less than a humanist president, intelligent, persuasive and modern. Even in the United States, what’s said and done is within an ostentatious bureaucracy. “In the end, the political interest groups and the bureaucracy, molded by internal political calculus and stimulated by the ideological polarization, generally have a major impact on the political exterior of Latin America that is the great design of external politics.”* The inconsistency and the contradiction are inevitable: they refused protectionism, but invite to “buy ‘America’”; they make energetic agreements, but they subsidize their ethanol and tax imported ethanol; they prohibit Mexican truck drivers from entering their territory, violating the NAFTA treaty.

The expectations should be modest. Despite good intentions to reestablish relations with Cuba, as demonstrated by Dan Erikson, advisor to the State Department, the lifting of some small restrictions for travel and shipment from the Bush era have not happened; nor has the approval of investments in communication or the standardization of postal communication. The prohibition is still in force for regular visits of Americans to the island. For Laurence Whitehead, of the University of Oxford, from the Latin American perspective the mentioned paralysis can be seen as a lost opportunity. “It is probable that Obama was not disposed to pay the political price that a more open attitude on Cuba would have meant within the United States.”*

More of the same, nothing has changed, some say. Below the face of Red Riding Hood, there is the same wolf with the same unilateral and domineering practices. The result is difficult to contradict when observing the action of Obama’s government in the cases of the military bases in Colombia and the constitutional interruption in Honduras; when listening to Hillary Clinton threaten Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela, only to invite the Iranian president to their country. “Each country exercises democracy as a considered convenience. The United States did it their way and not all are in agreement on how to conduct its government,” Lula Silva had to respond.

Whitehead does not believe that there really exists a general political framework with a high visibility leadership, nor a push to rewrite the hemisphere relations. Nevertheless, the Western hemisphere is for him an area where gains could be made, so that the United States regains position and recoups its international credibility. “But to guarantee this requires major innovation, long-range attention, and the will to treat their regional allies as equals.”*

*Editor’s note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.