Barack Obama and Latin America: The Absence of a “Grand Design"

International intervention in Libya has interfered with Barack Obama’s recent trip to Latin America — the first outside of Mexico. From March 19 to 23, Obama visited Brazil, Chile and El Salvador, while constantly following the course of the military operations. During the following week, from March 28 to 30, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter visited Cuba, a trip which his Democratic successor was banned from doing, given the current state of affairs. However, it is possible to see how roles were distributed in this arrangement.

When Obama was elected, it had such an impact with Latin Americans that the alienation caused by the Republican administration and by the war in Iraq was reversed. The new president even raised expectations in countries governed by left-wing political parties. In April 2009, at the Summit of the Americas — a series of international summit meetings that brings together the leaders of countries in North, Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean — in Trinidad and Tobago, optimism prevailed. Then, hope partly faded because the White House’s strategic priorities were elsewhere, not to mention the situation in the U.S. which had been complicated by the economic crisis. People wondered how Obama could commit to the immigration reform promised to Latin Americans during his election campaign, when he had to scrap his health care plan at the same time.

In June 2009, the coup in Honduras did not settle anything, even if it was condemned by all. If we are to believe the diplomatic cables revealed by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Le Monde, the U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, at the center of Honduras’ politics, had underestimated the risks of a coup until the week before the event. Honduras was suspended from the Organization of American States.

The image of the U.S. was further blurred by the signing of an agreement that said U.S. troops could use Colombian bases for anti-drug operations. Subsequently, the Supreme Court in Bogota shelved this agreement. Juan Manuel Santos, the current president of Colombia and former minister of national defense, has done nothing to revive it. Thus 26 months after Obama’s inauguration, his first Latin American tour was eagerly awaited. Since “localism” is the inevitable outcome of globalization, each country’s opinion has assessed Obama’s tour of Latin America nationally, whereas it is best seen in its entirety.

The Brazilians have felt strengthened in their role as an emerging power, even if Obama did not support their campaign for a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council. The reluctance does not result so much from Brazil’s position in the U.N. on Iran or Libya, but in deciding who should be given the second Latin American seat: Mexico or Argentina? Why not Colombia or Chile? The subject divides those concerned.

Like Obama’s speeches in Prague and Cairo, the one in Santiago, Chile was supposed to open a “new era” of equal partnership. Despite growing trade with China, the U.S. remains the main partner and investor in Latin America. The presidential palace of La Moneda, a historical site, welcomed the representative of a country that had previously conspired to overthrow the Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende. Obama did not mention this, but he referenced communist poet Pablo Neruda twice, who died shortly after the coup. Obama promised to Chileans, who wanted to hear a word of remorse, the cooperation of his administration in the clarification of human rights breaches. The expected gesture came in El Salvador, where the U.S. president bowed before the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated by a right-wing extremist death squad in 1980. The U.S. was even more involved in civil wars in Central America than in South American coups.

50 years after the Alliance for Progress, launched by John F. Kennedy aiming to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and South America, Washington has no “grand design” to propose to Latin America, apart from sharing “common values” and managing interdependence. Almost everywhere in the world, democracies aspire to security, growth and above all, greater equal opportunities. Cuba — the major worry — is no longer the threat that it was during the Cold War. Brazil, Chile and El Salvador show, as Obama highlighted, that a democratic transition and change in power can be done peacefully.

In Santiago, Obama recalled how his administration has approached the Cuban regime. In Havana, Cuba, Jimmy Carter suggested the two sides to go further. In the U.S., he demanded an end to the embargo and the release of five Cuban agents imprisoned in Florida. In Cuba, he pleaded for the American Alan Gross, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison although he is “innocent.” After talking with opponents, he also pleaded for Cubans freedom of expression and movement, and for human rights. Carter ought to find an attentive ear at the White House.