‘Historic’ and ‘Irreversible’

“Historic” and its cohabitant, “irreversible,” are terms often used in contemporary political symbolism. The Panama summit, which last weekend brought together Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, is undoubtedly historic in itself, since the last time the U.S. and Cuban presidents met in a formal setting was in 1956, and Washington and Havana are trying to make a fresh start. But “irreversible”? There are different degrees of irreversibility, aside from which the term’s usage tends to lead to disappointment, such as that caused by the temporary agreement signed by Israelis and Palestinians in September 1993. [Cases such as] this have constantly shown how reversible it can be, with brakes and back pedaling. For this reason in the Cuban-U.S. process, the degree of absolute irreversibility will only be reached with the lifting of the embargo from the Antillean island.

What does seem irreversible is that this is a different Latin America to that of Miami 1994, when the first Summit of the Americas was held. The political literature of the time proposed the consolidation of democracy, an irreversible end to militaries in power, whereas the main priority in Panama has been opposition to foreign interventionism, as the Bolivarian speeches (but not only these) made evident at the summit. This front, pretty much closed to foreign interference, is based on the conviction that there are matters that only concern Latin Americans, as is the case with Castroism; additionally, that despite huge differences, which exist among the congruent Left (Brazil, Chile, perhaps Argentina) and the so-called radicals (Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador), Latin America exists for the first time internationally with a strength it hasn’t known since independence.

Obama is responding to this new, coarse reality by emphasizing that Washington no longer thinks of overthrowing governments — today it is not at all clear whether it has managed [to change] — and by reiterating the offer formulated in the 2009 Trinidad and Tobago summit, of a relationship among equals. This new beginning has many factors in its favor, not the least of which being that in these times of relative neglect of Latin American affairs due to deployments to and withdrawals from the Middle East, the U.S. has not developed joint policies, as Carlos Malamud from Infolatam points out, but instead various bilateral approaches to Ibero-American countries. It doesn’t have much time left to put these intentions to the test, but if the U.S. president removes the embargo (to do so he would have to scale the steep slope of a Congress dominated by Republicanocrats and consolidate a nuclear agreement with Iran faced with the same adversaries) then he would be able to say that he had left a different world to his successor, whoever that might be.

Obama has removed a geopolitical cyst from the U.S., one which, precisely due to Latin America’s new international personality, was contaminating all of its relations with the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world, which it can now address by choosing between blocs, especially economic ones. We may therefore be facing a historic, irreversible project — unless of course a Republican president prefers to return to the famous position of “life was better against our enemies.”