How does Barack Obama Converse?

Last April, while in Trinidad and Tobago, Barack Obama said he was trying “to launch a new chapter of engagement” and establish an “equal partnership” with Latin America. His commitment to the far right was already clear. The announcement was revealed as a demagogic statement — hollow words emerged with the need to talk about change.

Today, nine months after Obama’s declaration at the opening of the Fifth Summit of the Americas, impositions continue to set the relations between the United States and Latin America. Imperialistic arrogance does not stop, because the project of strengthening the hegemony of U.S. power is ongoing.

In policies toward Cuba, for example, there is less weight to be flexible on travel and remittances than the decision to keep economic criminal sanctions and financial programs for the counterrevolution.

The recent inclusion of Cuba in the list of countries as “sponsors of terrorism” is a sign of the imperialistic power searching for arguments to justify aggression.

Is this what Obama calls a dialogue among equals or mutual respect?

In evaluating U.S. policy toward Latin America during Obama’s first year in office, the U.S. not only keeps aggression against Cuba, it also legitimizes the coup d’état in Honduras and increases American military presence in Colombia and Panama, which constitutes a continuous threat against the constitutional government of Venezuela, in particular, and in general against the progressive governments of the area.

Can he qualify as a promoter of a dialogue among equals for a government that takes control of seven military bases in order to finish converting Colombia into a scene for designing and implementing aggressive operations and espionage? And for a government that has no qualms in using Panama’s territory and the military bases in Curacao and Aruba for the same purpose?

How can Obama claim that he respects Latin America, when he has collaborated with the far right in recognizing the electoral farce staged by the Honduran insurgents? On a June morning, bodyguards drove President Manuel Zelaya to the U.S. base at Soto Cano. Why has he not proposed a penalty on U.S. officials who sponsored the coup?

Obama has no qualms about picking up the inheritance of conspiracy against political change in Latin America. As the far right advises in its basic documents, it tries to always make natural resources in Latin America available to the United States. That means plundering, aggression and subjugation, even when the head of the infamous policy is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.