Cuban–Latin American Relations in the Context of a Changing Hemis ...

Latin America is good for the United States.”⁵ Though the speech was short on policy specifics, it indicated a willingness to have a dialogue even with America’s adversaries—by implication, Cuba and Venezuela. Obama’s call for a different relationship with Cuba dovetailed with the two previously mentioned think tank reports, which called for dramatic U.S. actions to move toward a normalization of relations with the island as a part of a wider strategy of meeting the concerns of the Latin American nations.⁶ Brazil’s important leadership role was acknowledged, and for the first time since the FTAA initiative was launched by President Clinton in 1994, there was no U.S. rhetoric about liberalized trade being the key to the region’s problems. Latin American leaders of all political persuasions tended to believe that this was potentially a historic shift in the U.S. policy toward the region, comparable to President Franklin Roosevelt’s vaunted Good Neighbor Policy. Given this speech of Obama’s, it was natural that many observers both in the United States and Latin America expected significant policy changes from the new U.S. president.

In light of these expectations, how are the first two years of Obama’s policies in Latin America to be evaluated? Put simply, Obama’s rhetoric of May 2009 in Miami has not been followed by any real changes in U.S. policy. On a range of issues, from its approaches to Cuba and Venezuela, its promotion of drug policies in Mexico and the Andean region, and even its relations with traditional U.S. allies such as Brazil and Argentina, the Obama administration has pursued more continuity with the Bush era than it has pushed for change. Even more importantly, the administration’s response to its first Latin American crisis, the military coup in Honduras, has proven to be deeply disappointing to residents throughout the region. The region’s peoples and governments lined up almost unanimously in opposition to the June 2009 coup against President Manuel Zelaya, only to see the United States broker a solution that ultimately favored the coupmakers and weakened democracy in the region. This critique is expressed in two early 2010 research reports from Washington-based think tanks: Cambio? The Obama Administration in Latin America—A Disappointing Year in Perspective by the Council on