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

further United Nations sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, but the Brazilian government has pointedly refused to do so. In fact, President Luis Inacio da Silva (Lula)’s government invited the Iranian president to visit Brazil in 2010.

However, no issue has symbolized Obama’s failure to deliver a new Latin American policy more than his stance on the Honduran coup. There is no credible evidence that the U.S. government supported or helped to plan the coup, and initially the Obama administration joined Latin American leaders in condemning the removal of Zelaya and calling for his return. However, once the coup leaders resisted the initial pressure, the Obama administration’s role became a treacherous one that never pressed hard for the return of Zelaya to the Honduran presidency. It eventually approved a November election in which a conservative, strongly pro-U.S. candidate, Pepe Lobo, was victorious.

This favorable result for U.S. interests emerged from negotiations in Costa Rica that were brokered by President Oscar Arias, in which the United States forced Zelaya to negotiate with the coupmakers from a position of weakness. Under the agreement that was negotiated, Zelaya was to be restored to the presidency by the very Supreme Court and Congress that had sanctioned his removal. When those bodies refused to reinstate Zelaya, most Latin American countries, headed by Brazil, declared the agreement to be null and void and called for nonrecognition of the planned November elections. However, at a meeting of the OAS in October, the U.S. government broke ranks with Latin America and declared that it would recognize the winner of the election as the legitimate president of Honduras. Close U.S. allies in the region, such as Colombia and Panama, backed the United States, and the principled position many Latin American countries had taken against the coup was irrevocably undermined. Ultimately, Obama saw U.S. interests as lying with the removal of the populist leader Zelaya and not with the interests of democracy and human rights in the hemisphere. In the process of instating the country’s new leader, the new administration made it clear that although there may be subtle changes in the U.S.–Latin American policy that were more accommodating to the region’s needs, the United