Obama: US-Latin America Past is Past

Ask pretty much any person from Latin America and they’ll tell you that the one word that defines the US relationship to that part of the world is paternalistic, at times either meddling or taking it for granted. But to hear President Barack Obama speak this past week you’d be convinced that those times are in the past.

Obama has been traveling through Latin America this week juggling the much awaited foreign relations trip with America’s response to the earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear emergency in Japan as well as the military intervention in Libya and the overall volatile situation across the Middle East.  In Chile he delivered what observers believe was the keynote speech of the trip and he pointed to Latin America as the model for nations to follow as they transition towards democracy (somehow that phrase waters down the violence and turmoil that comes with ousting dictators). According to the New York Times:

“There’s so much Latin America can now share: how to build political parties and organize free elections, how to ensure peaceful transfers of power, how to navigate the winding paths of reform and reconciliation,” he said.

Those transfers of power in Latin America, though, have not been peaceful or easy. At a press conference in Santiago a reporter asked if  “he also would ‘ask for forgiveness’ on behalf of the United States for its part in the 1973 coup that brought Chile’s former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, to power and for the ‘open wounds’ that remain.” Obama’s answer was to assure the Chilean public that the US would be open and forthcoming with any information about that period, but emphasized that neither country should be “trapped” by history.

“We’ve seen extraordinary progress here in Chile, and that has not been impeded by the United States but, in fact, has been fully supported by the United States.”

“So I can’t speak to all of the policies of the past,” he said. “I can speak certainly to the policies of the present and the future.”

The list of issues that are of mutual concern for the US and Latin America is long:

• fighting criminal gangs and drug traffickers
• gun smuggling and immigration
• education and cultural exchange programs
• trade
• clean-energy projects and climate change
• and the melting of glaciers in the Andes Mountains

Obama even went so far as to include Cuba in his references to pressing issues and needed change from the past.

Saying his administration had worked for greater openness with the Cuban people, Mr. Obama said, “I will make this effort to try to break out of this history that’s now lasted for longer than I’ve been alive.”

But, he added, the Castro government “must take some meaningful actions to respect the basic rights of their own people.”

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda