Latin American Leaders Aim to Redefine Relationship With United States

When President George W. Bush traveled to Argentina four years ago for a gathering of Latin American leaders, protesters smashed windows, looted stores and sang anti-Bush slogans. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, drew 25,000 to a soccer stadium to rail against the United States’ free trade policies.

The summit meeting was a qualified fiasco for Mr. Bush and a low ebb for relations between the United States and Latin America.

Now President Obama is planning to visit Trinidad and Tobago this weekend for the fifth Summit of the Americas, with a chance to dim memories of the last such meeting and re-engage with Latin America, a region that took a distant back seat to the Iraq conflict during the Bush years.

But Latin American leaders are seeking more than re-engagement. They are looking to redefine the relationship.

“I’m going to ask the United States to take a different view of Latin America,” Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, said last month before meeting with Mr. Obama in Washington. “We’re a democratic, peaceful continent, and the United States has to look at the region in a productive, developmental way, and not just think about drug trafficking or organized crime.”

Leaders from the 34 countries with democratically elected governments that make up the Organization of American States are expected to press Mr. Obama on issues including the global economy and the United States’ policies on Cuba and on drugs.

Mr. Bush was the most unpopular American president ever in Latin America, polls showed, while Mr. Obama has rock-star status throughout the hemisphere — for the moment.

“Yes, there are other leaders coming, but people do not understand that, they only concerned about Obama,” said Kenneth Job, a street merchant in Port of Spain, Trinidad’s capital, where the meeting will be held.

“He is the main man who everybody love and want to see,” said Mr. Job, who sells framed photos of Mr. Obama, and of Nelson Mandela, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

Ultimately, Mr. Obama’s appeal in the region could be what keeps anti-Americanism in check at the meeting, analysts said. Mr. Chávez, a fiery populist, is also less likely to try to use the event to take a stand against the United States. In Argentina his ire was directed at sinking a free trade agreement, a deal that ultimately died and has yet to be revived.

But the steep decline in oil prices and Brazil’s ascendancy in the region may throw Mr. Chávez off balance. “He is not going to have the same support to be defiant or make provocative statements against the United States,” said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy research center in Washington.

Senior American officials said they did not expect Mr. Obama to try a formal reconciliation with either Mr. Chávez or with Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president. Each leader has expelled American ambassadors in recent months, accusing them of being involved in coup plots.

The conference is focused on “human prosperity,” energy security and environmental sustainability, but the global economy will be central for Latin American leaders, including Mr. da Silva, who is still smarting over how the crisis threatens to derail one of Brazil’s greatest periods of prosperity in a generation.

White House officials also worry that economic contagion could reverse the region’s growth and poverty alleviation in the past half-decade.

“In the last year, these achievements have started to dwindle away,” said Jeffrey S. Davidow, the White House adviser for the summit meeting. “There is a real concern that Latin America or the hemisphere may be entering into another lost decade.”

The Latin American leaders are hoping Mr. Obama will not shy away from subjects that have historically been taboo at such meetings. In the past, the United States has vetoed discussions about Cuba and shrugged off criticism of its drug policy.

But the Obama administration has signaled it agrees with some leaders in the region who want to rethink the approach to curbing drug violence. Several of the region’s leaders have also said in recent months that lifting the embargo with Cuba would go a long way toward repairing relations between Latin America and the United States.

American officials said this week that the president welcomed the discussion, but he is not expected to go beyond steps announced on Monday: lifting restrictions on travel and money transfers to Cuba by Cuban-Americans.

“They may not lift the embargo or legalize drugs, but there will be more space to talk about those kinds of things,” Mr. Shifter said. “Something could happen on these issues that hasn’t really happened before, which is an open debate. That is Obama’s style.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/americas/17trinidad.html?ref=global-home

Brazil's Lula -

U.S. must have a new look at Latin America

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva talked to U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday, asking him to have a new look at Latin America.

In a phone conversation with Obama, Lula said there are conditions for the United States and Latin America to establish partnership, the technological development in particular.

"The U.S. must look at Latin America thinking about technological development, partnership, contribution," he said.

Later on Thursday, during an Armed Forces event in Brasilia, Lula said that the U.S. hesitation about the region is not justifiable, since democracy has been established in the area.

"There must be a change in the U.S. policy on Latin America," said Lula, "There is no Cold War anymore, and there is no armed conflict."

He was also optimistic about a change in the U.S. stance towards Latin American countries, as "President Obama has every condition to improve and expand his country's relations with the Latin American nations," he said.

The two leaders will meet again at the Fifth Summit of the Americas, which will take place in Trinidad and Tobago from Friday to Sunday.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/17/content_11197620.htm

Rattling Sabres in the Rainforest: Is Latin America Facing a War?

Some people consider it a victory in the fight against terrorism. To others its a violation of national sovereignty. When Colombian troops carried out raids just inside the border with Ecuador, 16 fighters with the Colombian guerilla army FARC were killed. Among them was FARC's second most senior leader, Raul Reyes. But neighbouring Ecuador and Venezuela were outraged at the incursion. Both countries have since deployed troops to the Colombian borders. It seems Colombia's civil war is threatening to spill over its borders.

The situation is complex, involving old hostilities and fragile relationsships. It is true that the Farc leftist rebels are slowly withdrawing from the jungle and moving onto foreign turf. But many view Colombia's military attack as a similar encroachment of foreign territory.

But there's a lot more to this conflict than meets the eye. It's also a question of power politics. On the Colombian side there's conservative President Álvaro Uribe. He has closer ties to the USA than any other leader in the region, and receives large-scale military support from Washington.

Although Correa and Chavez deny the charges, Colombia has accused them of having ties to FARC rebels, which is internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation. The military wing of the Colombian Communist Party has been carrying out terrorist attacks in Colombia for more than 40 years, and been taking hostages on an almost daily basis. Among those currently held in captivity is the former Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

Is Latin America on the brink of war? And will Mexico, Argentina and Brazil be able to keep the peace in such times of high tension?

What do you think? Rattling Sabres in the Rainforest: Is Latin America Facing a War?

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2983699,00.html