Security was tight in crime-plagued El Salvador yesterday as US President Barack Obama was set to wrap up a Latin America tour in which he hailed a new era of partnership after a troubled past.
The three-nation trip was to conclude in one of the world’s most dangerous countries.
Large numbers of heavily armed police and soldiers were deployed around the presidential palace and the hotel where Obama will be staying as US military helicopters circled overhead.
Photo: AFP
Security was also tight around the cathedral of San Salvador, where Obama is to pay a visit today, and the archeological site of San Andres, 40km to the west, which will be visited by his family.
The US leader has also visited Chile and Brazil as part of his first tour to Latin America as president, in a visit seen as aimed at reasserting US influence in the region.
In Chile, Obama said the US and Latin America were bound by common values and a shared history as he sought increased trade to boost the faltering US economy.
“I believe that in the Americas today, there are no senior partners and there are no junior partners, there are equal partners,” Obama said, speaking alongside Chilean President Sebastian Pinera in Santiago.
“In each other’s journey we see reflections of our own. Colonists who broke free from empires. Pioneers who opened new frontiers,” he said. “This is our history. This is our heritage. We are all Americans. Todos somos Americanos.”
In a thinly veiled attack on regional foes like Cuba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Obama railed against “leaders who cling to bankrupt ideologies to justify their own power and who seek to silence their opponents.”
Obama has evoked the successful struggle against dictatorships in much of the region as a model for the popular uprisings under way in the Arab world.
“At a time when others around the world are reaching for their own rights and struggling for their own sense of dignity, Chile sends a powerful message,” Obama said.
“You too can write a new chapter in the story of your nation; you too can be free,” he said at the presidential palace, where the democratically-elected president Salvador Allende died during a US-backed military coup in 1973.
Obama’s charm offensive could help open up Latin America’s surging economies to US firms and shore up export markets as Washington ties up important free trade deals with key regional partners Panama and Colombia.
“We buy more of your goods and products than any other country, and we invest more in this region than any other country,” Obama said.
In the final leg of his trip Obama may focus on the drug trafficking and violence that continue to plague much of Central America.
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