US President Barack Obama has been lambasted for spying in Brazil, accused of being a warmonger by Bolivia, dismissed as a “lost opportunity” by Argentina and taunted in Nicaragua by calls for Latin America to draw up its own list of state sponsors of terrorism — with the US in the No. 1 spot.
However, Latin American leaders now have a new kind of vocabulary to describe him — they are calling him “brave,” “extraordinary” and “intelligent.”
After years of watching his influence in Latin America slip away, Obama suddenly turned the tables this week by declaring a sweeping detente with Cuba, opening the way for a major repositioning of the US in the region.
Washington’s isolation of Cuba has long been a defining fixture of Latin American politics, something that has united governments across the region, regardless of their ideologies. Even some of Washington’s closest allies in the Americas have rallied to Cuba’s side.
Now, Obama’s restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba is snatching a major cudgel from his critics and potentially restoring some of Washington’s influence in a region where rivals such as China have long been chipping away at US primacy.
“We never thought we would see this moment,” said Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who chided the Obama administration last year over the US National Security Agency’s surveillance of her and her top aides.
She called the deal with Cuba “a moment which marks a change in civilization.”
The change in tone was perhaps starkest from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Cuba’s main financial patron. He has called Obama the “big boss of the devils,” a puppet and a sad “hostage” of US imperialism. More recently, he lashed out at Obama over a bill calling for sanctions against Venezuelan officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses.
However, on Wednesday, when Obama announced the Cuba deal, Maduro was almost effusive.
“We have to recognize the gesture of President Barack Obama, a brave gesture and historically necessary, perhaps the most important step of his presidency,” Maduro said.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, the former Sandinista rebel, was chastising Obama just days ago, saying the US deserved the top spot in a new list of state sponsors of terrorism. Then on Wednesday, he saluted the “brave decisions” of the US president.
“Our previous Cuba policy was clearly an irritant and a drag on our policy in the region,” US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs Roberta Jacobson said, adding that it caused friction even with countries friendly to Washington.
She said that countries “with whom we have significant differences are going to be, let’s say, thrown off their stride by a move like this.”
“It removes an excuse for blaming the United States for things,” she added.
As for Cuba, experts said a significant factor pushing it to favor better relations with the US was the economic trouble in Venezuela, whose leftist government has propped up Cuba for years with shipments of oil, much as the Soviet Union once did.
Venezuela ships about 100,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba, in exchange for Cuban doctors, nurses, athletic trainers and military advisers. The relationship is worth billions of dollars a year to Cuba.
Maduro has pledged to continue supporting Cuba, but Venezuela is in the throes of a deep economic crisis that is being made worse by a drastic drop in the price of oil, the nation’s main export.
However, while sharp differences persist on many issues, other major Washington policy shifts have recently been applauded in the region, including Obama’s immigration plan and the resettlement in Uruguay of six detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
“These measures will not eliminate suspicions and resentments, but they will give Washington enhanced credibility on a range of other issues,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group, speaking from Havana.
The first test of the impact of the shift over Cuba could come swiftly in Venezuela, where Maduro must determine how to respond to new US sanctions, which Obama signed into law on Thursday.
Given that he had thundered against the “insolent Yankee imperialists” on Monday, Maduro’s response to the new law was muted.
Before the thaw with Cuba, Maduro had hinted that he was considering kicking out more US diplomats, something he has done before, but now that Cuba has opened its doors to US diplomats, Maduro must consider how it would look for him to be once again showing the door to US envoys.
“There will be radical and fundamental change,” former Colombian president Andres Pastrana said. “I think that to a large extent the anti-imperialist discourse that we have had in the region has ended. The Cold War is over.”
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