Latin America Rails Against America Despite That Obama's Visit Was Intended To Mark A New Direction In Relations

The Fifth Summit of the Americas took place yesterday in Trinidad and Tobago yesterday. Obama promised to “listen and learn” from regional leaders. I hope the President listened and learned.

Bloomberg reports that "Latin American leaders railed against the U.S. during President Barack Obama’s first trip to the region, turning what was intended to mark a new direction in relations into a history lesson that chastised 'Yankee troop' interventions and U.S.-dictated economic policies."

Fox News reports that "President Obama endured a 50-minute diatribe from socialist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that lashed out at a century of what he called terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America and included a rambling denunciation of the U.S.-imposed isolation of Cuba's Communist government." Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega included a reference to invasion by “Yankee troops.” Nicaragua’s president said he was “ashamed” Cuba wasn’t invited to participate in the summit. He also said that Obama's lifting on travel restrictions on Cuba were "insufficient and inacceptable." Fox News reports that "Ortega droned on about the offenses of the past, dredging up U.S. support of the Somoza regime and the 'illegal' war against the Sandinista regime he once led by U.S.-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s. Ortega was a member of the revolutionary junta that drove Anastasio Somoza from power in 1979 and was elected president in 1985. He was defeated in 1990 by Violeta Chamorro and ran unsuccessfully twice for the presidency before winning in 2006. Of the 19th and 20th centuries, Ortega said: 'Nicaragua central America, we haven't been shaken since the past century by what have been the expansionist policies, war policies, that even led us in the 1850s, 1855, 1856 to bring Central American people together. We united, with Costa Ricans, with people from Honduras, the people from Guatemala, El Salvador. We all got together, united so we could defeat the expansionist policy of the United States. And after that, after interventions that extended since 1912, all the way up to 1932 and that left, as a result the imposition of that tyranny of the Samoas. Armed, funded, defended by the American leaders.' Ortega denounced the U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's new Communist government in Cuba in 1961, a history of US racism and what he called suffocating U.S. economic policies in the region."

“For many years, there have been traumatic relations,” Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said. “I want you to know, Obama, that this is in no way a reproach against you. It’s simply an exercise to look back at what happened.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told Obama during a meeting that the summit without Cuba was unacceptable. “The big test is progress in relations with Cuba," Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said. “A small step was taken in the right direction. But there needs to be direct dialogue, discreet in the beginning. That’s what...needs to take place.”

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, known for his virulent anti-Americanism and who last month called Obama an “ignoramus” in regard to Latin America, felt comftorable walking over to a seated Obama to give Obama a Spanish-language copy of Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano’s book “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.” Chavez and Obama greeted each other with a hand shake and smile.

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