Obama's Latin America Policy: A Score Card

According  to  Senator  John  McCain,  “John  F.  Kennedy  described  the  peoples  of  Latin  America  as  the  United  States’  ‘firm  and  ancient  friends,  united  by  history  and  by  the United States’ determination to advance the values of American civilization throughout the hemisphere’” (Kennedy 1962, quoted in McCain 2007, 30). Latin American countries make natural  partners  of  the  United  States,  despite  the  inattentive  pollution  of  this  relationship  by  previous  administrations  of  the  United  States.  However,  from  the  moment  he  became  America’s 44thpresident, Barack Obama expressed a policy towards Latin America that is centred on the idea of equal partnership and mutual engagement, by saying, “I know that promises of partnership have gone unfulfilled in the past. There would be no senior or junior partner  to  this  new  engagement;  there  is  simply  engagement  based  on  mutual  respect;  common  interests  and  shared  values”  (Obama  2009).  This  two-part  analysis  examines  President Obama’s foreign policy legacy in Latin America looking at his change of strategy on  U.S.-Cuba  relations  and  the  challenges  that  followed.  The  initial  part  will focus  on  the  political and intellectual significance of ‘legacy’ as a study, then examine U.S. foreign policy shift  from  the  Bush  to  the  Obama  administration. This  first  part  of  a  two-part  assessment concludes that despite Obama’s Latin America policy not living up to its full expectation, it was  more  pragmatic,  cordial  and  multilateral  towards  Latin  America  than  most  American  administrations to date.