President Obama travels to a weekend summit of the hemisphere’s leaders Friday as the head of a nation that remains in many ways the economic envy of its closest neighbors, but also one whose influence is on the wane in a rising region...
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As the United States struggles to regain its economic footing, Latin America’s leaders have moved on from the largely U.S.-centric view of the world that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some of the most influential have embraced policies that welcome China, India and Iran as economic and political partners.
“This summit is hugely different from the first Summit of the Americas in terms of the United States and the hemisphere.,” said Cynthia J. Arnson, director of the Latin American program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Latin America has clearly emerged on its own.”
Obama, too, has focused on other parts of the world.
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The Castros are growing old in Cuba, Venezuela’s populist firebrand Hugo Chavez is battling cancer and faces an election this year, and Mexico’s Felipe Calderon also will be departing soon because of his country’s one-term limit. Obama, consumed by domestic issues and his own election prospects, will be challenged to find his own place in a region where the United States casts a smaller shadow than it once did.
“I think they are quite comfortable with the diminished role in the hemisphere, and I think it is coming from President Obama himself,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “He comes to this recognizing that U.S. power has diminished in the hemisphere — and that that is the natural order of things.”
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The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action. Read more
The Mexico Institute seeks to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship. A binational Advisory Board, chaired by Luis Téllez and Earl Anthony Wayne, oversees the work of the Mexico Institute. Read more
