Hillary Clinton has just dropped out of the Democratic primaries for the United States presidential race and it will be Barak Obama facing John McCain in the November election. The primaries have been front page news in the Latin American press, followed with obsessive detail that visitors to the region might find surprising, but Latinos are very aware of the influence that the U.S. wields over their counties and their lives.
Even though none of the candidates has addressed America's relationship with Latin America and foreign policy discussion has focused exclusively on the Middle East, people in this part of the world hope for a U.S. leadership that is not as aggressive or reactionary as previous administrations. Less sabre rattling from Washington towards Venezuela and a more conciliatory tone in its relationships with Latin America's populist governments would be a welcome start towards assuaging popular resentment for America's history of harsh rule in the region.
During the Cold War, a political dissident in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe could have expected to be harassed and possibly jailed for their activities. In America's sphere of influence, Latin America dissidents feared being abducted by a CIA-trained death squad, not to reappear until their body was found horribly tortured, shot in the back of the head and dumped at a landfill site.
In 1968, when a new liberal government in Czechoslovakia began enacting policies of which Moscow did not approve, the Soviets executed a military coup d'etat, arrested the government leaders and imposed a repressive regime that curtailed recently acquired freedoms. A few years later, when a new liberal government in Chile began enacting policies of which Washington did not approve, the U.S. executed a military coup d'etat, had the government leaders killed and imposed a repressive regime that murdered an estimated 136,000 people. Latin Americans might reasonably question which superpower more deserved to be called 'The Evil Empire'.
President Richard Nixon was once quoted as saying, "Latin America doesn't matter. ... People don't give one damn about Latin America", and little appears to have changed around the Whitehouse in the decades since. In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Barak Obama stated his ambition to, "...restore our image as the last, best hope on Earth." Understandably, Latinos view such statements with bitter irony, but they still hope that a day will come when the United States will stand for ideals like democracy and freedom, as it has always proudly claimed it does.
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