Barack Obama’s re-election to the White House was in no small part due to the support of the US’ minorities. Latinos may be the largest racial minority in the country, but the President has been lukewarm in his intra-hemispheric relations.
Although he received 71% of the Latino vote on 6 November, Latin American citizens and expatriates will hope the next four years bring increased commerce and greater efforts to combat the drug trade, particularly in violence-ridden Mexico.
Despite their variegated political ideologies, nations to the south of Rio Grande were pleased with the Democrat’s victory. Pleased, but by no means overjoyed: pragmatically satisfied by the stability that comes with some assurances of consistency in policy-making from the region’s hegemon.
It was however more of a case of Obama being the ‘least-bad’ option, as despite some favourable decisions, his administration has not been received wholly positively throughout the continent.
Probably the worst showing during Obama’s first term was the highly probable US role, or at least acquiescence, in the murky waters of Honduras’ regime change of June 2009. Manuel Zelaya, a progressive president friendly with Venezuela was overthrown by the Honduran military, who have received extensive US support and training to combat drug-trafficking and violence.
Obama denounced the coup, cut off aid, and claimed the US were not involved. Unlike the Latin American nations however, who were hesitant to recognise the new government, the US did so immediately.
Colombia is another country with a history of US military buttressing. However, back in 2008 it was feared by some supporters of then-president Álvaro Uribe that Obama’s election might affect the success of Plan Colombia’s counter-narcotics initiatives and military moves against leftist insurgents.
In reality however, Obama has effected little policy change in this area and has been conspicuously absent from the politics of the peace talks with Colombia’s FARC rebels, a group former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright classified as a terrorist organisation in 1997. It is hard to ascertain whether Obama is pleased with improvements in the country, or whether they aren’t so high on his priority list.
More positively, Obama has relaxed travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans returning to the US, and lifted the cap on financial support they can send back to the island. Nevertheless, the trade embargo or bloqueo, blockade, remains highly unpopular amongst Cubans.
Obama has also deported more illegal migrants, indocumentados, than any other US president for half a century. Even George W. Bush sought to reform immigration in favour of Latinos, but his plans were rejected by his party in 2005-06.
Obama is though, in a difficult position. For example, his impartial view would probably be that Brazil merits a permanent place on the United Nations Security Council; it would however not be in his country’s interests. On a visit in 2011, Obama stopped short of admitting that he supported the claim, only admitting that he ‘appreciated’ the Brazilian arguments.
In his 2005 book Who Are We?, Samuel Huntington recognised that technology and ease of travel mean that US-based Latinos are more likely to continue to consider themselves Latin Americans than ever before. The challenge for Democrats and Republicans alike will be convincing them that the US is keen to improve relations with its hemispheric neighbours.