News Analysis: Summit of the Americas underscores lackluster U.S.-Latin American ties

by Xinhua writers Shooka Shemirani, Yang Chunxue

LIMA, April 15 (Xinhua) -- This year's eighth Summit of the Americas, a two-day meeting that just concluded here Saturday, has generated little anticipation compared to the previous one in 2015, which some analysts believe reflects current lackluster relations between the United States and Latin America.

LOW EXPECTATION

Three years ago, the 35 member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS), which organize the summit, basked in the warm glow of reconciliation following the historic thawing of ties between the United States and Cuba after five decades of icy relations.

A lot has changed since then. While the world's attention once again turned to the summit, observers expected no breakthrough, and commentators mainly wrung their hands at the prospect of U.S. President Donald Trump further antagonizing his regional counterparts on their own turf, only to be relieved when the president canceled his visit at the last minute to oversee his country's military strikes against Syria.

In a little over a year since moving into the White House, Trump has dismantled much of former U.S. President Barack Obama's Cuba legacy and thrown ice water on the warming relations, reigniting diplomatic tensions and snubbing American public opinion, which polls show backs normalizing ties with the Caribbean island.

Trump has alienated the hemisphere's majority of Latin American countries by casting all immigrants as undesirable criminals and pressing for a "big" border wall that would effectively divide North America from Mexico, where Latin America begins, despite the onerous costs and ill feelings the project generates, especially among Mexicans.

He has imposed trade restrictions, demanded established trade deals be renegotiated to secure more favorable terms for the United States, and repeatedly summed up his inward-looking governing principle as "America First." The warm glow of the past summit has given way to a thick fog of uncertainty as to what Trump might do next.

In a New York Times editorial, Ben Raderstorf, a program associate at the Inter-American Dialogue, said Trump could possibly "avoid doing damage" at the continental meeting if his administration took "a hard look at why expectations are so low across the region."

DIVIDED OPINION

While one could argue U.S.-Latin America relations have never been good no matter who has occupied the Oval Office, since the United States has invariably advanced its own interests in the hemisphere regardless of the costs to other countries, regional tensions are running high.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, standing in for Trump, aggressively went after Cuba's government, accusing it of seeking "to export their failed ideology across the wider region" and "aiding and abetting the corrupt dictatorship in Venezuela," which he described as a "failed" state.

Cuba will not "cede even a millimeter on its principles, nor cease its efforts to build socialism," said Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

The United States also condemned Venezuela, which is absent from the summit, with Pence railing against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and blaming him for a humanitarian crisis in his country.

In the plenary session, Bolivian President Evo Morales condemned the "unilateral sanctions and threats of invasion against Venezuela" made by Washington, calling it the "worst enemy of peace and democracy."

WANING INTEREST?

Along with Trump, Cuba's President Raul Castro decided to skip the event, as did the presidents of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Paraguay. Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno arrived in Lima, but returned before the summit began to handle more pressing issues at home.

Whether that's a sign of waning interest in the summit remains to be seen, but one thing is certain -- ties between the United States and Latin America are at a low point.

According to a Gallup poll released earlier this year, only 16 percent of Latin Americans approve of Trump's job performance, and "in many countries, more than 40 percent of residents feel Trump will negatively affect the relationship between their country and the United States."

"The United States is not very interested in Latin America. The United States believes that it can make progress alone," Mauricio Castillo, CCO of Sigdo Koppers, a leading Chilean conglomerate providing services and products for mining and industry, told Xinhua.

Castillo, who took part in a business forum preceding the summit, said: "We are looking more to the Pacific. We feel closer to Asia (than to the United States) despite the distance. In Chile's case, we want to expand our market towards the Pacific, not Europe, nor Australia, nor the United States."

Gustavo Grobocopatel, president of Grupo Los Grobo, a leading agribusiness company based in Argentina, criticized Washington's protectionist and isolationist measures as potentially detrimental to the region.

"Trade restrictions have caused wars ... so you have to fight protectionism," said Grobocopatel, describing the United States under the Trump administration as "a world that does not feel part of the same planet."

"The United States has no positive agenda for Latin America that they could present at the summit. Almost all matters that have linked Trump to Latin America are matters of confrontation, whether in trade or immigration," said Peruvian political analyst Farid Kahhat. Enditem