Sergio Bitar on Obama

Sergio Bitar (who was a cabinet member in the Allende, Lagos, and Bachelet administrations in Chile) offers a Latin American perspective of the Obama administration's Latin America policy that is worth reading.  It compares Obama's approach to other parts of the world, and sees two core problems.

First, with Latin America, Obama focuses only on the hemisphere and does not acknowledge broader global forces at work.

Second, Obama does not acknowledge legitimate reasons why Latin American leaders (even ones generally supportive of U.S. policy) have been critical of the U.S., particularly how the global economic crisis came about in the first place.

Both are fair criticisms.  Obama inherited the "neighbor" rhetoric from every president before him, but it is increasingly becoming outdated and often had paternalistic overtones.  He also inherited the insistence that problems of drugs, immigration, etc. are primarily Latin American ones without creating new policies aimed at demand rather than just supply.