Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America

President Obama was elected with a campaign of hope, and change.  Those of us who care about Latin America hoped that U.S. foreign policy towards the region, too often unilateral and focused on military solutions, would also change.

A year ago, at a summit of Latin America’s leaders, President Obama hit a note that resonated well with his counterparts: “I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations.”

After that hopeful moment, though, the new administration stumbled at the starting gate. 2009 was a rough year for U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean. Latin American governments and civil society groups were disappointed by the Obama Administration’s inattention, vacillation on democracy and human rights, and failure of imagination in creating more humane policies, especially after it secretly negotiated a defense agreement with Colombia and backed off from efforts to urge resignation of the coup regime in Honduras despite an admirably united Latin American and OAS response to protect the democratic order.

As an official “Truth Commission” was inaugurated May 4th in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, leading Honduran human rights groups expressed serious concerns and announced an alternative commission.

Saying that a real truth commission “should provide a space which has been denied to the victims, in which they can be heard and injury to their rights repaired,” the groups criticized the official commission for “exclusion of the victims” and the “lack of processes to ensure effectiveness and impartiality.”

“Each of us represents a force that has a great capacity to create.” These words rang out on the colorful and majestic voice of Honduran activist and musician Karla Lara during an empowering concert at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC on April 23rd, where she taught us about the values that are central to the movement of peaceful, civic resistance that has been ongoing since the June 2009 coup. Lara, who for years has been making music that inspires people to be a part of constructing a better reality in places across Central America, now is a leader of the feminists-in-resistance and artists-in-resistance who are a part of the struggle for human rights, justice, and democracy going on in her own country.

“It's important to talk about the terrible things that are happening, but the media always covers the negative. It’s more important to talk about what is rarely discussed—that the people are organizing themselves. Not much has been said about how the country is different now, or at least that there are new ideas now about what policies should be like and how we can change things. I wanted to bring that sense of hope and possibility here. The belief that a new America is possible, a different order is possible.”