Obama’s Latin American debut

last updated 8 January 2015

President Obama “turned in a stellar performance” on his recent visit to Europe and Turkey, said The Miami Herald in an editorial. He will probably also be “the star of the show” in his Latin America debut at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. But star power alone won't repair strained relations—that will require some friendly policies, such as free trade and immigration reform.

Obama shouldn’t be all sunshine and rainbows, said The Washington Post in an editorial. He needs to raise some unpopular truths about Hugo Chavez’s widely ignored anti-democracy “crackdown” in Venezuela and Raúl Castro’s still-oppressive Cuba. Obama should make clear that his foreign policy is inexorably “linked to democracy.”

The best thing Obama can do for Latin America is to fix the sinking U.S. economy, said Alvaro Vargas Llosa in The New Republic, which has dragged the region down with it. It would also be helpful to revise the failed “war on drugs,” say, by legalizing marijuana. And it wouldn't hurt for Obama to practice his Spanish.