The week at a glance...Americas

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Vote is peaceful: Haiti’s presidential runoff between pop singer Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly and former First Lady Mirlande Manigat went much more smoothly this week than last fall’s chaotic first round. While some polling places lacked ballots, and many voters could not find where they were registered, there were no allegations of widespread fraud this time. The surprise return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who arrived in Haiti just two days before the vote—after years of South African exile—seemed to have little effect on voters. Neither did the return in January of former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, after 25 years in France. Wyclef Jean, the singer who was ruled ineligible to run, claimed he was injured by gunfire on polling day, but police said he’d actually just cut his hand on some glass. Official results will be certified in April.

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Obama charms hemisphere: Fifty years after John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress speech laid out U.S. policy toward Latin America, President Obama this week told the region’s leaders that the U.S. sees them as equals. “In the Americas today, there are no senior partners and there are no junior partners: There are equal partners,” Obama said in Chile during his first trip to the region. “Todos somos Americanos.” Obama said that while Kennedy’s goals of reducing poverty and eliminating illiteracy are still admirable, now Latin America has as much to offer as the United States. Obama used much of the trip through Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador to promote U.S. exports in a bid to help manufacturing back home.

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