US-Latin America: More continuity than change

Nearly one year after his inauguration, hopes that President Barack Obama would bring fundamental changes to U.S. relations with Latin American have faded badly. Distracted by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a major legislative battle over health care policy, and the two wars in the Greater Middle East left to him by his predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama has had very little time to devote to tending ties with Washington's southern neighbors. And it didn't help that some of his most important appointments, notably Arturo Valenzuela as his assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Thomas Shannon as his ambassador to Brazil, among others, were held up for months by right-wing Republican senators determined to prevent Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, viewed by them as a proxy for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, from returning to power.