WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
President Barack Obama will try to establish a cooperative new relationship with Latin America this week, but U.S. resistance to change on highly symbolic issues like Cuba and immigration could undercut the effort, analysts said.
Obama travels to Mexico on Thursday for his first visit to the region as president and heads to Trinidad and Tobago on Friday for the Fifth Summit of the Americas. As he did at the G20 summit of major economic powers in London this month, the president plans to emphasize listening to regional leaders and working on shared goals.
"With all that is at stake today, we cannot afford to talk past one another," Obama said on Saturday in his weekly radio speech. "We have to find, and build on, our mutual interests."
"I think coming so early in the administration," Davidow said, "this ... legitimately can be seen as a new beginning."
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Those issues, though not on the summit agenda, are sure to be debated. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and like-minded leaders are expected to push for Cuba to be readmitted to the Organization of American States. Debate over Cuba would underscore the divide between the United States and the region.
Washington has said it would not end its 47-year-old embargo on the communist island. But Obama is looking at loosening restrictions on family visits and remittances to Cuba, steps many view as inadequate.
"The measures that the administration seems to be willing to roll out regarding Cuban-American family travel are so limited in their impact, narrow in their scope that perversely this administration, which wants the summit not to be a Cuba summit, might make it a Cuba summit," said Julia Sweig, head of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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