
US President Barack Obama has passed its first test with brilliantly with 33 counterparts of Latin America, the Summit of the Americas, at Trinidad and Tobago, which was closed yesterday evening. The change in tone from a Bush administration depicted as at best indifferent at worst contemptuous for the countries of Central America and the South, was palpable, according to the statements of the heads of State present. At the point of Eclipse topics of the Summit, energy cooperation and the fight against climate change, while Washington had for the first time, Friday, acknowledged responsibility for carbon dioxide in this phenomenon (read page 8), deciding there yet with the era Bush.
"We were all able to talk and he responded to each," argued the Uruguayan President of Tabaré Vazquez, from the left, while "it couldn't before." Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, one of the most critical towards Washington with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez or the Bolivian Evo Morales, was he also under the spell, declaring, "this is the beginning of a new era." Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, said that "a different dialogue" was opened with Barack Obama and hoped that "intentions can be translated into concrete policies. Even the most virulent criticism of Washington, Hugo Chavez, who was against "American imperialism" and who had treated Barack Obama of "poor ignorant" last March, provided amazing marks of friendship to the new President of the United States. The President of the Venezuela faces, it is true, a serious economic crisis due to the decline in the price of oil which it is the fifth largest exporter. He had a handful of hands very publicized with its American counterpart, offering and him dédicaçant a book, which, however, is a classic of Latin American radical left, on the looting of the resources of the continent from the 15th century to the 20th century. Similarly, Hugo Chavez announced Saturday night that he had to appoint an Ambassador, Roy Chaderton, in Washington, where he had more representative since its decision to expel the American Ambassador in September.

Lack of consensus
Demonstrating the embarrassment of a US administration feared to be trapped by Hugo Chavez, Barack Obama merely exchanging a few innocuous words with the flamboyant leader of a scheme to the authoritarian turn marked for a few months. It is true, moreover, that the Cuban record remains a subject of contention between Washington and Caracas. Hugo Chávez had announced that he would not sign the final Declaration, text always developed by consensus since the first Summit of the Americas in 1994, if it was not called at the end of the US embargo against Cuba. However, despite its recent decision to facilitate travel and transfers of money from citizens United States to the island, Barack Obama is not prepared for such a gesture immediate. His economic advisor, Lawrence Summers, emphasized yesterday that he was first to obtain guarantees that the Castro regime to liberalize. Raul Castro assured Thursday be open "to dialogue on everything" with Washington, "including the rights of man, the freedom of the press, political prisoners." Excluded from the Organization of American States (OAS) since 1962, the island was not invited to the Summit.
34 Delegations chose yesterday to broadcast a statement signed only by a part of them, absence of consensus, which inevitably affected the positive results of the Summit.