News from Latin America on Obama's visit Share This /

President Obama will leave Washington tonight for his much talked about trip to Latin America, visiting Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador between the 19th and the 23rd. The U.S. news media has been abuzz discussing the visit, Obama’s first to the region. See these articles to get an feel for recent U.S. coverage of the trip.

Here, we look at what Latin America has been saying about President Obama’s trip.

• An article by DPA appeared in Chile’s La Tercera reporting that a large group of Brazilians have organized over the internet to protest Obama’s visit this Sunday. The message promoting the protest declares Obama a “persona non grata” in Brazil, due to U.S. policies against Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador.
• On the other side of things, Argentina's La Nacion is reporting that Obama will be greeted in Brazil “like a hero.” The outlet says that the visit will seem like “a prolonging of Carnaval” and that the U.S. president is being presented “like a pop star” by the Brazilian government.
• La Tercera is also reporting, via EFE that 2,500 members of the Army and the city’s police force will be on hand to provide security for Obama in Brasilia on Saturday, working alongside 250 U.S. agents.
• Likewise, according to La Tercera, close to 2,000 Chilean police will be providing security for President Obama during his visit. The paper notes that the number of security forces will depend on the itinerary, and will change throughout his visit to the country.
• Two university students were arrested in Valparaíso for writing political slogans against President Obama’s visit to Chile, reports UPI.
• Ex Chilean president Eduardo Frei told La Tercera that President Obama is scheduled to meet with him, as well as former presidents Ricardo Lagos and Patricio Aylwin on Monday. The article goes on to say ex-president Michelle Bachelet will not be attending the meeting due to commitments in New York as part of her job as head of U.N. Women.
• ElSalvador.com reports that the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central America and the Caribbean Julissa Reynoso said that Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador were chosen for Obama’s visit to Latin America because the three countries all show signs of “transformation toward stability” despite the “serious political problems” that have plagued them in the past.
• An article in Honduras’ El Heraldo quotes El Salvador’s president, Mauricio Funes, as saying that his emphasis in his meeting with President Obama will be on solutions to combat the country’s poverty that he believes exacerbates crime and the social inequality that he says “debilitates our democracy.”
• La Nacion reports that Brazil is hoping Obama’s visit will not only to reestablish forgotten ties, but also to signal the “weight of Brazil in the region and affirm its role as an ascending global power.”
• Chile’s La Tercera is reporting that a public appearance by Obama in Rio de Janeiro has been canceled. The appearance, which was scheduled for Sunday in a city plaza known as Cinelandia, was canceled because the president’s security team had doubts about the safety of the plaza.
• And finally, Argentina takes stock of Obama’s trip. La Tercera ran an article from the AP saying that Wikileaks had released a diplomatic cable from 2009 in which the Argentinean government asked to be included as a stop in an eventual trip by President Obama to Latin America. An article in Argentina’s La Nacion concludes that this snub, which it says surprised the Kirchner administration, verifies that the Obama administration has lost faith in the Argentinean government.

This post was written by CIP Intern Erin Shea