“It’s time for a new alliance of the Americas. After eight years of the failed policies of the past, we need new leadership for the future. After decades pressing for top-down reform, we need an agenda that advances democracy, security, and opportunity from the bottom up. So my policy towards the Americas will be guided by the simple principle that what’s good for the people of the Americas is good for the United States. That means measuring success not just through agreements among g  overnments, but also through the hopes of the child in the favelas of Rio, the security for the policeman in Mexico City, and the answered cries of political prisoners heard from jails in Havana.” -- [Speech in Miami, FL, 5/23/08] 

The United States shares a special bond with the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to a shared history of colonization and liberation, and shared struggles for national identity and prosperity, the Americas also have been steadfast allies through battles against colonial empires, two World Wars, the Cold War, and now the global battle against terrorism. The United States has long shared a deep and personal bond with the more than 500 million people who live in Latin America.

Lately, this relationship has frayed, as the Bush administration pursued a misguided foreign policy with a myopic focus on Iraq. Its policy in the Americas has been negligent to our friends, ineffective with our adversaries and disinterested in the challenges that matter to peoples’ lives. This has had dramatic effects. At the time of President Bush’s tour of Latin America last year, three-out-of-five Latin Americans distrusted the United States, and only one-in-four members of Latin American elites held a favorable view of President Bush himself. This has damaged U.S. credibility and decreased U.S. influence in the region.

Barack Obama wants to open a new chapter of cooperation and partnership with our neighbors to promote democracy, opportunity and security across the hemisphere, and to work together to address our common challenges, including economic development, global warming, energy independence, and the battle against drug trafficking and terror. Obama will pursue a program of aggressive, principled and sustained diplomacy in the Americas with a focus on advancing freedom as Franklin Roosevelt described it: political freedom, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

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