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The 2016 US election results provoked shock and horror in many parts of the world but probably in no place more than Latin America. All along the campaign trail the election winner vilified Latin American immigrants and promised to build a wall along the US southern border (paid for by Mexico) to keep the “rapists and drug traffickers” out. While campaigning in Florida he talked of fighting “oppression” in Venezuela and of reversing President Obama’s tentative diplomatic opening toward Cuba, an opening that had been universally applauded by Latin American governments. Yet not everyone in Latin America forecast gloom and doom with the election of Donald Trump. Asked which US presidential candidate would be better for the region, Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa didn’t hesitate: Trump . . . because he is so crude that he will generate a reaction in Latin America which will build more support for progressive governments. . . . We have a US government that has changed little in its policies and has done practically the same as it always has, but has a charming president in Obama. Notwithstanding the recent effort to normalize relations with Cuba (limited by the continuing embargo against the island), there is little evidence that the US administration’s Latin American agenda has evolved much since the George W. Bush years. The question is whether or not the erratic and unpredictable next president will in fact carry on with business as usual in Latin America, and what his presidency will mean for a region presently rocked by economic and political disruptions, with some observers considering that a “progressive cycle” of left governments has run its course.

The Prosperity Agenda The Latin American policy playbook that Trump will soon inherit from Obama rests on a set of broad strategic objectives for the region often referred to by the State Department as “prosperity,” “security,” and “democracy and governance.” The US “prosperity” agenda involves, first of all, the promotion of so-called free trade agreements (FTAs) between the US and regional partners. Obama picked up where George W. Bush left off, lobbying successfully for congressional approval of the Panama and Colombia FTAs negotiated by his predecessor, despite ongoing killings of Colombian labor activists and the strident opposition of most Democrats. A second key “prosperity” objective is the promotion of neoliberal reforms — austerity measures, deregulation, decreased tariffs, market liberalization, and more. Over the last fifteen years this goal has been complicated by the fact that many countries have broken free of the International Monetary Fund and its Washington-driven policy prescriptions (which had contributed to the “lost decades” of the 1980s and 1990s and reduced or halted progress on social indicators). However, the Obama administration has successfully leveraged assistance to poorer countries to push for market reforms benefiting transnational investors and generating economic turmoil for average people. In late 2014 the State Department supported the launch of the Alliance for Prosperity Plan for Central America’s poverty-stricken Northern Triangle region — an ambitious transnational-friendly development program that builds off the Bush-era Plan Puebla Panama. Washington’s “security” strategy for the region is rooted to a large extent in the militarized anti-drug and counterinsurgency programs developed under previous administrations. Under Clinton and Bush, billions of dollars of military aid went to Plan Colombia, supporting vast military offensives and contributing to thousands of civilian deaths and the displacement of millions while having no significant impact on cocaine production. Plan Colombia continued under Obama and was subsequently seen as a model for similar programs in Mexico (Mérida Initiative) and Central America (Central America Regional Security Initiative). Under these programs, Mexican and Central American army and militarized police units have been deployed on a massive scale to crack down on drug trafficking and organized crime, despite many of these units being allegedly involved in criminal activities themselves. An unprecedented wave of lethal violence has followed, taking with it not only alleged criminals and innumerable innocent bystanders but also a shocking number of local social activists — especially in Honduras, a major recipient of US security assistance. Journalist and researcher Dawn Paley has shown how violence and community displacement resulting from the US-backed “drug war” have helped open up previously unavailable resource-rich territories to transnational firms. The “democracy and governance” agenda that Obama is passing on to Trump can initially appear to be apolitical and focused on “institution building” and strengthening rule of law, among other seemingly benign initiatives. But the leaked State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in late 2010 and 2011 provide a contrasting perspective on this agenda. Among other things, the cables show US diplomats deploying well-honed methods of “soft” internal intervention — including the leveraging of US assistance programs, multilateral loans, and “democracy promotion” grants — to undermine, co-opt, or remove left political movements, particularly those thought to be close to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Other US efforts to roll back the Latin American left have taken place out in the open. On June 28, 2009, left-leaning Honduran president Manuel Zelaya — who had riled his country’s elite and the US government by deepening relations with Venezuela and pushing for a constituent assembly — was kidnapped at gunpoint by the military and flown to nearby Costa Rica. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to formally recognize that a military coup had occurred, which would have triggered the suspension of most US assistance. She also actively sought to prevent Zelaya from returning to Honduras. Later, the US government announced it would recognize the results of Honduras’s November 29 elections without the prior restoration of Zelaya, as demanded by governments throughout Latin America. This brazen unilateral and antidemocratic move sparked outrage throughout the region. But the US doubled down and threw all of its weight behind Honduras’s subsequent repressive, right-wing governments. The State Department and Department of Defense have ramped up security assistance to Honduras while largely ignoring rampant government corruption and dozens of assassinations of social leaders such as renowned indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. Aided in great part by the dire economic winds sweeping across Latin America, the Bush-Obama agenda has made notable strides over the last few years. The US arch nemesis, Venezuela, is mired in a prolonged economic and political crisis and has ceased playing a significant regional role. Following Chávez’s death in 2013, the US has intermittently supported dialogue and the destabilization tactics of radical opposition sectors. As the administration pursued its Cuba opening, it hardened its Venezuela policy with a new sanctions regime in late 2014. Meanwhile, the former pillars of South American integration, Argentina and Brazil, are now in the hands of right-wing governments, following twelve years of left-leaning governments. The Obama administration did its bit to support these transitions, imposing a damaging ban on multilateral loans to Christina Kirchner’s government (quickly lifted after Kirchner’s party lost the 2015 elections) and providing diplomatic support to Brazil’s interim government while the controversial impeachment (or “soft” coup) against President Dilma Rousseff was still underway. The political panorama today is starkly different from the one Obama encountered eight years ago when the Left controlled most of the region and was boldly asserting its independence. Upon leaving office, Obama could point to one foreign policy success story to counterbalance his lackluster record in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Honduras, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil — one by one, left governments had fallen and the United States had recovered a significant portion of its past influence in the region. Fidel Castro’s death, just two and a half weeks after Trump’s election, seemed to portend a resurgence of the hegemon and the beginning of a dark, uncertain time for the Latin American left.