Renee Parsons - U.S. Hegemony in Latin America

While the 'misconduct' of Secret Service agents with prostitutes in Colombia is a significant, if titillating scandal, most media reports have missed the tectonic political shift that surfaced at the recent Summit of the Americas meeting.

The Summit, an offshoot of the Organization of American States organized in 1948, consists of 35 western hemisphere nations that meet on a tri-annual basis with the U.S. historically setting the agenda since the summit's inception in 1994.

The president arrived, smooth and impeccable, with, no doubt, the expectation of encouraging new investment and trade initiatives at the first business seminar conducted since the Summits began. Attending were over three hundred U.S. business executives with Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue in attendance to push for a free trade deal with Brazil. Once China began out-hustling the U.S. for its share of the global pie in Latin America and as the U.S. bogged down in a decade of war with an enduring economic catastrophe on its hands, Summit countries took the opportunity to readjust their vision of Uncle Sam's once omnipotent authority. That readjusted vision has offered a measure of independence from U.S. trade markets as well as U.S. domination on policy decisions. While not known for its historical memory, the U.S. does not usually react kindly to previously compliant nations flexing their sovereign muscles, U.S. AID to Latin American and the Caribbean at $1.3 billion in 2010 will most likely provide the necessary tether for continued cooperation.

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