A change a’comin’:

And the region is ready for a fresh start: the sheer fact that los yanquis elected a liberal African-American as President has already done a good deal to alter Uncle Sam’s image in Latin America, even among leftists. None other than Chavez said last month said “there are winds in favor of relations between the Venezuelan government and the new President of the U.S.” Cuban President Raul Castro has said much the same.

Obama’s foreign policy campaign rhetoric was welcomed by Latins tired of Washington’s obsession with the drug war, free trade and democratic elections as panaceas for a continent still plagued by one of the world’s worst gaps between rich and poor. Democratic elections are of course a good thing. But “if we want to win the hearts and minds of people in Caracas, Jakarta, Nairobi or Tehran,” Obama wrote in his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, “dispersing ballot boxes will not be enough. We’ll have to make sure that the international rules we’re promising enhance, rather than impede, people’s sense of material and personal security.”