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Obama's Cuba-led pivot in Latin America

Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian president, spoke for many when she remarked last week that US President Barack Obama's move to improve relations with Cuba was "a moment that marks a change in civilisation".

For more than half a century, Washington's squeeze on Havana has poisoned its relations with the region. It often led even US allies to take the side of the Castro brothers, under the rubric that "Washington may be my friend, but they are my brothers". Mutual US-Cuban hostility also widened hemispheric fractures. The two countries took opposite sides in Central America in the 1980s and, in 1971, a visit to Chile by Fidel Castro foreshadowed Augusto Pinochet's US-supported coup. Today, however, detente between US and Cuba has the potential to force a profound realignment of American relations.

Rapprochement vaporises a rhetorical bludgeon that US critics have routinely used to cudgel Washington. That is especially important given China's growing regional presence. It also helps to neutralise anti-US sentiment routinely wheeled out to mask local failings. At next year's Summit of the Americas in Panama, which both the US and Cuba will attend, Latin Americans will now hopefully focus more on Cuba's baleful human rights record.

It also drives a wedge between Cuba and its closest regional ally, Venezuela, while undermining the kind of "anti-yanqui" bombast that Caracas regularly spouts to deflect attention from its deepening economic crisis. At the start of the week, President Nicolas Maduro was exhorting his fellow Venezuelans to take to the streets against the yanqui menace. By Wednesday, however, he was gushing about Mr Obama's "gesture of greatness" towards Cuba.

There are already some signs of change elsewhere. In Colombia, the Cuba-mediated peace talks with Marxist FARC guerrillas took an unusual turn last week when the rebels offered Bogota a unilateral ceasefire. The rebels perhaps drew the lesson from the 18-months of backdoor negotiations that led to Washington and Havana's agreement that diplomacy, not confrontation, is the best way to resolve differences - a lesson Colombian opponents to the peace deal should also heed.

Old ways, of course, die hard. Evo Morales, Bolivia's leftist leader, last week claimed the fall in global oil prices was a US-led conspiracy to destabilise Venezuela. Indeed, it is ironic that the day after making his historic Cuba announcement, Mr Obama signed into law a bill that sanctions Venezuelan officials charged with human rights abuses. This may well provide Caracas with an unfortunate opportunity to saturate its already propaganda-filled airways. Yet the sanctions are limited to specific officials, not the country as a whole. Moreover, the bill itself does not impose sanctions-only the US president can do that. So far he has not.

Over his two terms, Mr Obama has patiently recast US relations towards the hemisphere for the better. He has acted on immigration; on narcotics, by reframing the "war on drugs" as a public health issue; and now on Cuba. These are three of the biggest irritants in north-south relations.

The effects of these measures will not be felt immediately. "I don't expect a transformation of Cuban society overnight," Mr Obama said. Nor is it likely that passage of any vote that entirely removes the embargo will be easy to get through the Republican-controlled Congress. Still, history will probably judge these measures as major moves.

Change is coming to the Americas. It may or may not lead to better times. But they will certainly be different.

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