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In Buenos Aires, Obama hopes to rebuild trust Obama, new Argentine leader work to break from past tensions
(about 2 hours later)
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — President Barack Obama acknowledged Wednesday that U.S. relations with Latin America’s dictatorships in the 1970s damaged its image in the region, but said he hoped the release of long-classified documents about Argentina’s “Dirty war” would rebuild trust. BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — On a fence-mending mission, President Barack Obama held up Argentina on Wednesday as an emerging world leader worthy of U.S. support, as he and Argentine President Mauricio Macri broke with years of recent tensions between their countries.
Obama made the comments on the eve of the 40th anniversary of a military coup that would lead to one of the most brutal regimes in Latin American history. Ahead of his visit, the Obama administration announced last week that it would declassify thousands of CIA, FBI and other internal documents that could shed much light on one of the South American nation’s most painful chapters. Obama’s state visit to Buenos Aires quickly turned into a love-fest between him and Macri, who in December replaced hot-blooded former President Cristina Fernandez, long a thorn in Obama’s side. Obama lavished praise on Macri and said his visit was “so personally important,” even riffing on his boyhood interest in Argentinian literature and culture.
“I don’t want to go through the list of every activity of the United States in Latin America,” Obama said, answering a question during a joint news conference with Argentine President Mauricio Macri about his presence during the anniversary. Obama then noted that fighting communism was a focus of America’s foreign policy in the 1970s. “One of the great things about America, and I said this in Cuba, was that we engage in a lot of self-criticism.” “President Macri is a man in a hurry,” Obama said in Casa Rosada, the pink-hued presidential palace made famous in the U.S. by the movie “Evita.” ‘’I’m impressed because he has moved rapidly on so many of the reforms that he promised.”
Obama arrived in Argentina following an historic visit in Cuba. The two-day visit to Argentina comes as Macri has gone to great lengths to repair relations after years of antagonism by the previous administrations. Macri, who has committed Argentina to a pro-business approach, was equally effusive about Obama, who leaves office in less than a year.
Obama has made no secret of his preference for Macri over his left-leaning predecessor, Cristina Fernandez, whose meandering missives were a source of frequent frustration and eye-rolling in the White House. He was all too glad to see her replaced in December by Macri, who has affably accepted U.S. help with his mission to modernize Argentina’s struggling economy. “You emerged proposing major changes and you showed they were possible — that by being bold and with conviction, you could challenge the status quo,” Macri said. He added, “That was also a path of inspiration for what our dear country is now going through.”
Obama also heard from young Argentines at a town hall meeting in what’s become a hallmark of his trips abroad. Obama told the young adults that he’s wanted to visit Argentina since he was young like they are. One young woman, apparently overcome with excitement, said: “I’m going to have a heart attack Mr. President.” Obama replied “that would be bad” before moving on to the next questioner. Obama has made no secret of his preference for Macri over the left-leaning Fernandez, whose meandering invectives against the U.S. were a source of frequent eye-rolling in the White House. Fernandez was close with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s famously anti-American late president, and openly admired Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. She was quick to blame the U.S. for Argentina’s problems and was accused of helping Iran hide its role in bombing a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, a claim she denied.
Joined by first lady Michelle Obama, the president was to be feted at a state dinner in the evening, marking the first such visit by a U.S. president in nearly two decades. So Obama was all too glad to see Fernandez replaced by Macri, who has started pushing Argentina back toward the political center after years of flirting with the extreme left. To that end, Obama’s visit was a reward of sorts to keep that promising trajectory on track.
Despite efforts to keep the focus on the future, Obama’s visit has been clouded by a renewed look at Argentina’s past and questions about America’s role in the Argentina’s 1976 military coup and the dictatorship that followed. It’s a theme of Obama’s Latin America policy that was on vivid display a day earlier in Cuba, where Obama paid a history-making visit aimed at spurring further reforms in the communist country. Obama’s administration has also been heartened by the Venezuelan opposition’s recent success in legislative elections and Bolivian President Evo Morales’ defeat in a referendum on term limits.
“On this anniversary and beyond, we are absolutely determined to do our part as Argentina continues to heal and move forward as one nation,” said Obama. Those developments have fueled optimism in Washington “that Latin America is moving toward more rational economic and political policies,” said Gabriel Salvia of the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America, an Argentina-based think tank.
In another gesture directed toward the victims of Argentina’s “Dirty War,” Obama planned to visit Remembrance Park in Buenos Aires on Thursday. Argentina’s government estimates some 13,000 people were killed or disappeared under force during the crackdown on leftist dissidents, though activists say the number is as high as 30,000. Yet Obama conceded that America’s history backing repressive regimes in the region had clouded its ability to take the moral high-ground. His visit, the first for a U.S. president in nearly 20 years, coincides with the 40th anniversary this week of Argentina’s 1976 coup, stirring up lingering questions about America’s role supporting the military dictatorship that followed.
Obama’s visit to Argentina, like his stop in Cuba, aims to bolster his efforts to keep the U.S. focused on economically important regions like Latin America and Asia, even while dealing with pressing security concerns in the Middle East and elsewhere. Overshadowing his trip were terror attacks Tuesday in Brussels that killed more than 30 people and triggered fresh panic in Europe about the spread of violent extremism. At Macri’s request, Obama has agreed to declassify U.S. intelligence and military records about the period known as the “Dirty War,” a gesture Macri said would help Argentinians “know what the truth is.” Before closing his visit on Thursday, Obama planned to pay homage to the dictatorship’s victims at Remembrance Park in Buenos Aires.
Those distractions notwithstanding, Obama hopes his final year as president will be one of critical progress for the U.S. and Latin America. “I don’t want to go through the list of every activity of the United States in Latin America,” Obama said. But he said one of the “great things about America” is that “we engage in a lot of self-criticism.”
Even as Obama continues to struggle with refugees fleeing insecurity and instability in Central America, his administration is working toward a historic truce between Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The U.S. was heartened by the opposition’s success in Venezuela’s recent legislative elections. Still, there were detractors. Some prominent rights groups threatened to boycott Obama’s visit to Remembrance Park. And a few hundred people gathered at a McDonald’s in protest.
No nation has become a more potent symbol of Obama’s efforts to turn a page in Latin American than Cuba. The president flew to Argentina from Havana, where he made history as the first U.S. chief executive to visit in nearly 90 years, a significant boost for his efforts to normalize ties with the longtime U.S. foe. “We reject Obama’s presence because the United States is most responsible for the dictatorship,” said Victoria Remesa, a 25-year-old teacher-in-training.
The last U.S. president to set foot in Argentina was George W. Bush, who attended a regional summit here in 2005 but it was not a formal state visit. Bill Clinton came to meet his Argentinian counterpart in 1997. It was the opposite sentiment at a factory-turned-concert hall where Obama fielded questions from young Argentinians at a town hall meeting. He called on one fawning woman who said she was “going to have a heart attack,” adding that “you are my hero.” It turned out she didn’t actually have a question.
__ Macri was to honor Obama and his wife Wednesday evening at a state dinner at a cultural center named for the late Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez’s husband and himself a former president. Before returning to Washington, Obama and his family planned for a leisurely daytrip to Bariloche, a picturesque city in southern Argentina.
Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP ___
Reach Peter Prengaman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/peterprengaman Associated Press writers Vicente Panetta, Luis Andres Henao and Almudena Calatrava contributed to this report.
___
Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP and Peter Prengaman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/peterprengaman
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.