Obama on defensive at summit

(PHOTO: Jon Super/AP/Corbis)

Until a few weeks ago, it looked like next weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Panama would be a golden opportunity for President Barack Obama to seal his announced normalization of ties with Cuba, and remove a decades-long sore point in U.S.-Latin American relations. But with few days to go before the 34-country summit, Obama’s prospects of emerging a big winner look bleak.

Several developments in the past few weeks will put Obama on the defensive at the mega-summit, a rare occasion where the U.S. president will meet collectively with all his Western Hemisphere counterparts. Since the first of these meetings was held in Miami in 1994, they have taken place only every three or four years.

First, the March 9 Obama executive order denying U.S. visas and freezing U.S. assets of seven Venezuelan government figures accused of human rights abuses or public corruption has led Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to seek 10 million signatures demanding the sanctions be repealed. Maduro has said he will present the massive petition to Obama in Panama.

While Maduro’s petition drive is characteristic political theater to divert attention from Venezuela’s domestic problems, and the Obama administration has repeatedly said — contrary to Maduro’s assertions — the U.S. sanctions will not affect the Venezuelan population, the U.S.-Venezuela dispute will dominate news in much of Latin America.

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