L. America ignored in Obama’s policy speech

U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama (image) neglected to directly mention Latin America during a major foreign affairs speech made yesterday in Chicago. The Illinois Senator bemoaned “the consequences of a foreign policy based on a flawed ideology” on a number of topics ranging from nuclear arms to foreign aid to the Iraq conflict.

Mind you, this does not mean that Obama has ignored Latin America altogether as he demonstrated in a speech shortly before the President’s tour of the Americas last month:

“We need to restore U.S. relations in the hemisphere. We need to consolidate the gains that have been made in the sweeping change of the last few years. We need to sustain our commitment to democracy, to social justice, and to opportunity for our neighbors to the south. The western hemisphere is too important to our core economic and security interests to be treated with the neglect and mismanagement that have defined the past six years”.

However, for him to have not explicitly mentioned the Americas in such a seemingly vital speech does raise some eyebrows. Hopefully Obama can provide more details of his views on Latin America in the weeks to come.

Links- International Herald Tribune, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, U.S. Senator Barack Obama

Image- Salon