President Barack Obama looks up at the ceiling of the Cabanas Cultural Center during a trilateral meeting with Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper and Mexico's president Felipe Calderon during the North American Leaders' Summit in Guadalajara, August 10, 2009

President Felipe Calderón of Mexico urged the United States on Tuesday to enter a Pacific free trade agreement. “In this very difficult time in the world economy, the world needs more trade and not less trade,” he said in a speech at the United States Chamber of Commerce, a business lobbying group.

Calderón, whose conservative National Action Party is almost certain to lose the presidency in July, credited his nation’s participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement and more than forty other trade pacts with helping its economy grow 4 percent last year and create almost six hundred thousand net new jobs.

The Obama Administration has signaled an interest in joining the Trans Pacific Partnership to deepen American engagement in East Asia. The organization seeks to eliminate all tariffs on imports and exports between Pacific nations by the middle of this decade.

The partnership began in 2006 as a free trade area including Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. Australia, Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam are on track to join. Canada, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan also want to come aboard.

Canada, Japan and Mexico urged the United States to ascend to the organization in November but have yet to receive an answer.

Ahead of a summit of American states almost two weeks ago, Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos Calderón also pressed the United States to engage more actively with other countries in the Western Hemisphere.

“If the United States realizes its long term strategic interests are not in Afghanistan or Pakistan but in Latin America, there will be great results,” Santos predicted.

Relations between Colombia and the United States were frayed by President Barack Obama’s two year delay of the implementation of a bilateral free trade deal. A similar agreement with Panama was also upheld throughout the first half of his presidency.

The American leader faces his own reelection battle in November and will be hard pressed to convince his Democratic Party base that freer trade across the Pacific is in the interest of American workers.

Manufacturers that were once headquartered in the industrial heartland of the United States, parts of the Midwest and northeast of the country that are now known as the Rust Belt, have shifted production overseas, often to China or other low wage countries in East Asia as well as Mexico.

The president has blamed this outsourcing on other nations not playing by the rules. “Our workers are the most productive on Earth,” he said in January, “and if the playing field is level, I promise you, America will always win.”

Yet Obama is reluctant to lift trade barriers that would create a level playing field. Rather he has enacted protectionist measures that further distort free trade.

The United States prohibit foreign sales of high technology and weapons and subsidized domestic automakers, banks and insurance companies. Ethanol subsidies expired this year but many import and investment restrictions remain. “Buy American” procurement rules further add to the cost of trade.

Enrique Peña Nieto, presidential candidate for Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, delivers a speech in Oaxaca, April 11

Mexico elects its next president in less than three months from now. The Institutional Revolutionary Party is poised to return to power with the popular Enrique Peña Nieto, the former governor of the central state of Mexico.

Among the remaining contenders is the nation’s second woman presidential candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, a former education secretary and businesswoman who represents the incumbent National Action Party. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, was nominated for the presidency for the second time by the left wing Party of the Democratic Revolution. Gabriel Quadri de la Torre represents the New Alliance Party.

Peña maintains a comfortable lead over his competitors. Polls in March showed Peña ahead of his closest contender, Vázquez Mota, by more than 10 percentage points. López Obrador remains in third place and does not appear to be advancing. Quadri, for his part, has almost no support in the surveys.

As Mexican voters appear inclined to return the PRI to power, some argue that the country is losing its faith in democracy. PRI became infamous for its corporatis and clientalist style of government which allowed it to rule Mexico for more than seventy years in what author Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, a Nobel laureate, once described the period as one of “perfect dictatorship.”

Peña’s popularity, however, has rather more to do with his personality than party affiliation. Unlike the other candidates, he represents “change”—change from a government which is held responsible for a drastic increase in drug violence and the negative consequences of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

López Obrador tries to portray himself as “renewed” individual, one who has learned from the mistakes he made when he last ran for office in 2006. The left wing candidate has toned down his rhetoric and adopted a “business friendly” attitude instead to appeal to the middle class. He went as far as changing his attire, discarding his emblematic yellow (PRD’s official color) tie for conventional blue and red ones.

It appears his change of character has come to late. After the 2006 election, he announced himself as the “legitimate” president and became infamous for the rallies he organized which disrupted public life in Mexico City. He accused the country’s business elite of conspiring against him and stealing the election. These bombastic charges haven’t been forgotten.

Vázquez Mota, Peña’s main challenger, has tried to distance herself from the former and current administrations by insisting that she will not repeat the mistakes of her predecessors. While she brands herself as “different,” she never explains just what those “mistakes” are and judging from her statements, she doesn’t really believe many mistakes were ever made.

Regarding incumbent president Felipe Calderón’s security strategy, for instance, she maintains that the results “will not be measured by how many criminals are captured but by how stable and secure communities are.” Her competitors similarly insist that the emphasis should be on the latter. Vázquez Mota hasn’t suggested major changes in security policy that would accomplish this. Rather she frames her proposal as a second phase of the current strategy.

PAN lost valuable time deciding who its presidential candidate should be. Vázquez Mota has lost valuable time pretending to be different. It’s too little, too late for Mexican voters and Peña’s victory seems all but certain.

Would it represent a setback for Mexican democracy? Perhaps. Peña will bring the PRI’s machinery with him to the presidency. There will be favors to pay and interests to uphold. But this happens in the most developed countries. The problem with Mexico lies in a system that has engrained several vested interests which block much needed reforms.

It would be a stretch to imagine Peña’s election as a sign of Mexicans losing faith in democracy however. Voters value security and economic prosperity the most. When a government fails to provide this, change is needed. This is not a repudiation of democracy. It is democracy at work.

Presidents Juan Manuel Santos Calderón of Colombia and Felipe Calderón of Mexico in Mexico City, August 1, 2011 (Francisco Santos)

Colombia’s president urged his American counterpart Barack Obama to focus more on maintaining relations across the Western Hemisphere.

“If the United States realizes its long term strategic interests are not in Afghanistan or Pakistan but in Latin America, there will be great results,” Juan Manuel Santos Calderón said ahead of the Organization of American States’ sixth leadership summit in the Caribbean port of Cartagena this weekend.

Santos also urged his fellow South American leaders to bridge their ideological divides and cooperate wherever possible. “Let’s respect our differences, but stay together,” he said. “Who would have imagined Venezuela and Colombia working together?”

Although Santos is a conservative who, as defense minister, intensified the counterinsurgency effort against the FARC while Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez is a bombastic leftist who sympathizes with the rebel movement, there has been a rapprochement in the bilateral relationship since the former took office last year.

Chávez, who is undergoing cancer treatment in Cuba, did not attend the Summit of the Americas. After warmly greeting Obama at the same conference in 2009, the Venezuelan president accused the American of continuing the “fascist” policies of his predecessors

American-Colombian relations were frayed by President Obama’s two year delay of the implementation of a free trade deal. Bogotá agreed in 2007 to reduce tariffs and trade barriers. America is its leading trading partners. Nearly 40 percent of Colombian exports are headed for the United States. By contrast, Colombia accounts for just 1 percent of America’s trade volume.

Santos’ attempted normalization of ties with his neighbor Chávez coincided with Obama giving his country the cold shoulder. Venezuela is Colombia’s second largest trading partner.

Opposition Republicans in the United States have chastised the president’s Latin American policy. One former presidential contender, Rick Santorum, said in January that Obama’s was “a consistent policy of siding with the leftists, siding with the Marxists.” He “held Colombia out to dry,” said Santorum, in not ratifying the free trade agreement sooner which had been negotiated by the previous, Republican administration.

The British Royal Navy frigate HMS Montrose

In what was explained as a display of “Latin American support for Argentina’s legitimate rights,” Peru on Monday disallowed a British frigate to dock in one of its ports.

According to Peru’s foreign minister, “This decision has been made to honor our commitment with the UNASUR”—an interregional body that includes all South American nations except French Guyana—and in recognition of “Argentina’s legitimate rights regarding the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich islands and their surrounding maritime territories.”

The “Malvinas” are the Falkland Islands, situated nearly three hundred miles off the southeastern coast of Argentina.

HMS Montrose, on routine deployment in the South Atlantic, was set to dock in Lima’s port of Callao on Thursday for a friendly visit.

At a UNASUR summit in Asunción in November however, Peru endorsed Argentina’s claim to the Falklands and condemned the British military presence in the area.

Argentinean president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had earlier declared the island dispute “not an Argentine cause” but “a global cause, because in the Malvinas they are taking our oil and fishing resources.” She has also labeled Britain a “crude colonial power in decline” and vowed to “reclaim” the Falklands.

Britain has enjoyed sovereignty over the Falklands since the eighteenth century and asserted its control over the archipelago in 1833 and 1982. On both occasions, it was unsuccessfully challenged by the Argentinians.

The dispute has escalated in recent years after British companies began exploring for oil in waters surrounding the islands.

There appears to be little chance of Argentina staging another invasion attempt. Its naval capacity, for one thing, has barely improved since the 1980s when the South American country most recently tried to conquer the islands.

The United Kingdom, for its part, shrugged off the Peruvian decision as little more than regrettable. For good measure, the British embassy in Lima added in a statement that the government in London “remains fully committed to the Falkland islanders’ right to self determination. This position will not change.”

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina speaks in Rosario, February 28

Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s popularity has dropped to a thirteen month low of 42 percent as the Latin American nation’s economy is starting to slow down.

Kirchner, who won reelected in October with 54 percent of the vote, has enacted numerous protectionist measures that benefit her allies in the labor unions but undermine Argentina’s overall competitiveness.

She has also had to cut back on popular subsidies and welfare spending in order to achieve a budget that will almost be balanced this year.

Argentina is the world’s largest exporter of soy oil and a major supplier of corn and soybeans. A rising Asian demand for commodities has fueled a healthy economic expansion in recent years but the government continues to throw up roadblocks to a commercial sector that is otherwise flourishing.

President Kirchner implemented a one for one trade policy which mandates that companies that bring goods into the country match their value with exports. She enacted specific trade restrictions against Argentina’s biggest trading partner, Brazil. According to the International Monetary Fund, the country “has introduced about one hundred restrictive measures since 2009,” which is “more than any other individual country” in the world.

The results are painfully familiar. Argentina’s failure to live up to its potential is a recurring theme in twentieth century South American history.

Twice president, Juan Domingo Perón introduced an autarkic corporatism that empowered unions, nationalized entire industries and destroyed the nation’s burgeoning imports and exports sector. Despite wild populist swings to the left and to the right, interrupted by military coups, the aim of “economic independence” is still present in Argentinian politics.

Kirchner is a Peronist pur sang. She rallies against multinationals and foreign Argentine bondholders in her speeches, prompting international investors to shun Argentina whenever they can.

Argentina now ranks among the least economically free nations in Latin America. Regulations for businesses are burdensome and nontransparent. Tariffs, import and export controls, licensing provisions, restrictions on ports of entry and subsidies significantly distort trade. Domestic preference in government procurement predated Kirchner’s administration but has not been repealed.

Foreign investment is prohibited in certain sectors. The judiciary is notoriously slow and inefficient, forcing investors to resort to international arbitration. Corruption is endemic.

So far, commodity sales have been able to make up for Argentina’s institutional weaknesses. If the global economy falters however and Kirchner’s approval rating falls with it, she will have little choice but to reform—or make way for new leadership.

Texas congressman Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum debate Latin American policy during a Republican Party presidential debate in Jacksonville, Florida, January 26 (CNN)

Rick Santorum, a Republican Party presidential contender, accused Barack Obama of pursuing “a consistent policy of siding with the leftists, siding with the Marxists” in Latin America.

The former Pennsylvania senator, who appears to have little chance of securing the Republican nomination to challenge the incumbent in November’s election, participated in a televised debate sponsored by CNN in Jacksonville, Florida on Thursday night. Conservatives in the southeastern state vote in a primary on Tuesday to elect a presidential candidate.

Santorum referenced Colombia in particular which “is out there on the frontlines working with us against the narco-terrorists, standing up to Chávez in South America and what did we do?” he asked.

For domestic political purposes, the president of the United States sided with organized labor and the environmental groups and held Colombia out to dry for three years.

Colombia successfully crushed the drug and FARC insurgency with military and financial support from the United States.

A free trade agreement between the two countries, which the government in Bogotá ratified in 2007, was held up for nearly three years by the Obama Administration over union concerns about the safety of labor leaders in Latin America—even if the murder rate among union members has steeply declined in recent years. A unionized laborer in Colombia today is one sixth as likely to be a victim of homicide as a fellow citizen who does not belong to a trade union.

Colombia accounts for just 1 percent of America’s trade volume but 40 percent of Colombian exports are to the United States. A third of the products it imports are American.

The country sells mainly coal, coffee, cut flowers and petroleum. As the security situation has stabilized, the Colombian economy is performing strongly. 4.3 percent growth is expected this year.

Despite a long standing economic and military relationship with the United States, Colombia’s second largest trading partner is neighboring Venezuela where the president, Hugo Chávez, works to build an anti-American league in the region.

Bogotá suspects Venezuela of supporting the left wing revolutionaries of the FARC but seeks to normalize relations with the Chávez regime nonetheless. Conservatives in the United States blame President Obama’s three years of inaction on the Colombian free trade agreement for this apparent alienation. “We cannot do that to our friends in South America,” was how Santorum put it Thursday night.

He also rejected calls to normalize relations with Cuba which he described as “the heart of the cancer that is in Central and South America.” He alleged that the president intended to reward a behavior of thuggery. “This is the exact wrong message at the exact wrong time.”

Texas congressman Ron Paul, who advocates a noninterventionist foreign policy, challenged Santorum’s call for a more activist American presence across the Western Hemisphere. “You’re talking about force,” he said. “The Cold War is over. They’re not going to invade us.”

I don’t think the nations in South America and Central America necessarily want us to come down there and dictate what government they should have.

Rather he championed freer trade before pointing out that economic sanctions, well intended as he said they may be, “almost inevitably backfire and help the dictators and hurt the people.”

During the Cold War, the United States regularly intervened in the political affairs of Latin American nations to prevent leftist regimes from coming to power there. Santorum said he didn’t necessarily favor military intervention but suggested that an economic union should be erected across the Americas.

Port facilities near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 2, 2008 (Jim Skea)

Growing demand for oil and other natural resources in Asia is fueling an export boom in Latin America where even Venezuela, otherwise hostile to freer trade, is witnessing economic expansion thanks to globalization.

The region’s foremost oil exporter has averaged 4.6 percent economic growth since 2005 compared to 4 percent in Chile, the world’s leader in copper and economically the freest nation in South America.

Even in Argentina, where business confidence is fading and enterprise increasingly squeezed between regulations and populist spending measures, growth averaged 7 percent during the same period as record soy and other farm exports helped offset Buenos Aires’ inflationary monetary policy and persecution of international energy companies and investors.

Commodity demand will likely slacken in 2012 as a result of economic woes elsewhere, meaning countries as Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay, which are generally open to foreign business and investment, will do better than Venezuela and even Brazil which is struggling to escape the legacy of decades of corruption and nepotism.

The overall pace of Brazil’s regulatory reform has slowed but President Dilma Rousseff is leading an effort to root out corruption at great political peril to her ruling Workers’ Party. In her battle for transparency, political allies have abandoned Rousseff’s administration and her aloof leadership style threatens to alienate local machines and left wing voters.

2012 may be Rousseff’s test year. If she manages to ramrod her transparency agenda through Congress and continues the free trade policies of her predecessor, Brazil could eventually outperform the region in economic growth.

In the long term, the largest and most powerful country in South America is well positioned for a future of enduring prosperity. Commodity exports, despite their expected downturn this year, are critical to Brazil’s success.

Asian demand for corn is expected to increase by roughly 25 percent this decade which will be a huge boon to exporters in the Americas, including Argentina, Brazil and the United States which between them constitute almost a third of global corn production.

International beef, pork and soybean trade will probably expand by similar factors, again benefiting Latin American producers. Brazil currently provides 40 percent of global beef and 15 percent of pork exports and it dominates the sugar market, accounting for 60 percent of the market. With the elimination of sugar tariffs in the United States earlier this year, which were designed to protect the ethanol industry there, Brazil will be able to export north as well.

The country’s ability to turn this export advantage into a broader economic success that sees industries and services flourish hinges on Rousseff’s willingness to reform.

Brazil has seen some progress but starting or closing a business remains costly and time consuming while organizing new investment is inhibited by regulations that make it especially difficult for foreign companies to compete. Tariffs and antidumping measures are barriers to trade and excessive labor laws stifle employment and expansion. There’s a risk of “Dutch disease” if growth is taken for granted and politicians refuse to challenge vested interests to improve market conditions. The president appears committed to the task but is her party?

Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran inspect a honorary guard in Caracas, January 10

With his nation under pressure from international sanctions and facing a European oil embargo, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turns to a small and shrinking group of Latin American allies this week.

Ahmadinejad arrived in Caracas on Sunday to team up with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in denouncing America’s attempts at isolating Iran. He travels to Nicaragua on Monday to attend Daniel Ortega’s inauguration ceremony. The socialist leader won a third presidential term in November and has intensified relations with Iran and other anticapitalist regimes in recent years.

The Iranian president will also visit Cuba and Ecuador. Like Nicaragua, these nations belong to Hugo Chávez’ Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, an organization that rejects the expansion of free trade and efforts at liberalization that have defined South America’s other economies for the last two decades.

Outside of these pariah states, the Iranian leader hasn’t a huge fan base in Latin America. Despite her nation’s previous attempts at diplomacy with Iran, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff has shown little interest in deepening ties with the Islamic republic and isn’t scheduled to meet Ahmadinejad. The Iranian did come to Brazil in 2009 when he last visited the region but promises made then have yet to be fulfilled—among them, pledges to build an oil refinery in Ecuador and a port in Nicaragua.

After it brokered a nuclear fuel exchange agreement with Iran in conjunction with the Turks almost two years ago and failed to convince Western nations of Tehran’s sincerity, the Brazilian Government appears to have started moving away from its ideological commitment to nonalignment and conducted a pragmatic foreign policy with its own interests in mind foremost.

Brazilian trade with Iran has doubled in the last six years but the country is no ally of Iran’s. Rousseff even criticized her predecessor, the extremely popular Lula da Silva, for abstaining from voting on a United Nations resolution that condemned the Iranian regime for human rights abuses in the country.

Colombia, Chile and Mexico, economically and militarily among the strongest nations in Latin America, are allied to the United States while Argentina, in 2006, issued an arrest warrant for Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in relation to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires which killed eighty-five people and was likely carried out by Hezbollah. There is little sympathy for Iran’s confrontational foreign policy in these quarters.

Outside of a few poor and decaying leftists regimes, Iran’s transatlantic support is limited indeed. It is doubtful moreover whether this supports extends beyond these nations’ eccentric leaders who talk a lot of challenging American “imperialism” in Latin America but amount to little more than a nuisance to the United States’ position on the continent. With Rousseff signaling a more pro-American policy and expressing no interest in expanding relations with the Islamic state, Ahmadinejad’s visit is actually a rather sad one this week.

Enrique Peña Nieto, presidential candidate for Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, October 24, 2011

Polls suggest that Mexico’s once dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party will again claim the presidency in July. The party’s candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, has a comfortable lead of roughly 20 percent over his closest competitors. Several hiccups and gaffs haven’t significantly damaged his reputation. A possible scandal involving his family could have a negative impact on his popularity yet however.

Last month, the candidate’s daughter took to Twitter to denounce her father’s critics as “a bunch of morons from the proletariat.” He had been made fun of on social media when he apparently failed to remember any books beyond the Bible that had shaped his thinking and couldn’t mention the prices of basic commodities like tortillas nor the country’s minimum wage.

If there is a drop in Peña’s approval rating, it will likely recover in the upcoming months as the incidents are forgotten and the elections move closer. Mass online criticism of the candidate has already winded down. So long as Peña and his family refrain from committing more public mistakes, the next polls, which will be conducted in February, could be encouraging for him.

The media exposure that Peña and his family enjoy, and have helped him propel to frontrunner status, could ultimately work against him if the people grow weary of what the French call the peoplisation of politics. President Nicolas Sarkozy and his celebrity wife Carla Bruni have avoided the spotlights in more recent years after French voters came to perceive their leader’s presence in the headlines and tabloids as unpresidential.

Peña could suffer the same fate before there are even elections, especially if Mexico’s other political parties exploit this vulnerability and manage to portray him as an unserious candidate who may seem glamorous but lacks the intellectual depth to lead.

For the conservative National Action Party to mount an effective campaign against Peña, it will soon have to nominate a candidate to succeed incumbent president Felipe Calderón. Former businesswoman Josefina Vázquez Mota is the party’s best option according the polls but it is losing precious time to challenge Peña as long as it fails to nominate her.

Another potential obstacle to PAN winning the presidency again is the socialist Party of the Democratic Revolution which may be tempted to focus its attacks on the incumbent party, thus splitting the non-PRI vote. If rather they prioritize undermining Peña’s popularity, they may regain competitiveness in the polls ahead of the vote this summer but given PDR’s history of battling the right, a coordinated anti-Peña campaign seems unlikely.

HMS Vanguard arrives back at Naval Base Clyde, Faslane, Scotland following a patrol, November 29, 2010

The British Government on Wednesday warned that there should be no doubt about its commitment to supporting the Falklands Islands after Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay banned ships that fly the islands’ “illegal” flag from their ports.

Admiral Alan William John West, a former Royal Navy chief and security minister in the last cabinet, suggested that Britain dispatch a nuclear submarine to the South Atlantic and stage military exercises there to express its displeasure at the “outrageous behavior” of Argentina and its neighbors.

“Far from trying to settle in a grownup way and having better and better relationships with the Falkland islanders, they are upping the ante and becoming very confrontational,” he told the London Evening Standard.

Britain has claimed sovereignty over the Falklands since the eighteenth century and asserted its control over the archipelago in 1833 and 1982. On both occasions, it was challenged by the Argentinians. Admiral West commanded a frigate that was sunk by Argentine forces during the latter conflict. Twenty-two of his crew died in the attack.

The island dispute has escalated in recent years after British companies began exploring for oil in waters surrounding the Falklands which lie four hundred nautical miles off the Argentine coast. President Cristina Kirchner accused Britain of plundering her country’s resources this week.

“Malvinas is not an Argentine cause, it is a global cause, because in the Malvinas they are taking our oil and fishing resources,” she told a summit of Latin American leaders in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital. She’s previously labeled Britain a “crude colonial power in decline” and vowed to “reclaim” the Falklands.

There appears to be little chance of Argentina staging another invasion attempt however. Its naval capacity, for one thing, has barely improved since the 1980s when the South American country most recently tried to conquer the islands. Fearful of a military coup, Argentina’s civilian government has consistently underfunded the armed forces.

The country is gathering international support to open the issue up to negotiation, not just from its neighbors but from the Americans as well.

This summer, the United States voted in favor of a “draft declaration on the question of the Malvinas Islands” that was subsequently adopted by the Organization of American States by unanimous consent. Rather than siding with its Atlantic ally, the Obama Administration implicitly legitimized efforts to Argentinize the islands, urging the United Kingdom to enter into negotiations with Buenos Aires.

Prime Minister David Cameron rejected calls to negotiate, telling parliament this summer, “as long as the Falkland Islands want to be sovereign British territory, they should remain sovereign British territory. Full stop, end of story.”

No matter Argentine pretensions, the Falklanders appear to have no desire to be part of their eastern neighbor, rather they are steadfast in their willingness to remain subjects of the British Crown. Of the three thousand islanders, some 20 percent are British.