Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery
The State of the Union
Wednesday, January 27, 2009
Washington, DC
Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:
Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union. For two hundred and twenty years, our leaders have fulfilled this duty. They have done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility. And they have done so in the midst of war and depression; at moments of great strife and great struggle.
Jorge Castañeda’s lament ("Adios, Monroe Doctrine," December 28, 2009) about U.S. indifference towards Latin America sounds a familiar theme. His claim that “the United States doesn’t seem to care much what happens in Latin America” has been a constant refrain that has dominated analyses of U.S. regional policy since the mid-1970s. The “new passivity” is not, after all, terribly new.
Francisco Toro and Juan Nagel write the Venezuelan news blog Caracas Chronicles.
The Honduran crisis surely reached its Rococo stage this week after fresh elections organized by the coupsters' regime saw the election of a conservative rancher as president—while Brazil's nearly sainted left-wing president, Lula da Silva, promptly rejected the poll as undemocratic ... a scant few days after welcoming Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Brazil with open arms.
The election of President Lobo has split the international community, and in mostly predictable ways. His victory has been recognized by the U.S., Peru, Panama, Colombia, and Japan, while Spain has announced it will soon re-visit its tough stance. The region's left-wing governments, however, remain staunchly opposed to recognizing any election tinged by association with June's coup.
Brazil is now leading the guys with the pitchforks, a group that includes Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, and the OAS, alongside such shining exemplars of democratic principle as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and the Castro brothers in Cuba. The problem for this group is that Lobo's election comes with the real legitimacy of a vote that was mandated by Honduras’s constitution and had been scheduled and planned long before June's coup. What's more, despite calls for a boycott by deposed president Mel Zelaya, Sunday saw turnout top 60%--slightly higher than the turnout five years ago, when Zelaya himself was elected, and about the same level of participation that saw Barack Obama elected in the U.S. last year.
All dictators, from Creon onwards, are victims. --Gabriel García Márquez
I.
Many years later, in the course of writing his memoirs, Gabriel García Márquez was to remember that distant afternoon in Aracataca, in Colombia, when his grandfather set a dictionary in his lap and said, "Not only does this book know everything, it’s the only one that’s never wrong." The boy asked, "How many words are in it?" "All of them," his grandfather replied.
Tensions are rising across South America this month as Venezuela signed three oil deals with Iran and a 2-billion-dollar arms deal with Russia, causing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to speculate about a possible arms race.
Nestled high among the mountains of Cauca, a coca-producing region in southern Colombia, La Sierra is one of those forgotten villages Colombians call ghost towns. For at least two years, it was governed by the leftist rebels known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (farc). But, on March 5, 2003, a band of 36 soldados campesinos, or peasant soldiers--ordinary Colombians who train for three months in urban warfare under a new government program and then return home--marched into town and took over. According to surprised residents, the farc abruptly left.
