US president Barack Obama attends yesterday’s
session of the Fifth Summit of the Americas in
Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

The new US President really does look like a Trinidadian from about seven feet away. That’s how close the 25 pool reporters—including from T&T Guardian—chosen for the event from the hundreds of international and local media personnel, got to Obama as he moved past them on a walkway to ascend the Hyatt stage at Friday’s function during the Fifth Summit of the Americas.

The shortest female among reporters—at the front of the pack—was close enough to notice a slight pulse along Obama’s jawline as he proceeded up the walkway after being led into the ballroom, escorting the US flag amid huge cheers. (Also noted were his sober expression, very classy shoes and the greying hair that has sprouted in the last two years of his work towards the presidency.) And it was indeed the youthful American leader, who entered second to last, on whom attention was focused. The US’s most strident critic in the region, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (in suit, sans red beret and military green) had entered first.

Obama greeted those nearer his end of the row of seats warmly: Chilean President Michele Bachelet, in a breathtaking emerald green suit, Argentina President Cristina de Kirchner, in skyscraper-high heels and Bolivian President Evo Morales, sporting an artistic indigenous design. How many friends has Obama won and how many people does he now influence, with the billion-dollar package of gifts concerning economic and security issues—the region’s two biggest concerns—which he presented to the region on Friday? That might have been calculated yesterday, after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez presented Obama with something in return.

A gift.
And not one of Chavez’s usual anti-American verbal missiles. Obama’s gifts showed him to be a master politician. Coming under verbal attack by one-time guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega, now Nicaraguan president, he employed the following: Smiling sparingly, hand to chin, he bore it silently, then whipped out substantial enough monetary evidence of his good intentions.

But the gift that Obama subsequently received yesterday morning seemed a typical Chavez reply—more subtly packaged in prose—to Obama’s move to put his country’s money where his mouth is. Eduardo Galeano’s book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, which Chavez gave Obama as a gift, chronicles the passage of Latin America’s assets as they have rolled over the years into US and European coffers.

Was Obama’s subsequent admission that “he has a lot to learn” related to the book’s content? Did the book signal veiled skepticism Chavez might have had, in the face of Obama’s extended hand to the region and apparent warming towards Cuba? Indeed, the two leaders, who appeared to have stood as far apart as they sat on the Hyatt stage on Friday—Obama at extreme front left, Chavez at back right—have shaken hands twice. And to do that, Chavez would have had to undo any clenched fist. Obama, in a signature gesture, went one better by also clasping Chavez’s upper arm to underscore his stance of openness.

After the heavy weather of Chavez’s pre-summit postures, Ortega’s anti-US rant on Friday and endorsements by Canada and Caricom leaders—including summit chairman Patrick Manning—for Cuba’s reintegration, Obama’s pronouncements on “new beginnings” appears to herald shifts towards a more positive direction. At summit’s end today and hopefully before Obama leaves this afternoon, leaders will get a chance to say just how much.