BUENOS AIRES, Mar 25: Dancing tango, watching baseball and acting in a TV comedy, US President Barack Obama used cultural soft power to polish his country’s image in Latin America this week.
The landmark visit to Cuba at the top of Latin America and Argentina at the tail, saw Obama subtly try to dampen anti-Americanism, in a region where Cold War grievances still burn.
The tone for the trip was set early, when Obama landed in Havana for the first presidential visit in 88 years.
“Que bola, Cuba?” — “What’s up, Cuba?” he tweeted using heavy Cuban slang.
The five-day visit featured the usual meetings with dignitaries and presidents, but for much of the trip Obama had his eye on an audience of 11 million Cubans, 42 million Argentines and a continent full of Latin American unease about decades of US power.
On Tuesday he sat down alongside Communist leader Raul Castro — to watch a game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team.
The Rays won 4-1, but it was never about the result.
“We share a national pastime — la pelota,” or the ball game, Obama said, stressing commonality between two countries that have been at ideological odds for half a century.
He also hailed cultural ties forged by the likes of US author Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Cuba, and Cuban-born singers such as Celia Cruz and Gloria Estefan.
He astonished Cubans by making an improvised appearance in a television comedy sketch, striding onto the set and sitting down to play dominos with the characters.
“He departed from the script and gave me a scare because he started talking in English,” said comedian Luis Silva, better known as the character Panfilo, star of “Vivir del Cuento,” Cuba’s most popular television show.
“I understood a few phrases and I was able to carry on the conversation.”
The actor supposed Obama did it “to relate with the ordinary Cuban people.”
Some locals complained however that no ordinary Cubans were allowed to get near Obama when he made a tour of the old city of Havana shortly after arriving.
The whole visit to the island laid bare Obama’s strategy of fomenting change rather than imposing it from Washington.
This was Obama going back to his days as a community organizer in Chicago, trying to generate a critical mass that could alter the political reality on the ground.
The White House is betting that increased economic openness will lead to political change in Cuba, with the regime unable to separate the two in a way that China, Vietnam and the Gulf have done. (AGENCIES)
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