Remembering Obama's legacy in Central and South America, now trashed by Trump

Trump's invasion of Venezuela has reminded me that I came of age during the Cold War - with stories of Korea, Vietnam, and Central/South America dominating our foreign policy. Here's what I wrote about that back in 2016:

I haven’t forgotten what this country has gotten wrong in the past. There was a legitimate clash of ideologies between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. And the specter of nuclear war was terrifying. But in many ways those threats became tangled with global corporate interests and a lack of awareness about the impending death of colonialism. In the process, millions of people all over the planet had their lives upended and damaged by our interventions.

Having lived in Peru for the first six years of my life, I was particularly attuned to the atrocities this country perpetrated in Central and South America. That is why, in the spring of 2011, this photo grabbed my attention: 

On a trip to El Salvador, the President of the United States visited the grave of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who spoke out against repression by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army during the 12-year civil war that killed at least 75,000 people. Romero was fatally shot in the heart March 24, 1980, as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel. 

During that same trip, Obama visited then-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. 

After a U.S. backed coup in 1964, Rousseff was imprisoned and tortured by a military that had been trained at the infamous School of the Americas.

During one of his last foreign trips as president, Obama visited Argentina - creating this powerful moment:

That photo was taken on Argentina's “Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice” on the 40th anniversary of the 1976 coup that led to the brutal massacre of approximately 20,000 people. The U.S. backed junta that came into power organized death camps with methods that were reminiscent of the Nazi’s. One of the most common came to be known as “death flights,” where prisoners were injected with sedatives before being dropped from airplanes, still alive, into the Rio de la Plata. President Obama and then-Argentine President Mauricio Macri threw flowers into the river that became the watery grave for so many.

Even more significant, on that same trip, Obama became the first U.S. President to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years. 

That visit came on the heels of this:

The Cold War died Wednesday.

Its death was foretold, yet somehow it still came as a shock.

It didn’t expire on a bayside battlefield in the Caribbean or with a mushroom cloud or even with an exploding cigar. It perished at a White House podium.

The prisoner swap that set Alan Gross free — and the sweeping changes to U.S. policy on Cuba that went with it — won’t heal all wounds, nor will it vanquish the powerful cold warriors in the U.S. Congress. But it did fundamentally alter a curio of American foreign policy that deeply influenced popular culture and played an outsize role in U.S. presidential politics for more than half a century.

Here's some of what Obama said during his 2016 speech to the people of Cuba:

I know these issues are sensitive, especially coming from an American President. Before 1959, some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit, ignored poverty, enabled corruption. And since 1959, we’ve been shadow-boxers in this battle of geopolitics and personalities. I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it...

So here’s my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people: The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution – America’s revolution, Cuba’s revolution, the liberation movements around the world – those ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy. Not because American democracy is perfect, but precisely because we’re not. And we – like every country – need the space that democracy gives us to change. It gives individuals the capacity to be catalysts to think in new ways, and to reimagine how our society should be, and to make them better.

A lot has happened in Central and South America over the last decade - not all of it good. But President Obama repaired much of the trust that had been justifiably lost over the atrocities we were involved with during the Cold War. 

Now the narcissistic felon is taking a sledge hammer to all of that - declaring U.S. dominance in the Western hemisphere. May he rot in hell for that.