Western Hemisphere - Obama Presidency Oral History

Responses to natural disasters provided opportunities for the Administration to demonstrate its commitment to regional partnership. On January 12, 2010, a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the United States mobilized military and civilian resources to respond to the humanitarian emergency and to assist in the nation’s long-term recovery. In addition to policymakers’ memories of the earthquake itself, the collection contains the reflections of Olsen Jean Julien, a Haitian engineer and architect who oversaw the Haiti Cultural Recovery Project in conjunction with the Smithsonian, a project championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. 

Relations with Mexico were rendered especially significant by virtue of the attention to cross-border issues during Obama’s presidency; the large Mexican-American population residing in the United States; and integration of the U.S., Mexican, and Canadian economies following the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992. Multiple narrators speak about the spirit of cooperation between the United States and the Mexican administrations of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) on a range of issues including immigration, illicit drugs, and trade. U.S. security and law enforcement assistance to Mexico expanded under the Mérida Initiative, a massive counternarcotics and counter-organized crime program established by President George W. Bush and Calderón in 2006 and continued by the Obama Administration. U.S. security assistance for Central America, originally established under Mérida, continued under the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), initiated by Congress and the Obama Administration in 2010.

Immigration policy became an increasing focal point of hemispheric relations as debates over immigration reform in the United States intensified. Narrators recall diplomacy with the countries of Central America and Vice President Biden’s trip to the region to consult with leaders during the 2014 surge in arrivals by unaccompanied minors and women at the U.S. border. Following the trip, the Administration requested $750 million in annual funding for the U.S. Strategy for Engagement in Central America.

The Obama Administration’s diplomatic engagements were sites of friction within the hemisphere as well. Narrators recall, for example: objections to the U.S. response to the 2009 overthrow of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya by the country’s military and political opposition, deemed a coup by the Organization of American States; the closure of USAID offices in Ecuador in 2014 after disagreements with Rafael Correa’s government over U.S. development programs; and the fallout from revelations by Edward Snowden in 2013 regarding U.S. spying in Brazil, which led President Dilma Rousseff to accuse the Administration of breaching international law and to demand an apology. A longer-running disagreement existed between the United States and Venezuela, where the government of Hugo Chavez was subject to US counternarcotics and counterterrorism sanctions enacted by the Bush Administration. Following Chávez’s death from cancer in March 2013, his successor Nicolás Maduro intensified the crackdown on opposition parties amidst a disputed election which Maduro won by a slim margin. Subsequently, the Obama Administration launched a new round of sanctions targeting the government’s human rights record and its treatment of protesters. These included the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014 and Executive Order 13692, issued by Obama in March 2015, which declared Venezuela to be a national security threat to the United States and imposed sanctions on seven of the country’s political leaders.

Perhaps no initiative better represented Obama’s efforts to promote partnership while dealing with the burdens of the past than the normalization of relations with Cuba. During the presidential campaign, Obama had spoken of his desire to improve relations between the two countries, which had been formally severed by the Kennedy Administration in 1961 and since 1962 subject to a full trade embargo. Recognizing frustration with the embargo that existed across the political spectrum, within the Cuban-American community, and among Cubans, the White House took early steps to ease restrictions on travel and trade. However, the December 2009 arrest of USAID contractor Alan Gross by Cuban authorities on allegations of spying halted such efforts. 

In 2013, Obama authorized secret negotiations with Cuban officials over a possible prisoner exchange. The negotiations eventually led to a prisoner swap in December 2014 as well as an agreement—announced dramatically by Obama as Alan Gross was returning to the United States—that the two countries would officially resume diplomatic relations. In the collection, narrators recall key milestones in the process of normalizing relations, including Obama’s handshake with Raúl Castro at the memorial service for South African leader Nelson Mandela, re-opening opening of the U.S. embassy in Havana in 2015, and ongoing efforts to address human rights violations against opponents of the Castro regime. Many interviews feature memories of the Obama family’s visit to Havana in March 2016, the first by a U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. 

White House efforts to engage with the Cuban-American community around the diplomatic opening, and the attitudes of Cuban-Americans and Cubans alike towards the rapprochement, are remembered from multiple perspectives in the collection. These include, for example, Felice Gorordo, a Cuban-American NGO leader who also served as a White House Fellow during the Obama years, and Ileana Yarza, a Cuban woman who wrote Obama several times, and to whom Obama wrote a reply in 2016—the first piece of mail passed directly between the countries since 1963. 

Although the Obama Administration failed to overturn the trade embargo with Cuba, narrators reflect on the impact that normalizing relations had on the U.S. role in the hemisphere more broadly. For example, officials discuss the role played by the United States in Cuban-led negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group, which led to a landmark 2016 peace agreement. A popular referendum to ratify the agreement failed, however the two parties signed a revised peace agreement which was officially ratified by the Colombian congress in November 2016, ending one of Latin America’s longest running civil conflicts.