Some leaders who attended the Summit of the Americas - and others who chose to skip - accused US President Barack Obama of causing the divisions in the Americas for his refusal to accept that Cuba should be invited to future summits. "All countries in Latin America and the Caribbean support Cuba, as they support Argentina over the Falklands. If the United States were to accept or acknowledge that great feeling ... there would be integration, there would be inclusion and there would be democracy," Bolivian President Evo Morales said in Cartagena.
"If not, then certainly there is no integration in the Americas, and the United States are to blame." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez skipped the gathering for medical reasons. In fact, he travelled to Cuba instead to continue treatment for cancer. Meanwhile, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro accused Obama of "ignorance."
"His advisors keep him ignorant about the reality of Latin America, of the Caribbean," he said. "Either that, or he acts very cynically." Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who has remained vocal in retirement, wrote that Obama appeared to be "quite aloof" during the gathering in Cartagena.
"It was as if he were sleeping with his eyes open," Castro said. Three years after the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, the criticism shows that Obama has lost at least part of the enthusiasm he generated when he took office in 2009. Obama did not just reap criticism in Colombia. Some praised him for the fact that he took the thrashing quite stoically and that he did not run away despite the evident problems. Indeed, several leaders including Morales left before the end of the discussions that they had said where so vital. Obama stuck it out to the end.
"I saw a US president with enormous patience, sitting for two days listening to the other 33 of the continent's leaders talking about everything and anything," Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, host of the summit, told reporters after Sunday's close of the meetings. "He was very positive and constructive."
Mexican President Felipe Calderon agreed. "I think it's the first time in my experience that a US president stays virtually all the time at the summit, sitting there listening to all the comments of all countries, whether the most unlikely or the most questionable or the most incompatible," Calderon told reporters. "I think it is a very valuable gesture from Obama."