Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations: The ghost in the room, Cuba, was the most important topic when President Barack Obama, in his opening remarks at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, offered a "new beginning" with Havana.  The specifics at this point are not huge: family travel, remittances, perhaps Cuban membership in the OAS, but Obama has shown, unlike his predecessor, that at least he has a grip on reality.

The Obamamaniacs are praising him as a great statesman for these moves toward Cuba while the right-wing is probably preparing another teabag [or cafe con leche] assault on Washington as we speak, but Obama's shift on Cuba was neither a bold move or appeasement, but principally a recognition that the world, and Latin America more than most places, had changed dramatically and the United States had little choice to but to accept that.  Much like FDR exchanging diplomatic recognition with the Soviet Union in 1933, Obama's moves toward Havana come after a long, a too long, period of estrangement, and take place during a period of crisis when it's easier to get away with a "grand gesture" of this sort.  But, make no mistake, Obama is not acting from a position of strength, but, as he would know from his poker days, is trying to pass off two pair as a flush.

There are two factors that made Obama's overtures possible, if not necessary.

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The first is the emergence of the Latin Left.  I would argue that there has never been a region as Left in its overall political orientation as Latin America is today.  As someone who grew up in some of the most divisive days of the Cold War, the rise of Left governments in Latin America stuns me.  I grew up listening to the most harsh invective against the Cuban Revolution; came of age politically when the Carter and Reagan administrations began to wage brutal counterrevolution against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and fund equally brutal governments and paramilitaries in Central America [and, as I was living in the Washington D.C. area at the time, I recall spending many Friday afternoons outside contra headquarters- I want to say on Wisconsin Avenue near Adams Morgan?- protesting against the vile Reagan policies];  and, as a Ph.D. student, I learned about the interventions at the turn-of-the-century, the "money doctors," the ousters of Arbenz and Allende, the 1968 Olympics massacre,  and . . . .well, you get the point.  Whenever the forces of nationalism or democracy tried to rise up in Latin America the US government-Democrat and Republican alike-was there to offer military aid, civil police, training at the School of the Assassins, and virtually any other measure to deny self-determination and maintain ghoulish military proxies in power.

How the world has changed:

• Just about a month ago, Mauricio Funes, a former FMLN rebel, was elected president in El Salvador.

• In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinistas brutally attacked and in reality overthrown by the US, has come back as the elected president [just as he was defeated in an election and walked away from office in 1990], making "compromises" to be sure but still firmly to the left.

• Fernando Armindo Lugo Mendez, is the current<