For too long, the U.S. has relied on a rather imperial mechanism — just telling Latin America what it needs. Compare that to China’s approach: It offers Latin America what it wants (in the form of financing and trade from China).

If in Latin America, the ordinary citizens were able to communicate their vicissitudes directly to the chief of state, and if the office of the president became the true public defender, empowered to correct misdoings, denounce violations of the law and survey the actions of the state, we would see how the necessary reconciliation between society and state would gradually occur.

The trip should consolidate U.S. partnerships not just with these three nations, but send a message that a new form of engagement with the United States is now possible. The days of U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere are over, and a president and vice president no longer travel with a packet of aid.

Behind the excitement is the sense that the Pacific Alliance is a hard-nosed business deal, rather than the usual gassy rhetoric of Latin American summitry. Under the leftist governments that rule in much of South America, there has been plenty of talk of regional integration, but precious little practice of it.

There is most probably no left wing leader who had influenced public opinion inside and outside the Latin American part of the Western hemisphere to the same extent as the unconventional Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez had over the last decade. Doubtlessly, his death three weeks ago ended one phase of Venezuela’s political development. Now facing the caudillo’s loss, the electorate has to determine the sustainability of principal public diplomacy paradigms of the Chavez government.

The recent death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez from cancer comes as no great surprise. The former military leader had rarely been seen in the public eye since December last year when he travelled to Cuba for surgery, and premature rumours about his death have been circulating for months. But his shadow now looms large over South America, standing with the likes of famous Latin American leaders like Che Guevara, Juan Peron and Fidel Castro.

US is not able to restrict Iran's soft power by spreading Iranophobia, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces for Basij and Defense Culture Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri said, IRNA reported.

The law was the White House’s most public strategy to date to counter Iran’s influence in the Americas, and gives the State Department 180 days to draw up a plan to “address Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity.” The US received prompt criticism from Iran who said the US “still lives in the cold war era and considers Latin America as its back yard.”