Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has officially launched a Spanish-language satellite TV channel, saying it would deal a blow to "dominance seekers" – remarks that were an apparent dig at the US and the west. The launch is Tehran's latest effort to reach out to friendly governments in Latin America.

Through more aggressive public diplomacy elements such as listening, cultural and educational exchange, advocacy, and broadcasting, Spain is in a good position to foster understanding and goodwill with its Latin American counterparts.

“New media and connective technologies enhance our ability to listen…Social media provides new ways for us to keep our ear to the ground,” said McHale. “Of course, we are not interested in developing social media platforms for the sake of having them. We are interested in applying social media to promote our strategic objectives in the Americas.”

Today this woman, Dilma Rousseff, is the President of Brazil - the perennial "country of the future", the world's seventh-largest economy by purchasing power parity (ahead of the UK, France and Italy), a member of the BRICS, and exercising a soft power way beyond music, football and joy of living.

The country is now making an additional effort to promote its culture abroad. We certainly have pending tasks on this effort. It isn’t easy for the people in Asian countries to identify with elements of the Chilean culture beyond the scope of the well-known, high quality products exported by the country.

Romney, advised by a committee professedly oriented toward Latin America.. called the Campaign for Economic Opportunity in Latin America (CEOLA), in order to promote “a vigorous public diplomacy and trade promotion effort in the region.”

Soccer players from England, Argentina or Brazil who went on tours in other countries were transformed into ambassadors while away. Sports and soccer, in Latin America especially, were effective ways for countries to get to know each other, he said.

India's different approach...stems to a large degree from the fact that it is politically, economically and even culturally more akin to Latin America than communist China is. Increasing frictions with China are a big reason for the region's increasing interest in dealing with India. Washington, of course, is also happy ...the U.S. considers New Delhi less a threat to its interests in the hemisphere than is Beijing.