UPON commencing his second term in January, Barack Obama initiated an intense period of U.S. activity in Latin America. The President traveled to Mexico and Costa Rica, while Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Brazil at the end of May, moving on to Colombia and Trinidad & Tobago, a few days before the arrival in the latter country of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Biden himself described the initiative as the most active period of high-level contact with Latin America in a long time, acknowledging that the Western Hemisphere has always been important to the United States, but particularly now, given that it has more potential than at any other moment in its history.

In early June, the White House welcomed Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, and on June 10, Obama met with the Peruvian leader, Ollanta Humala.

Obama praised the strong and important relationship with Chile, as well as the economic model being promoted by the Pacific Alliance, a trade bloc founded in 2012, which includes Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico, while Costa Rica is in the process of joining.

Everything indicates that the United States has placed its hopes in rapprochement with a hemisphere which has distanced itself from its imperial neighbor.

Adam Isacson, from the Washington Office on Latin American Affairs (WOLA) told BBC Mundo, "They are not going to be able to recover this lost ground with new and daring aid programs because there’s no money, so the logical step is to increase diplomatic activity." The analyst noted that no special ideas or programs were proposed during Obama’s visit to Mexico. "There were no concrete promises," he stated.

However, Harvard professor Joseph Tulchin sees positive signals coming out of Washington. As the U.S. academic told Granma, "The Obama administration is trying to respond to the Latin American nations’ new scale of international activity."

Tulchin said, "In his speech in Brazil, Biden emphasized the country’s leadership and made it clear that the United States is disposed to work with the hemisphere to solve common problems."

But despite what is perceived as intense diplomatic activity – possibly desperate given integrationist projects such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and MERCOSUR – U.S. policy toward Cuba and Venezuela remain unchanged.

Eric Hershberg, director of the Latin American Studies Center at American University, Washington, believes that his country has been completely out of synch with governments of the region on the issue of integration.

"Thus, it’s still very early to predict that relations with Latin America during Obama’s second term are going to be less sour than they were during his first term."

Professor Ernesto Domínguez at the Center of Hemispheric and United States Studies at the University of Havana, agrees. He sees an evident re-launch of U.S. policy toward Latin America on various fronts. "Hence the search for a rapprochement with Brazil, the largest power in the region; and also with others, such as Colombia, Chile and Peru."

"The policy of the Trans-Pacific Alliance has to be placed in the geo-strategic, geopolitical and historical perspective of U.S. interests in the Pacific, an area which has been its priority since the 19th century, and more so now with the growth of the Chinese economy and in general, that of all of Eastern and Southeastern Asia," Domínguez affirmed to Granma.