Earlier this month, leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee urged Obama to meet with survivors of the AMIA attack and the 1992 terrorist attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires during his Argentina visit.
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Obama’s two-day visit marks a rapprochement after years of sour relations and is a sign of support for Macri’s investor-friendly reforms aimed at opening up Latin America’s No. 3 economy.
Journalists stand behind a barrier as Air Force One, carrying President Barack Obama and his family, arrives at the global Buenos Aires airport, Argentina, early Wednesday, March 23, 2016. President Barack Obama will reward the South American nation on… So Obama was all too glad to see her replaced by Macri, who has set out to modernize Argentina’s struggling economy. The two planned to hold a joint news conference before Obama lays a wreath at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral.
An hour later Obama is scheduled to meet with Argentine young entrepreneurs in La Usina del Arte cultural center, and will be declared Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires City.
Be Civil – It’s OK to have a difference in opinion but there’s no need to be a jerk. Joined by first lady Michelle Obama, the president was to be feted by Macri at a state dinner in the evening, marking the first such visit by a USA president in almost two decades.
Obama is eager to show that the USA and Argentina are on better footing now that Macri is in office. Obama’s visit takes place at a very sensitive date, the fortieth anniversary of the military 1976 coup, considered one of the bloodiest in recent Argentine history.
Even without the visit, memories of military rule between 1976 and 1983 haunt the country, affecting political ideology and feeding debates about whether the country should continue to spend millions of dollars every year prosecuting former Dirty War perpetrators and searching for the remains of the missing.
The United States initially backed the dictatorship, which killed up to 30,000 people in a crackdown against Marxist rebels, labor unions and leftist opponents.
Macri and Obama – who will be accompanied by Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and more than 400 USA business executives – are expected to announce bilateral agreements and trade deals covering renewable energy, agriculture and technology. It’s all part of a larger strategy to rebuild normal relations after long periods of estrangement with many Latin American countries, but so far, the thaw in relations with Cuba doesn’t seem to have yielded much in the way of improved ties with the region.CCTV America’s Michael Voss reports.
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A day before Obama’s announcement, during an interview with The Associated Press, Argentine President Mauricio Macri sidestepped questions about whether he would bring up the past with his USA counterpart. Obama and his family will also travel to the southern resort city of Bariloche before returning to Washington on Friday.
