Arturo Valenzuela

On January 26, the day before taking office as the newly elected president of Honduras, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo was counting on the restoration of normal relations with the United States.

“Starting tomorrow,” he told reporters inquiring about his country’s rift with the United States, “everything will be normal.”

You can’t blame Lobo for being confident. That day, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, had arrived, dispatched by President Obama as head of the delegation attending Lobo’s inauguration.

That the first African American U.S. president is appointing a substantial number of Latinos to his administration should come as no surprise. Now the largest minority in the country, Latinos represent more than 15 percent of the population and voted for President Obama by a margin of two to one.

Many of these appointees have been named to posts responsible for Latin American policy. Some call this pigeonholing and others outsourcing U.S. foreign policy to an ethnic constituency.

Of course, it is neither of those but a little of both.

Finally, President Obama's Latin America team has its leader. Six months after his nomination, Arturo Valenzuela was sworn in on Nov. 10 as the top U.S. diplomat in the region: head of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department. Now Obama's "new chapter of engagement" between the United States and its southern neighbors can begin in earnest.

U.S. policy toward Latin America is suffering from a lack of experience at the top. Neither President Obama nor Vice President Biden or anyone in the cabinet could honestly be considered a Latin Americanist. And Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's nominee for assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs -- the top diplomatic post in the region -- remains unconfirmed, the victim of a Republican senator's cheap political maneuvering.