Let's all throw more shoes at Bush...

…and while we’re at it, we'll send a signal to Obama.

You could call it the independence summit. The meeting of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Brazil seems to have been about independence from Washington, and a big way of expressing that independence was opposition to U.S. policy toward Cuba. The Washington Post sums up here.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon suggested creation of a new hemispheric organization to discuss political and economic issues; it would not include the United States and Canada (see AP story). What Canada did to deserve exclusion, I don’t know.

On the Cuba front, there was a joint statement calling on the United States to end the Cuba embargo, and “in particular” to stop applying “the measures adopted over the past five years to deepen the impact” of U.S. sanctions against Cuba. President Calderon and Argentine President Fernandez agreed to visit Cuba next year. And Raul Castro reportedly spent a half hour with the OAS Secretary General.

Spain’s El Pais summed up: “The image of a Cuba that practically has relations only with Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, or Nicaragua, has ended.”