Small examples keep manifesting themselves in places where they would not have done so ten years ago. Latin America is a particularly good example, and today there is this tidbit:
Aids campaigners have welcomed a decision by Brazil to turn down US funds because of a clause in the agreement condemning prostitution. The US development agency, USAid, had offered Brazil around $40m (£21m). But Brazil's top Aids official, Pedro Chequer, said the US' conservative approach to treating the disease would not help.
Correspondents say references to prostitution are likely to become a condition for all US Aids funding. Washington says it is important not to promote prostitution, and does not want any of its funds to be spent on treating prostitutes
Brazil Turns Down USAid(s) Funds
(more below)
There used to be a reverence toward the US in Latin American politics. That is not to say that Brasil would have bent over and assumed the US position on prostitution and AIDS, but it would have negotiated for those funds and then spent them as it saw fit. The fact that the country flat-out will not abide by the terms imposed is a sign that 1) it probably doesn't desperately need the US monetary help in battling AIDS and 2) the US position on a subject does not necessarily need to be seriously considered.
There is no doubt that the US still exerts enormous influence over the southern hemisphere, but it is becoming less politically important at the same time that economic terms of trade begin to favour Latin American negotiating points.
Some people have been wondering if this is because US attention to the region has been deficient in recent times, but in reality it is the playing field that is changing, not the level of US interest - it is much more economically viable to ally with Europe and the Orient, neither of which impose unhinged and surreal terms of agreement to their treaties, then with the US, whose decades of preaching democracy and freedom have boiled down to refusing treatment for prostitutes. The fascist trends that have been reshaping US politics at the national level are to blame for making the country less and less attractive as a partner, and less and less authoritative as a totem for development in the rest of the hemisphere.