Barack Obama went to Latin America a few days ago to project a new, softer image of US regional influence based on common bonds. He left behind nations delighted by the attention but determined to use their growing economic voice their own way.

The visits to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador illustrate the new politics of the hemisphere – more economically viable, more democratic, with a growing global footprint and a perspective that will not always hew to the wishes of its giant neighbour to the north.

American financial aid does not carry as much influence as it once may have – though fiscal pressures on the US make that aid unlikely anyway. The strongest leverage the United States has is forging relationships based on mutual commercial or security interests. But Obama knows Latin America has heard pledges for new regional alliances before, only to see them fizzle.

Indeed, many in Latin America thought his trip was long overdue. But Obama left behind goodwill in his host countries and leaders buoyed by a sense that his visit brought them and their countries a degree of international validation. By that measure, the trip ended on a successful note.

For Obama, the timing of the trip awkwardly coincided with American forces dropping bombs and firing missiles at Libya. Questions about Libya dogged Obama at every stop.

The White House maintains that simply showing up can do much to build bridges. Obama generally stuck to his itinerary despite the demands of the attack on Libya, helping mitigate any lingering irritation that he had put off the visit for too long.

It’s an approach the White House under new political adviser David Plouffe has employed domestically as well, sending Obama on weekly visits to states to make his case on domestic topics even as national and international issues overwhelm them.

A trip such as this can also generate domestic rewards. El Salvador has one of Central America’s highest rates of emigration, especially to the United States. In regions such as northern Virginia, with a heavy concentration of Salvadorans, such attention can reap political benefits.

The power of trips like these also rests on the lingering symbolic images.

Obama supplied them. He played soccer with children in a Rio de Janeiro shantytown, visited the tomb of slain Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in San Salvador, and addressed the people of Latin America from La Moneda, the Chilean governmental palace placed under siege during a bloody coup nearly four decades ago and now the heart of a restored democracy.

Taken together, the pictures illustrate the strides Latin America has taken and how remarkably different it is from the strife that characterised it in the 1970s and 1980s.

Brazil has grown into the seventh largest economy in the world. Chile has emerged from Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship with a vibrant democracy and a succession of centre-left but pragmatic leaders – a string only broken by Sebastian Pinera, a Harvard educated conservative who nonetheless has not sought to dismantle the work of his predecessors.

El Salvador, still struggling economically, has established its own model of democracy after the bloody 12-year civil war that began in 1980s and left an estimated 75,000 people dead. After years of democratically elected conservative governments, Mauricio Funes was elected as the candidate of the party of former left-wing guerrillas.

Obama’s trip also revisited complicated periods of the United States’ own history, when it sided with often brutal right wing factions, particularly in Chile and El Salvador. Asked by a Chilean reporter whether the United States was prepared to seek forgiveness for any role it played in the 1973 coup of Socialist President Salvador Allende and the subsequent repression in Chile, Obama sought to look ahead instead.