Thank you to Carla for that introduction and to Michael Shifter and my colleagues at the Dialogue for including me in this event. Carla Hills has been an inspiration to women like me someone whose toughness and competence was never questioned and whose commitment to this region has never flagged. I’m honored to be here for this celebration of some renowned figures, important contributors to the hemisphere’s progress over the past decades.

As someone who has made her working on the Americas, caught up in the daily grind and the bureaucratic details, I know it takes an effort to step back to see where we really are making progress. But as I hope to come to the end of my four-and-a-half-year tenure as Assistant Secretary, it seems to me that we have reason both to be proud of what has been accomplished and to gird ourselves for serious challenges that remain.

Let me start achievements of which we can be proud. At the Summit of Americas in Panama last spring, President Obama noted the commitment he made in 2009, to begin a new era of cooperation with the hemisphere, as equal partners, with relations based on mutual respect. I hope our partners would agree that we have honored that commitment – and are looking to the future.

With this in mind, we re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba. This is forward-looking policy. It improves our ability to support the Cuban people, emphasizing people-to-people relations and increased ties through trade with entrepreneurs, communication, and dialogue.

Our goal remains unchanged – to empower the Cuban people and support the emergence of a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic Cuba. This means that human rights remain at the core of our Cuba policy, and we will continue to support those seeking their universal rights. But it is a new day and we look forward to our partners in the Hemisphere working with us more closely than they could in the past these issues.

I won’t spend time on breakthroughs in the Colombian peace process because my former boss and mentor Bernie Aronson has so ably done that. But peace in the longest running civil conflict in the Hemisphere will surely have significant positive effects throughout our countries.

In Central America, we developed a more comprehensive approach to the challenges of crime, poverty, and corruption. One that builds on our past citizen security programs, but incorporates a new focus on economic development and good governance. Recognizing our shared responsibility, we have updated our drug control strategy to a more balanced approach that increases our focus on prevention and demand reduction.

We are redoubling efforts to create inclusive economic opportunity. Macro-economic numbers, even when strong, often obscure millions left out of such progress, which means we need to invest more in quality education and infrastructure. We are building on the U.S. record of leadership on free trade with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Chile. It will lower barriers to trade with key markets around the Pacific Rim, but go beyond by bolstering protection for intellectual property, labor, and the environment.

We are working with key countries in the Americas to ensure that just days from today COP 21 in Paris results in the most far-reaching climate agreement ever.

Which brings me to what I see as the single most important lesson I’ve learned on this job and our greatest challenge: nearly all of the threats and many of our successes can be traced back to the health of our government institutions and what we commonly refer to as the rule of law. The rule of law and with it sound, government institutions are the greatest bulwark against extremism, transnational crime, and the corruption that corrode institutions from within. Even as protestors criticize their governments, I see progress in social protests –peaceful, democratic, and legitimate – taking place across the hemisphere.

And it doesn’t stop at the Rio Grande. I’ve heard there is some of that same anti-politician sentiment here as well. These protests are aimed at ending actions that hurt the very people government officials are supposed to help. President Obama pointed out that corruption isn’t just immoral. It siphons off billions of dollars that could feel children, build schools, and infrastructure. It stifles economic growth and promotes economic inequality. It aids and abets human rights abuses and fuels organized crime and instability.

The effort to fight corruption involves the creation of internal and external watchdogs holding institutions accountable. One important global mechanism is the Open Government Partnership, now 4 years old and 69 countries strong. The commitments of the OGP are real and meaningful, and it has vibrant civil society participation. So why are only 17 countries in this Hemisphere members? The Open Government Partnership supports efforts we have seen in many countries to respond to threats by debating tough issues and working openly to try to find solutions.

But threats to freedoms of expression and association, whether from state interference, criminal violence, or institutions that can’t or won’t enforce the rule of law, stand in the way of this ability to respond. For too long, we have been complacent in our defense of democracies without examining the strength of the institutions that underlie them. What is certain is that if we fail to heed this frustration and anger, fail to take advantage of the opportunity in this moment, we may well convince our citizenry that democracy cannot deliver. In this crucial moment, we can defend and advance the democratic transformations begun more than 30 years ago.

In closing, I think we must frame our most important challenge in the Americas as a very simple question: Will we respond to the opportunity put before us by citizens who are, in the words of Howard Beale in the movie, Network, “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?” Or will we return to business as usual? This is an important moment for the hemisphere, one in which we need to prove that democratic institutions can deliver. That’s why I am so happy to be here celebrating those who are working so hard to answer the first question, “Yes, we can; Si se puede.”

Thank you.