Eric Farnsworth, a longtime voice in hemispheric affairs and former White House and State Department official, will kickoff Nexus Miami with a keynote address on the state of U.S.-Latin American relations. He joined the U.S. State Department in 1989, initially focusing on Panama following the U.S. invasion to remove Manuel Noriega. “I had been responsible for shepherding an agreement between the United States and Central America,” Farnsworth said of his early role at the State Department. During his decade in government, Farnsworth said Western hemispheric relations reached a high point before the turn of the century. The 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, he said, was marked by optimism.