Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, speaking on the sidelines of a weekend summit of Western hemisphere leaders here Saturday, urged her US counterpart Barack Obama to treat Latin America as an equal.

"In Latin America, we have a huge space to make our relationship one of partnership but partnership between equals," said Rousseff, whose country has gained mounting international clout as the world's sixth largest economy and Latin America's dominant power.

"This is a very relevant factor between the most developed country of the region and Latin American countries," she added, in veiled criticism of Washington's past dealings with an area it used to view as its own back yard.

She spoke at a business forum shortly before most democratically elected leaders of the hemisphere launched two days of talks on expanding regional trade amid division on controversial issues such as alternatives to the failing war on drug trafficking, and relations with Cuba.

"It is remarkable to see the changes that have been taking place in a relatively short period of time in Latin, Central America and in the Caribbean," Obama told the same forum.

"We've seen enormous progress. Trade between the United States and Latin, Central America and the Caribbean has expanded 46 percent since I came to office."

And acknowledging the region's growing assertiveness and independence, he said in response to Rousseff's remarks: "I think often times in the press the focus is on controversies. Sometime those controversies date back to before I was born ... to the 1950's ... Yankees, and the Cold War, and this and that.

"That is not not the world in which we are living today, the US leader said. "My hope is that we all recognize this enormous opportunity that we have."

While the world has changed swiftly, the United States in the post-Cold War era has not kept or rebuilt what for centuries was its role: active pan-American regional leader.

The United States has seen its influence across the Americas eroded as China's importance as a trade and economic partner has surged.

Meanwhile US credibility as a defender of democratic values in a region that has had more than its share of military and authoritarian rule, was seriously hurt by US handling of the 2009 coup in Honduras. Washington was achingly slow to react, and widely seen as not actively defending democratic rule when the person ousted (elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya) was not a US ally.

And after 50 years of US diplomatic confrontation with Communist Cuba that has not ended the regime in Havana, many Latin leaders are baffled by continued US refusal to change failed policy toward Cuba, the United States' next door neighbor.

Rousseff also defended her government's measures to protect the Brazilian industry in the face of what she calls a "monetary tsunami" waged by rich countries.

Brazil has been reeling from the appreciation of its currency, the real, against the dollar, resulting from the influx of cheap dollars generated by easy credit which hurt the competitiveness of Brazilian goods.

Rousseff raised the issue during her visit to the United States early this week.

The huge monetary supply flooding Latin American countries in search of stable markets is also fueling the appreciation of other currencies such as the Colombian peso.

"This amounts to exporting your crisis to us," summit host and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said. He called on countries of the hemisphere to adopt a common stance on the issue at the G20 summit of developed and emerging nations in Mexico in June.