Hours after this year's Nobel Peace Prize was announced, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson spoke to a college audience and gently admonished "our new Nobel Peace Prize-winning president."

Richardson, the ex-presidential candidate, diplomat and a past Nobel nominee, relayed a simple message to President Barack Obama: "Pay more attention to Latin America."

But in an ironic twist shaken out from last month's Nobel surprise, Obama beat out the odds-on Nobel favorite, Piedad Córdoba, a Colombian senator and successful hostage negotiator who for years has promoted negotiations to end the four-decades-long civil war in Colombia.

Oddly enough, Obama has embraced the opposite solution to the tragic conflict in South America – a military expansion.

In July, the Obama administration announced a deal with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe – Córdoba's nemesis, America's ally – that will send at least hundreds of U.S. troops to seven Colombian military bases.

The idea behind the expansion, U.S. officials said, is to track cocaine traffickers and the insurgent forces they fund.

But Obama's first major policy decision on inequality-stricken Latin America also reinforces a regional arms race, an unsettling trend that diverts more and more resources to building up armies instead of bolstering social development.

At a talk to students at UCLA last month, Venezuela's ambassador to the United States, Bernardo Álvarez Herrera, addressed the deal, "You cannot be talking about peace and at the same time increasing the presence of the military in Colombia."

The comment was made the day before Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was announced.

The deepening U.S.-Colombia military partnership has been roundly criticized, but the story suffers from Latin America's second-thought status among many in the U.S. The criticism comes not just from Venezuela, but even moderate governments in Brazil and Chile.

"It was kind of sprung on people. Nobody saw it coming," said Michael LaRosa, a Rhodes College professor, of the decision to send troops to Colombia. "To some degree, it goes against everything that President Obama has been trying to do in Latin America, which is openness, transparency, reaching out."

John Lindsay-Poland, a California-based Latin America researcher, also has suggested that the expanded military partnership isn't in tune with Obama's latest accolade.

"This is a time when Washington should invest in peace talks, not institutionalizing its relationship with the military," Lindsay-Poland wrote on his blog.

LaRosa noted that three of the Colombian military installations where U.S. forces will be renting space are on the country's tense eastern border with Venezuela. "So it looks like we're trying to get close to Venezuela – and not because we want to get to know the Venezuelan people better," he said, "but because of the oil reserves there."

Weeks after news of the U.S.-Colombia deal broke, Venezuela's oil-rich leader, Hugo Chávez, promptly announced another major arms purchase with Russia – $2 billion worth of surface-to-air missiles, battle tanks and anti-aircraft missile launching systems. Chávez specifically invoked the U.S.-Colombia pact as a justification.

Meanwhile, Brazil, the regional heavyweight, spent a record $24.6 billion bulking up its military last year.

But Venezuela and Brazil aren't the only nations in the region devoting large sums to military spending. In 2008, so did Colombia ($12.3 billion), Chile ($4.9 billion), Ecuador ($1.3 billion) – even Bolivia ($1 billion), home to Latin America's most extreme poverty. Nor is the trend a one-year phenomenon. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, overall military spending in Latin America and the Caribbean spiked by 91 percent over the past five years, to $47.2 billion in 2008.

Even a respected analyst who favors U.S. assistance in combating Colombia's leftist guerillas cautions against the trend.

"We do have an arms buildup, which I think is worrying because Latin America, in relative terms, has been pretty peaceful," said Michael Shifter, director of the Andean program at the Inter-American Dialogue. "But the risks are increasing. There's very little transparency about the arms purchase and what their purposes are."

A decade ago, Plan Colombia was launched with the aim of interdicting drugs and supporting the Colombian government, not going after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

"But after 9/11, quietly, Plan Colombia funds began to go after three terrorist organizations as the United States names them in Colombia – the FARC, the paramilitary groups and the ELN [National Liberation Army]," LaRosa said. "So there was mission creep and mission change."

It's a mission creep our newly minted Nobel laureate endorses.

Nowadays, Córdoba, the Colombian politician and peace activist Obama beat for the Peace Prize, is still pressing the Uribe government for a prisoner swap with the FARC as a way to stimulate a different approach.

But unlike Obama, she'll have to press forward on that thankless task without the prestige of a Noble Prize to back her up.

David Alire Garcia is a freelance writer on Latin America. His e-mail address is aliregarcia@hotmail.com.