The second Summit of the Americas will bring 34 heads of state to Santiago for meetings this weekend. At the first summit in Miami in 1994, significant progress was made towards a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005.
The euphoria of that dream, a free trade area from "Alaska to Tierra del Fuego", quickly evaporated when President Clinton failed to secure fast-track trade negotiating authority from Congress.
This week, the region's leaders will concentrate on evaluating progress in the areas of health, education, human rights and poverty, as well as trade. The US presidential aide, Mr Thomas McLarty, had told President Eduardo Frei of Chile that education reforms in Latin America would be the priority of Mr Clinton's visit, giving political observers the impression that the summit would do little more than reiterate the previous agreement to create a free trade bloc.
But a last-minute breakthrough in preparatory sessions recently in Costa Rica may have put the hemispheric free trade agreement back in the summit spotlight.
Mr Clinton will address the Chilean Congress today. His keynote is expected to be US-Chilean trade relations. Chile, tired of listening to free trade rhetoric from the US and waiting since 1994 for Mr Clinton to make good on his promise to invite "the fourth friend" into the North American Free Trade Agreement, will be anxious to show that it has the right combination of democracy and economic stability to represent South America in NAFTA.
But the recent elevation of the ex-military dictator, Gen Augusto Pinochet, to a lifetime Senate seat has once again put a question mark on the democratic nature of Chile's transition. Last week's failure of the constitutional accusation against Gen Pinochet in the Chamber of Deputies was due in no small measure to the opposition of President Frei.
Government officials were reportedly worried that if the constitutional accusation was not voted down before the summit began, it could have created a media event for the estimated 2,000 journalists in Santiago. Ms Sola Sierra, chairwoman of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared, complained "the summit will change nothing as regards the human rights situation in Chile. Our loved ones will still be missing when the presidents leave". She is not the only one who is critical of the summit.
Environmental activists, indigenous groups, trade unions, teachers and human rights associations from Canada to Argentina have organised an "alternative summit". The main objective of this conference is to highlight the perils of an American free trade zone, and to set up a broad "continental social alliance" to counterbalance the power of the continent's ruling elite. They will point out that, judging by the example of NAFTA, it will mean nothing but "growing misery and unemployment" for the continent's workers. The number of poor in the Americas has increased from 200 to 210 million since 1994.
Whatever happens at the alternative summit, Presidents Frei and Clinton will be delivering their inauguration speeches at the convention centre of the five-star Sheraton Hotel in Santiago. On Sunday, the summit's declaration will be signed there by the heads of state. It will be the end to a controversial event, for it is difficult to reconcile the idea that the same leaders that pledge themselves to fight poverty will be sitting around a table - made of the finest Chilean wood and copper - that cost over $50,000.
The Chilean Foreign Relations Minister, Mr Jose Miguel Insulza, has agreed to deliver to the heads of state a copy of the agreements at the alternative summit. It will not be priority reading for them, and this continent's countries will stumble on to the next summit.