text: KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Opening a three-day trip to the Caribbean and Central America, President Barack Obama hopes to capitalize on mutual needs in the face of expanding Chinese influence and weakening power by Venezuela, once the energy juggernaut of the Americas. 
   
   U.S. President Barack Obama, right, accompanied by Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N,Y, walks down the steps during their arrival on Air Force One, Wednesday, April 8, 2015 at Norman Manley International Airport... (Associated Press) 
   
   U.S. President Barack Obama waves during his arrival on Air Force One, Wednesday, April 8, 2015 at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica. Obama arrived to Jamaica for a two day visit... (Associated Press) 
   
   Obama's arrival Wednesday evening in Kingston, Jamaica, was low-key compared to the excitement he stirred in the Caribbean upon his election in 2008. Greeted at the airport tarmac by dignitaries including Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, Obama slipped into a motorcade that ran through mostly quiet, empty streets. 
   
   The visit comes amid a perception that Obama's interest in the region has failed to materialize. Yet his travels — first to Jamaica, then to the Summit of the Americas in Panama — follow a year of increased attention to the region by the U.S. president. His immigration executive orders, his efforts to slow the influx of Central American minors to the U.S. border, and his diplomatic outreach to Cuba have put a foreign policy spotlight on U.S. neighbors to the south. 
   
   Obama on Thursday will meet with Simpson Miller and with other leaders in the 15-member Caribbean Community. He also plans to speak to young regional leaders in a town-hall setting, continuing a tradition of engaging new generations in foreign political and civil society institutions. 
   
   The president promptly paid tribute to the island's cultural hero, the late reggae star Bob Marley, making an unscheduled visit Wednesday night to the legendary singer's museum. He toured Marley's former home as Marley's hit "One Love" played through the building's sound system. 
   
   In the Caribbean, energy security tops Obama's agenda as the U.S. seeks to fill a potential void left by Venezuela's scaled-back oil diplomacy. Earlier this year, Vice President Joe Biden hosted prime ministers and other top officials from all Caribbean countries except Cuba at the first Caribbean Energy Security Summit in Washington. 
   
   "We, in looking at the region, saw that a number of the (Caribbean) countries had significant energy needs," said Benjamin Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser. "At the same time, the United States has significant resources, not just in terms of our own energy production, but also in our energy infrastructure, in our ability to work with countries that have formed cooperative solutions to promote energy security." 
   
   Meanwhile, China has steadily expanded its economic alliances in the Caribbean, providing much of the financing for new roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. 
   
   "China is running away with the gold in the view of many region watchers. Its footprint is visible and obvious through its 'checkbook' diplomacy in the Caribbean," said Anthony Bryan, an international relations professor at Trinidad's campus of the University of the West Indies. The public university system serves 18 English-speaking countries and territories. 
   
   Obama's visit to Jamaica is the first by a U.S. president since President Ronald Reagan in 1982. Obama was last in the Caribbean region in 2009 when he attended the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. His stop in Kingston comes ahead of his attendance at this year's summit of the Western Hemisphere's heads of government Friday and Saturday in Panama. 
   
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   Barack Obama has taken a tour of the Bob Marley museum in Jamaica after becoming the first US president to visit the country since 1982. 
   
   To the strains of the late reggae star's One Love, Mr Obama was shown around the sprawling house in Kingston that was Mr Marley's final home. 
   
   The US president said he was a fan of the musician, telling his museum guide: "I still have all the albums." 
   
   Mr Obama is in Jamaica to meet the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc. 
   
   But his first stop after landing in Kingston was the old Victorian-style house in central Kingston that Mr Marley called home between 1975 and his death in 1981. 
   
   Mr Obama spent 20 minutes in the museum, which now houses artefacts from the singer's life including gold records and his Grammy Lifetime Achievement award. 
   
   His arrival aboard Air Force One on Wednesday made him the first sitting US president to set foot in the country since Ronald Reagan visited 33 years ago. 
   
   He was greeted by Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller and the US Ambassador to Jamaica, Luis Moreno. 
   
   Mr Obama will meet representatives of the 15 countries in the Caribbean Community group on the three-day trip to Jamaica and Panama, and is expected to discuss energy and security issues.
target: – President Obama arrived in Jamaica last night, and his first stop was the Bob Marley museum, the BBC reports. Obama is the first US president to visit Jamaica since Ronald Reagan did so in 1982, and he's apparently a big Marley fan: During his 20 minutes spent touring the Victorian-style house where the musician lived from 1975 to his death in 1981, he told the guide, "I still have all the albums." The stop was an unscheduled one, the AP reports. Of course, Obama is technically in Jamaica not as a tourist, but to discuss energy and security issues with representatives of the 15-country-strong Caribbean Community group. He'll spend three days in the Caribbean and Central America. The AP notes that while there was great excitement in the region when he was first elected, Obama's arrival was greeted with "mostly quiet, empty streets," with locals having the feeling that the president's "interest in the region has failed to materialize." He has not been in the Caribbean since 2009.