President Fidel Castro of Cuba headed to the beach on US election day, "just like the majority of the US population", he joked, citing low voter turnout as proof of the anti-democratic nature of US politics.
Dr Castro clearly relished the dragged-out election process and the legal wrangling over Florida votes and said he expected no change in policy toward the island regardless of the winner.
The Cuban revolution has survived nine US presidents, one US invasion and a crippling US trade embargo, leaving Cubans sceptical of any thaw in relations with their hostile neighbours, just 90 miles across the Florida straits.
Florida has long been the centre of anti-Castro activities, where exiles have lobbied effectively for measures to strangle the 40-year-old revolution.
Latin American governments were reluctant to make any statement on the future US president, with both Mr Gore and Mr Bush expected to uphold their commitment to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which will link Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in a single trade bloc by 2005.
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil commented that Mr Gore and the Democrats advanced social issues and environmental defence whereas Mr Bush and the Republicans placed more emphasis on trade expansion.
El Salvador's President, Mr Francisco Flores, said that whatever the outcome of the vote, US-Salvadoran relations would centre on the plight of his nation's immigrants in the US, and the forging of closer trade links.
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez expressed "total confidence" that the winner of the US election would strengthen ties to the oil-producing nation. He embraced the Iraqi leader, Mr Saddam Hussein, in September and hosted a four-day welcome visit for Dr Castro last week, comparing his radical plans for social change with Cuba's socialist experiment.
Venezuela's media, largely anti-Chavez, reprinted editorials from the Washington Post and New York Times, which described the Venezuelan leader as a threat to US interests in the region.
Colombia's national media devoted more attention to the announcement of 22 finalists for the annual Miss Colombia beauty contest yesterday than they did to the US election, despite increasing US involvement in Colombia's 40-year-old internal conflict.
The next US president will undoubtedly implement Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion military package to fund Colombia's fight against drugs and left-wing rebels, which enjoys bipartisan US congressional support.
Cuba's state-controlled daily paper, Granma, published an editorial titled "Banana Republic" yesterday, formally denouncing the "terrorist mafia" which it says controls Florida politics, "shamelessly using electoral fraud as their predecessors in Cuba did before the Revolution".
Newspapers in Venezuela, Peru, Panama and Central America prematurely congratulated Mr Bush on his unconfirmed election triumph, while Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Ecuador opted for caution, limiting commentary to the narrow gap.
The UN General Assembly, for the ninth year, called for an end to the US trade embargo against Cuba, and Cuba appealed to the new US president to scrap the measure.