Leer en Español
The ninth edition of the Summit of the Americas was held in the United States, specifically in the city of Los Angeles, California, and was hosted by President Joe Biden. The summit was organized under the theme “building a sustainable, resilient and equitable future” with four major themes focused on the whole hemisphere: “social inclusion, economic recovery, climate change, democracy and digital transformation.”
But before moving on to this year’s summit, let’s remember that it is a product of U.S. diplomacy created in the post-Cold War era, specifically in Miami in 1994, during the Clinton administration. It was born as a meeting place for all the Americas to deepen efforts in “economic growth and prosperity based on common democratic values”, according to the State Department’s website.
This last sentence of the previous paragraph was precisely the one that soured the summit before it was held, since, the host president decided not to extend an invitation to three governments that are not recognized as democratic: we are referring to the Caribbean tyrannies of Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
Soon, the reactions of some leaders came to light who, beyond their active and fervent militancy in the radical left, ergo, mourners of the Castro-communist regime, regrettably adopted positions that totally turned their backs on the people who suffer severe and systematic violations of human rights, limitations and even the absence of freedoms -both political and commercial- and, in general terms, live in the most abject poverty. In short, they are peoples who suffer the vicissitudes of authoritarian socialist governments. This group was headed by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, followed logically by Luis Arce of Bolivia and Xiomara Castro of Honduras, all of whom are members of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group.
On the day of the inauguration of the summit, the list of those who were invited but did not attend was extended. This was the case of President Alejandro Giammattei, from Guatemala; Nayib Bukele, from El Salvador; and Luis Lacalle Pou, from Uruguay. The latter claimed that he tested positive for the Wuhan virus.
For his part, the good comrade Alberto Fernandez, president of Argentina, announced that he would be the spokesman for the Venezuelan narco-tyranny-neocommunist Venezuela, what an honor!
However, beyond the pompousness of the event that the Biden administration gave it and the effort to get the attending leaders to sign the Los Angeles Resolution, we would like to emphasize the convenience and moral wisdom of not inviting the Caribbean tyrannies to the summit, as well as the fact that the American president stoically withstood the pressure exerted by the ultra-left leaders, led by Lopez Obrador.
In the midst of the summit, President Biden tried to restore Washington’s direct relationship with the democracies of the hemisphere, and in his inaugural speech he unloaded heavy artillery against neoliberalism. He also announced three major plans: one to manage future pandemics, another for economic reactivation and finally one to guarantee democracy and human rights. All in all, on this summit and all the others, what is essential is the commitment to the traditional values of the West, as President Biden himself said about the commitment to democracy, so that in our opinion, the rest are mere accessories.
Finally, the boycott against the summit led by López Obrador and the cantankerous speech of President Alberto Fernández, full of complaints about the “blockade” against Cuba and Venezuela, or the absurd accusation of a coup d’état in Bolivia “committed by the OAS”, only reiterate the deep fracture of the Washington consensus that took place at the beginning of the present century during the Hugo Chávez era. This constitutes a profound divergence between an axis of democratic countries confronted with those of a socialist and anti-imperialist character prone to authoritarianism, irreconcilable differences that will mark a complex and difficult coexistence in the governments of the Americas in the coming decades.
Nahem Reyes is a PhD in history from the Andrés Bello Catholix University and associate member of the American Studies Center of the Central University of Venezuela. // Nahem Reyes es doctor en Historia de la Universidad Católica Andrés Bello y miembro asociado del Centro de Estudios de América de la Universidad Central de Venezuela.