US President Joe Biden hopes the Summit of the Americas will break new ground with Latin America and the Caribbean, but kicks off Monday in the swamp amid threats of boycotts from countries like Mexico amid the crisis.
With just two days until its opening in Los Angeles, the city that is home to the largest Hispanic community in the United States, the host has yet to reveal the list of invited executives, which has become the list of disputants.
A few weeks ago, his implication that he wouldn’t invite Cuba or the presidents of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro and Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, opened Pandora’s box.
Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, and the 14-nation Caribbean bloc cast doubt on their involvement, which the United States says violates the Continental Democratic Charter, excluding those countries.
Cuba’s participation in one of these summits will not be the first time, as it has been in the last two years.
“Drama”
Biden is particularly concerned by the absence of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at this ninth meeting of countries in the region.
“Our relationship with Mexico is and will continue to be positive,” and the president “personally wants” Lopez Obrador to attend, Juan González, the White House’s senior adviser to the Americas, said this week.
The United States needs López Obrador because of the immigration problem, and “challenging Biden makes him look like a Latin American leader,” Michael Shifter, a professor at Georgetown University, told AFP.
“All the drama about who will or won’t participate, and for what reasons, shows that there’s been a huge disconnect” and the US “losing influence, particularly in South America, but also in Mexico.”
Chilean President Gabriel Boric and Argentina President Alberto Fernández joined the call to invite everyone, but they will be present at the meeting.
migrant caravan
On Monday, a caravan of 11,000 Venezuelan immigrants in southern Mexico plans to leave for the United States.
And immigration could affect Biden in the November midterm elections, which could cause him to lose control of Congress.
Washington hopes to reach an agreement on the Immigration Declaration to integrate immigrants into host countries and better manage the crisis.
Economic development is another general concern, but it requires resources to be paid for, and it remains to be seen what the US can offer.
I don’t see the “government emerging with strong financial commitments” but “competing on an equal footing with at least a certain number of partners” such as Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Chile, Uruguay and Colombia. He points to Manuel Orozco, director of the Inter-American Dialogue’s Immigration, Remittances and Development Programme, in a virtual meeting with the press.
Benjamin Gedan, of the Woodrow Wilson think tank’s Latin America Program, estimates that “the real barometer for this summit will be whether the United States has provided substantial access to new markets, credit and foreign aid to support the recovery.”
At the diplomatic level, the summit, which will end on June 10 with the war in Ukraine in the background, will allow Biden to meet with some presidents.
Among them is Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of former President Donald Trump and whom the current tenant of the White House has not seen in almost a year and a half.
Juan Gonzalez will discuss bilateral and global issues, food insecurity, the economic response to the pandemic, health and global warming, as “all the priorities of the summit are areas where Brazil plays an incredibly important role,” he said.
For Rebecca Bill Chavez, head of Inter-American Dialogue, the summit’s success will depend on “whether it serves as a launchpad for a regional commitment and focuses on resonant issues.”
source: Noticias
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