Political leaders have expressed opposing views on the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from the IX Summit of the Americas, to be held in June in Los Angeles, United States. After the Joe Biden Administration announced that “countries that do not respect democracy due to their actions will not receive invitations.”
The Chilean Foreign Minister Antonia Urrejolaaffirmed that he is in favor of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela participating in the Summit and added that in recent years “exclusion has not given results in terms of human rights.”
“Everyone knows what the president’s (Gabriel Boric) position is regarding the human rights situation in those countries, and mine too. But what we have been insisting on in the bilateral talks (…) is that hopefully this was the broadest possible summit,” the foreign minister said in an interview with the Chilean newspaper La Tercera.
Although the State Department of USA confirmed last week that it ruled out inviting Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to the Summit of the Americas on the grounds that they “do not respect” democracy. On Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the invitations have not yet been sent out because “there is no final decision.”
According to the Chilean foreign minister, who was rapporteur for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for Nicaragua, regardless of the differences and even the convictions that may exist in terms of human rights, the “post-pandemic, with the economic crisis, is a time also to have a space for dialogue beyond the differences”.
Urrejola explained that the presence of Chile in the forum will not be subject to the participation of these countries, as stated Mexicoadding that he hopes that many other heads of state will not stop attending if that is the case.
“The region is super-fragmented, it has become polarized and, in some way, under the leadership of (United States) President Joe Biden it would be important to be able to talk beyond differences,” he argued.
The Summit of the Americas, the main diplomatic forum of the American continent, will be held in Los Angeles (California) from June 6 to 10 and it is the first time that it has been organized by the United States since the first edition, in 1994.
Cuba qualifies its exclusion as aggression
The Committee on International Relations of the Cuban Parliament described on Saturday the country’s exclusion from the IX Summit of the Americas as a “new aggressive act by the United States against Cuba.”
“There is not a single reason that justifies the exclusion of any country of our America from this meeting,” the parliamentary commission stressed in a statement issued on the first day of the fifth extraordinary session of the legislative body.
Cuba attended the two previous editions (in Lima in 2018 and in Panama City in 2015), but had previously also been excluded.
In this regard, the Cuban assembly members considered that this position “is totally identified with the demands and pressures of the sectors of the extreme anti-Cuban right and its main spokesmen in the US legislature.”
They also criticized what they consider “strong pressure and threats” from the United States “on numerous Latin American and Caribbean governments, trying to silence their legitimate claims in favor of the presence of Cuba in the so-called continental event.”
“With unparalleled cynicism, Cuba is included in spurious and unilateral lists such as that of countries that promote terrorism and human trafficking, among others,” criticizes the statement.
The possible exclusion of Havana, Caracas and Managua has generated criticism and even the leaders of some countries, such as the presidents of Mexico and Bolivia, have warned that if there are excluded they will not attend.
Other countries, such as some Caribbean nations, are also studying whether to join the meeting in Los Angeles under these conditions.
Dictatorships seek to sabotage the Summit
The director of the Inter-American Institute for Democracy, the political scientist Carlos Sánchez Berzain, expressed his opinion in an article published this Sunday in Infobae that “the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia” are showing their status as a “transnational criminal organization”, and Mexico, in its role as “paradictatorial government”, they are plotting against the Summit.
“The dictatorial strategy consists of the boycott for absence or attendance, in what not invited they accuse and if they are invited they sabotage from within“Sánchez Berzain warned in his article The dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia seek to sabotage the Summit of the Americas from within.
The political scientist valued that the signal from the United States regarding the guests at the Summit of the Americas “is in compliance with the international legal order.” But the bottom line is thatthe nature of dictatorships is completely contrary to the nature and objectives of the Summit of the Americas” which brings together the heads of state of the hemisphere to discuss —among other things— democracy and governance.
“The dictatorships of socialism of the 21st century or Castrochavism are the expansion of the Cuban dictatorship of the 20th century that today controls Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua under its system of holding power with ‘state terrorism’, ‘crimes against humanity’, ‘violation of human rights’ imposed in its ‘infamous laws’, repression and massacres, prisoners and exiles politicians who prove the absence of the ‘rule of law’, inexistence of ‘separation and independence of the bodies of public power’ and institutionalization of their ‘electoral dictatorships’ in which the people vote but do not choose”, wrote Sánchez Berzain.
For the political scientist, the Castro-Chavista dictatorial system “has recovered oil capacities that allow it to assist Cuba more and that it intends to use again for the well-known ‘oil bribery’ to governments of Caribbean countries”, bribes that were institutionalized through “Petrocaribe” with Hugo Chávez and currently “they are in full maneuver of support from Caribbean governments to the dictatorships in the IX Summit“, he stressed.
“It is evident that from outside the Summit, Castrochavism carries out a boycott that it cannot win because it exposes it and can awaken the democracies from the situation of helplessness in which they remain as inexplicably as shamefully….but it is certain that they do. dictatorships arrive at the IX Summit of the Americas, it will only be to sabotage it from within,” said Sánchez Berzain.
