*By Arthur McFields
The Ninth Summit of the Americas is just around the corner. On the eve of this hemispheric event, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has led an active and painful campaign in favor of the dictatorships of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In this party of democracies, AMLO has become the unpaid mariachi of the dictatorships that have made us cry and cry.
This desperate cry in defense of his three friends is sheltered under the excuse of non-exclusion, self-determination, solidarity and all that old rhetoric to which the late Hugo Chávez had accustomed us. Obrador, he did not stop there, too dusted off the anachronistic leftist discourse of beheading the OAS and strengthen a hemispheric sect of sterile results called CELAC.
Related news: Daniel Ortega responds to the United States: “We are not interested in being at that Summit”
In other words, AMLO is committed to an exclusive organization, without the United States, without Canada and without any commitment to human rights and representative democracy.
For its part, the dictatorship of Cuba and its more than 60 years of infamy and repression, also demands its place at the table at the Summit of Democracies. The island, whose main export product is ideology and failed politicians, continues to be the lost paradise of many left-handed and absurd leaders of Latin America and even of some Americans and Europeans.
All of them look at and admire the Castro model as a perfect system, 3 presidents, more than 60 years old and not a single human rights organization. Enviable right?
On the other hand, the dictatorship of Venezuela also wants your free ticket to go to Los Angeles. The country with the richest oil reserves in the Americas is today the beggar of the Western Hemisphere. His formula for success is well known.
For almost two decades, the Chavista system gave foreign oil to almost all the countries of the world in exchange for political favors, breaking its economic and productive framework, eliminating any vestige of democracy and establishing the second cruelest and bloodiest dictatorship in Latin America.
Finally, Ortega’s Nicaragua boasts of spending millions on police and weapons, while the country sinks into extreme poverty, repression and drug trafficking.
In a country of lakes and volcanoes, there are more and more armed police and fewer free citizens. The forces of public order are dedicated 24 hours a day to persecute students, journalists and priests, while the country became last year the Central American nation that captures the fewest drugs and drug traffickers. As if that were not enough, in this country the President has been screwed in power for 15 years and without blushing he named his wife, Rosario Murillo, as his new vice president for life.
Being objective, there are no perfect governments, in Latin America or in the United States. We know that these are complex and challenging times. El Salvador with the gangs and authoritarianism, Costa Rica, with a dubious government; Argentina, with an inefficient and indebted leadership; Colombia, with the threat of Petro’s socialism; Mexico, with a populist president and enemy of free expression and the list continues to grow.
They all have problems and pending tasks, but none of them is a dictatorship with 15 or 60 years in power. That’s what we talk about when you don’t want to invite dictatorships to the Summit of the Americas.
Tolerance and self-determination. While the presidents of the so-called left of the 21st century dance the tango of the self-determination of the peoples, they forget the most important “the peoples”. When AMLO plays the mariachi of the dictators of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, he ignores or does not want to see that these dictatorships continue without any tolerance or respect for human rights, imprisoning and murdering their own citizens 365 days a year. So we ask ourselves, where is the tolerance?
*The author was Nicaraguan Ambassador to the OAS
