The United States has denied entry visas to 23 Cubans who were hoping to travel to the event of left-wing organizations parallel to the Summit of the Americas, which is being held in Los Angeles between June 6 and 10, the official press reported this Thursday.
“Not only is Biden not interested in having a dialogue with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela or with other countries, but he does not allow us, from the people, to be able to dialogue and communicate,” said Manolo de los Santos, co-director of The People’s Forum, one of the US organizations that coordinates the so-called People’s Summit for Democracy. In addition, they are part of the event, which will take place in the same Californian city between June 8 and 10, Code Pink, Alba movements or NDLON, among others.
De los Santos told Granma that the measure confirms the exclusionary nature of the Summit. “It highlights the great hypocrisy of the United States government, which wants so much to talk about democracy, but in the end it is a democracy for a few, for those who agree with them; not a democracy in which we can all participate,” he asserted.
“It highlights the great hypocrisy of the United States Government, which wants so much to talk about democracy, but in the end it is a democracy for a few”
The manager told the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba that the organizers regret the situation because they were “very excited about the idea that American youth and social leaders were going to be able to interact, many for the first time, with activists and representatives of civil society. and in this way to be able to exchange without any prescribed conclusion, but with the interest of dialoguing and debating things in common and the future that we want to build together in our continent”.
It has also announced protest actions in the coming days, in addition to the petition that is on its website and that can be signed to ask the US to reverse the decision. According to the official press, among the guests were Cuban scientist and doctor Tania Crombet Ramos, member of the World Academy of Sciences; the Olympic wrestler Reineris Salas Pérez; a Christian student leader, Jorge González Núñez, and other journalists, artists, trade unionists, and community leaders.
For the time being, the United States has not given an explanation for the denial of these visas, which De los Santos considers “an affront to the same democratic values that the United States government and its ‘Summit of the Americas’ intend to defend.”
The People’s Summit for Democracy began to be held in 2005, in parallel to the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and is an independent event, very different from the Civil Society Forum, which is one of the events that make up the inter-American event bringing together non-governmental organizations from each country.
In the two previous editions in which the Cuban Government attended the Summit of the Americas, in Lima 2018 and Panama 2015, representatives of civil society attended the parallel event integrated into the event. However, in Cuba there are no associations recognized by the Government, so these people were, de facto, members of the official delegation.
Precisely at the Panama Summit, there was a serious altercation between the members of the independent civil society and those of the ruling party, when the latter carried out an act of repudiation of the former
Precisely at the Panama Summit, there was a serious altercation between the members of the independent civil society and those of the ruling party, the latter making an act of repudiation of the former.
This last one is the most recent friction before a Summit of the Americas that is poisoning, especially since the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador affirmed that he would not attend if the absence of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela was confirmed. The three countries have not yet been formally excluded, but at least members of the White House have spoken twice in a way that suggests that this will be the case, since, according to their words, “non-democratic” countries cannot be invited. .
The Bolivian president, Luis Arce, also maintained that he would not be there if there were countries excluded, although he did not refer to whether he would send a representative, such as his Mexican counterpart, who announced the presence of his foreign minister, Marcelo Erbrad. They have also positioned themselves against other leaders not being invited to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, such as the Argentine Alberto Fernández or the Chilean Gabriel Boric, but none of them has questioned their presence.
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