[ Honduran President Xiomara Castro is also skipping this weeks
Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. ]
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MEXICAN PRESIDENT BOYCOTTS SUMMIT OVER US EXCLUSION OF CUBA,
NICARAGUA, VENEZUELA  
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Kenny Stancil
June 6, 2022
Common Dreams
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_ Honduran President Xiomara Castro is also skipping this week's
Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. _

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaks at a press
conference in Mexico City on December 8, 2020., (Photo: by Francisco
Canedo/Xinhua via Getty Images)

 

MEXICO'S LEFTIST PRESIDENT ANDRÉS Manuel López Obrador announced
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that he is skipping the Summit of the Americas, following through on
his threat
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boycott the upcoming meeting if the White House refused to invite
officials from all nations in the Western Hemisphere.

The Biden administration's decision to bar the governments of Cuba,
Nicaragua, and Venezuela from this week's gathering in Los Angeles was
made final on Sunday.

Unnamed sources familiar with deliberations between Washington
officials and their Latin American and Caribbean counterparts,
including those in Mexico, said that U.S. President Joe
Biden's long-anticipated
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was "based on concerns about the lack of democracy and respect for
human rights in the three countries," _Bloomberg_ reported
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However, the White House is reportedly considering
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role for Juan Guaidó—an unelected and unpopular right-wing
opposition figure who participated in a failed, Trump-backed
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to overthrow
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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2019—at a virtual side
event.

Washington does not officially recognize Maduro as the legitimate
leader of the South American country even though he was re-elected
last year in a contest that U.S. legal observers called
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Instead, the U.S. recognizes Guaidó as interim president, and Biden
previously invited
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Venezuelan coup leader to his administration's so-called Summit for
Democracy in December.

In addition to Maduro, the U.S. is excluding Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega, whose 2021 re-election Biden called
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from the Summit of the Americas.

According to U.S. officials, the Biden administration decided against
inviting a lower-ranking government representative to attend in place
of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who said
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month that he would not travel to Los Angeles even if invited due to
the White House's "brutal" pressure campaign to make this week's event
non-inclusive.

Cuba participated in the 2015 meeting in Panama and the 2018 meeting
in Peru, which former U.S. President Donald Trump skipped.

Despite Democratic lawmakers' pleas
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Biden's own campaign pledge
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reverse Trump's "failed" approach to Cuba—which
included implementing
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than 200 punitive policies following Obama-era efforts at
normalization—the White House has imposed
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sanctions in recent months, intensifying Washington's 60-year embargo
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the Caribbean island.

Among other officials in the hemisphere, far-right presidents Jair
Bolsonaro of Brazil and Iván Duque of Colombia are expected to attend
the Summit of the Americas, which begins Monday and ends June 10.

Like López Obrador, however, Honduras' socialist President Xiomara
Castro will not be making the trip to Los Angeles. Her decision to
stay home was announced
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Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and Honduran Foreign Minister
Eduardo Enrique Reina are expected to fill in, but the absence of
multiple Central American presidents is likely to complicate Biden's
agenda, which reportedly includes
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an agreement to reduce and manage undocumented migration as well as
discussions of regional economic, health, and food security issues
exacerbated by rising inequality and the fossil fuel-driven climate
crisis.

Aileen Teague, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, argued
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month that "the Biden administration will lose political capital if it
allows its growing tendency to divide the world into 'democratic'
friends and 'authoritarian' states to dictate the invitation list for
a forum that is much larger than Washington's professed policy
objectives."

The stated focus [[link removed]] of
the Summit of the Americas is to commit to "concrete actions that
dramatically improve pandemic response and resilience, promote a green
and equitable recovery, bold strong and inclusive democracies, and
address the root causes of irregular migration."

John Kirk, professor emeritus of Latin American Studies at Dalhousie
University in Canada, argued
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week that "for a summit that aims to 'dramatically improve pandemic
response,' it seems odd to exclude Cuba—the only country in Latin
America to have developed its own Covid vaccines
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to have sent thousands of medical professionals abroad
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help people during the pandemic, and to have fully vaccinated 96% of
the population. (Latest figures show fewer than 70 Covid cases per
day)."

"In terms of their role abroad, some 5,000 Cuban specialists worked in
42 countries on anti-Covid missions," Kirk continued. "As the prime
minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit explained: 'Here in the
Caribbean if the support of Cuban doctors was to be removed from the
health system of all the countries that are members of Caricom [the
Caribbean Community], these would collapse.'"

"Cuba has one of the best public health systems in the Americas,"
wrote Kirk. "Given these successes, and its program of international
medical support, why not at least listen to its successful approach to
the pandemic?"

_Kenny Stancil is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

* Summit of the Americas
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* U.S.-Mexico relations
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* Boycott
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* Andrés Manuel López Obrador
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