The actions of the U.S. government leading up to the Los Angeles Summit of the Americas are being questioned. Voices raised against the unilateral exclusion of several countries on the continent are not an isolated few.
Several Caribbean nations will decline the invitation if Cuba is not invited, according to Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, a position seconded by the Puebla Group.
Following the categorical decision by
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador not to attend the Summit. if other countries were excluded, his counterpart in Bolivia, Luis Arce, joined the condemnations.
›“If all nations are not present, it is not the Summit of the Americas,” declared Xiomara Castro, President of Honduras, and Argentine President Alberto Fernández agrees with her, openly criticizing Washington’s position.
The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America–Peoples Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) through its executive secretary, Sacha Llorenti, described the event as “Neither a summit or of the Americas,” since the U.S. seeks to “direct all spaces in favor of its hegemonic interests.”
The United States was also questioned strongly by China: “Not only does the U.S. enjoy development and prosperity without supporting Latin America, but has exploited the subcontinent, imposed indiscriminate sanctions, exported inflation, practiced political interference and subversion, as well as the assassination of leaders and even armed aggression; all under the principle of America only for the United States.”
Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, the countries that Washington has excluded thus far, have overwhelming support. The White House, to date, has offered only one response: “The final invitations have not yet been sent.”
The United States has run aground on Latin American and Caribbean dignity.
— Pedro Jorge Velázquez, Granma
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