“Whatever they do, the voice of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua will arrive in Los Angeles, we will be there with our truth, we have our tricks, I am not going to reveal any secrets”, warned the Chavista leader
Dictator Nicolás Maduro thanked the support of Mexico, Argentina and Bolivia in the face of exclusion from the Summit of the Americas
Nicolás Maduro on Tuesday thanked the support of the governments of Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras and the Caribbean due to the exclusion from the Summit of the Americas by the government of Joe Biden.
“For his courage, for his strength, I give a very special thanks to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for his courage, for his clarity. To President Lucho Arce, from Bolivia, to President Alberto Fernández, from Argentina, to the prime ministers of the Caribbean, to the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro”, the Venezuelan dictator stated during an official act.
“I thank you all for your courage, for your solidarity, for your support and for your protest against unjust, discriminatory exclusion,” he added.
The Chavista dictator, who was not invited to participate in the summit that will take place next month in Los Angeles, United States, issued a warning to Washington: “Whatever you do, the voice of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua will reach Los Angeles, we will be there with our truth, we have our tricks, I am not going to reveal any secrets.”
“We carry the flags of Bolívar, Martí, Sandino, of Fidel and Chávez, and we are going to continue to wear it with great pride,” assured Maduro.
The dictators of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua have convened by surprise for this Friday a regional allied forum ten days before the controversial Summit of the Americas to which they have not been invited.
< b>The XXI Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which will meet in Havana, represents a new episode in the tensions between these three countries and the United States, which excluded them from the appointment from June 4 to 10 in Los Angeles.
The US excluded Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua from the Summit of the Americas for not respecting democracy (Ramon Espinosa/REUTERS)
The ALBA leaders “will share common development strategies” and “will analyze the regional political situation,” the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a brief statement. The general secretariat of the alliance has not reported the meeting.
The regional policy point refers to the situation created around the Summit of the Americas, the issue that has been dominating regional political news for days and overshadowing the preparations for a meeting that intended to talk about migration, economic development and climate change .
The United States advanced at first that it was not going to invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the summit because these countries do not respect democracy. Later, as the controversy intensified, he hinted that he was considering options so that they could participate, but not on equal terms with the rest.
Last week, the United States unilaterally announced the relaxation of certain sanctions against the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes, although without linking them to the Summit of the Americas.
Less than two weeks before the event, Washington has not cleared up the mystery and has not published the definitive list of participants, despite having already begun to send out the invitations. Among the invited countries is Spain.
The regional controversy began with the denunciation by the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, at the end of April, that the United States, host of the IX Summit of the Americas, was excluding his country from the preparations.
The situation took a qualitative leap when the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced, days after visiting Havana, that he would not attend the Summit if there were excluded. But he left the door open for his chancellor to represent him.
In the following days, other leaders of the region also indicated that they would not participate if all the countries of the continent were not invited. Among them are the presidents of Bolivia and Guatemala, Luis Arce and Alejandro Gianmattei, respectively.
Presidents López Obrador (Mexico) and Arce (Bolivia) supported the dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua for being excluded from the Summit of the Americas (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP)
Other Latin American countries -such as Chile, Argentina, Panama and Honduras- expressed their rejection of the exclusion of countries from the region, but indicated that they would participate.
Ecuador, Peru, Colombia , Uruguay and Paraguay have confirmed their attendance. Brazil, for its part, has not yet made public whether it will attend, although this has nothing to do with those excluded.
< b>Within the Caribbean Community (Caricom), its 15 members are divided on their participation, but all want the summit to be a success. Its partners include countries close to Cuba such as Belize, Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The wave of criticism affected the United States, which sees the success of the Summit of the Americas in danger, where it aspired to present a regional migration plan.
< p class=”paragraph”>This objective is key for President Joe Biden, who wants to tackle the current migration crisis on his southern border, and relaunch his popularity and the options of the candidates of the Democratic Party of ahead of the November elections.
The exclusion of Cuba, however, would leave one of the largest emitters of migrants in recent months out of a potential migratory pact. From October to April, there were 114,000 Cubans who have arrived in the United States, according to data from its border agency.
Joe Biden’s government will try to focus on the migration crisis during the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles (Yuichi Yamazaki/REUTERS)
The Summit of the Americas, initiated in 1994 by the United States with a meeting in Miami, does not have a defined structure that determines who its participants are and leaves the invitations in the hands of the host.
Due to its informal relationship with the Organization of American States (OAS), from which Cuba was expelled after the triumph of the revolution in 1959, Havana was not included in the first quotes.
However, the island did participate in the last two summits, that of Panama in 2015 and that of Peru in 2018.
ALBA regularly holds its summits of leaders at End of the year. The previous one was in December 2021, also in Havana. Then issues of internal cooperation were discussed and the idea of jointly producing agri-food products and medicines was even launched.
Currently, ALBA has ten members (Former and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela, and two special guests (Haiti and Suriname).
(With information from EFE)