The absence of the presidents of Mexico and other countries at the Summit of the Americas represents a failure of semi-spherical dimensions for Joe Biden’s USA and is a clear sign of the decline of US hegemony in the region.
Exhibiting greater independence from Washington than his European allies in NATO, Mexican President Manuel López Obrador and his colleagues from Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador chose to boycott the summit to protest the exclusion of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
And if Chile’s new president, the leftist Gabriel Boric, has finally agreed to participate, he is there to protest such unfair exclusions, as he himself told the press.
At the same time, Biden’s idea of private democracy is evidenced by the fact that he invited Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro to the summit, despite the increasing number of indigenous people killed in that country. exponentially in recent years.
And if Bolsonaro agrees to participate, that could only accelerate the dreaded climate change across the planet, provided deforestation policies in the Amazon are not criticized.
While Bolsonaro has even allowed himself to criticize Biden for excluding Cuba and two other countries, there seems to be no problem meeting with the Saudi crown prince, who is thought to be responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
On the other hand, it is significant that it is not only governments of the left who boycotted the summit this time, but also other governments with right-wing ideology such as El Salvador, Venezuela and Colombia, and therefore intend to mark their own summit. Real or imagined independence from Washington.
Meanwhile, the former president of the latter country, Iván Duque, cannot escape his government’s responsibility in a domestic situation where leaders of social or trade union movements, indigenous people and critics of the government do not stop. to be assassinated.
Biden also invited Haitian President Ariel Henry, who is allegedly linked to a suspect in the murder of his predecessor, Jouvenel Moïse, to a Los Angeles meeting.
Countries that decided to boycott the summit accuse Democrat Biden of continuing the discriminatory policies implemented by his predecessor in the White House, Donald Trump, in relations with Latin America, and above all for domestic policy reasons.
We should also not forget that if Biden recently chose Nicolás Maduro’s particular opening towards Venezuela, yet continued to recognize the discredited Juan Guaidó as interim president, it only has to do with the West’s oil needs. From Russia’s boycott of the invasion of Ukraine.
Many Central Americans condemn the US offer of $50,000 million in military and humanitarian aid to this European country, and only $4,000 million to Central America, which has serious problems and a nearly equivalent population.
They also complain that this aid to the countries of the Central American isthmus will certainly be used mainly for the army and police and to strengthen the borders, rather than improving the living conditions of those who desperately fled there towards the USA. .
They also criticize that while the victims of the Ukraine war are greeted with open arms in the West, many Central American children are “caged” and brutally separated from their parents at the southern border of the United States. There are still classes.