June
7 was a bad day for Luis
Almagro,
secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS).
During the ninth Summit of the Americas, a young man declared
to
him what he is: an assassin and puppet of the White House, instigator
of the coup in Bolivia. He said that Almagro cannot come to give
lessons on democracy when his hands are stained with blood. In
another room at the summit in Los Angeles, Secretary of State Antony
Blinken seemed to be doing no better: several journalists rebuked him
for using freedom of the press to provide cover for the murderers of
journalists and for sanctioning and excluding certain countries from
this meeting. “Democracy or hypocrisy?” could be heard
over
the loudspeaker that day.
In
reality, this stormy summit began with a large diplomatic stumble for
the United States, when several Latin American presidents announced
that they would not participate in the summit because of the
exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, as dictated by the White
House, while the U.S. State Department still claims the open and
unrestricted nature of the meeting’s call. Its website says,
“Throughout, the United States has demonstrated, and will
continue to demonstrate, our commitment to an inclusive process that
incorporates input from people and institutions that represent the
immense diversity of our hemisphere, and includes Indigenous and
other historically marginalized voices.”
Hypocrisy
seems to be the glue of this summit, and mainstream U.S. media and
analysts declared the June 6-10 meeting a failure before it even
started. On June 7, the Washington Post assured
readers
that “This week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles
will be remembered for its absences rather than its potential
agreements,” focusing its attention on Mexican President Andrés
Manuel López Obrador, who was the most mentioned political
figure in U.S. networks and media on June 7 and 8, even more than
U.S. President Joe Biden, according to statistics from Google Trends.
Richard N. Haass, who was the adviser to former Secretary of State
Colin Powell and director of policy planning for the State
Department, summed up the disaster superbly in a tweet:
“The Summit of the Americas looks to be a debacle, a diplomatic
own goal. The U.S. has no trade proposal, no immigration policy, and
no infrastructure package. Instead, the focus is on who will and will
not be there. Unclear is why we pressed for it to happen.”
As
can be expected of a meeting for which the invitation list had not
been declared just 72 hours before it began, apathy seems to dominate
the debate rooms, to which almost no one goes, according to
witnesses. Even so, the United States government did not miss an
opportunity to secure the appearance of participation by the civil
society groups on which it bets, and it met with the envoys from
Miami, paid for by USAID, and awarded them with more money. During
the summit, Blinken promised
a
new fund of $9 million to support “independent journalism”
to those who already receive
$20
million a year for promoting “regime change” in Cuba.
This
political pageantry is happening in what is essentially a bunker,
because the Los Angeles Police received
more
than $15 million to police the summit and militarize a city famous
for its homelessness and belts of poverty. The U.S. Democratic Party
elite, meanwhile, remain out of touch with the reality of their own
country, shaken by daily massacres, increasingly powerless to meet
the expectations of citizens, and with most decisions and legislative
projects stalled. They are replicating the clichés of the
Monroe Doctrine—America for the Americans—and
demonstrating what appears to be a commitment to isolationism with
respect to Latin America.
The
United States rarely takes into account the differentiating features
of its Latin American neighbors: cultural, linguistic, religious, and
traditional—in short, those that grant and promote a genuine
way of understanding life and its miracles. It might seem
incomprehensible at this point, but the U.S. foreign policy toward
Latin America is articulated and carried out from exclusively
ideological approaches, with simplistic decisions that end up harming
everyone—including and especially the United States itself.
Defying
the storm, the People’s
Summit for Democracy
has
been installed
at
the doors of the meeting of the friends of the White House. Sponsored
by some 250 organizations, most of which are local unions, the
counter-summit is marching through the streets of Los Angeles on June
10, whether or not the authorities, who have done everything possible
to silence the alternative meeting, give permission. But the media
blockade is not having the expected success. Almagro and Blinken have
gone viral on social media for reasons beyond their control, and they
will not be the last to prove firsthand what the outrage of the
excluded looks like.
This
commentary was produced by Globetrotter
