After much drama over what nations will be in attendance, most leaders in the Western Hemisphere will gather this week in Los Angeles during the ninth Summit of the Americas, a high-profile meeting that is expected to deliver an accord on managing unprecedented levels of migrants throughout the region.
Since the inaugural summit in 1994 in Miami, the gathering of the heads of states has created a unique opportunity to advance deals and initiatives to tackle the region’s most pressing challenges. The White House, with the input of the Organization of American States and participating countries, has put out an agenda focused on broad themes like migration, pandemic resilience, combating climate change, digital transformation and democratic governance.
But details of concrete initiatives are scarce just hours before the event officially starts on Monday. And a diplomatic spat with Mexico and other countries that insist that the authoritarian governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua should be invited to the summit has underscored how democratic values are backsliding in the continent and how considerations over migration, seen by many as primarily a domestic U.S. policy issue, had dominated the debate over the invites.
The uncertainty about who would attend the Summit extended over the weekend.
By Sunday afternoon, the White House had not yet invited Juan Guaido, the opposition leader the United States and other countries recognize as the legitimate democratic authority in Venezuela.
“We were reliably informed that Guaidó was not invited,” said Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne.
“If Guaidó is allowed to participate as the ‘Venezuelan President,’ then we will have to uninvite ourselves,” he told the Miami Herald. “Antigua and Barbuda will not participate in any meeting with him because we do not recognize him.”
The presidents of El Salvador and Bolivia were not expected to attend. A recent phone call from Vice President Kamala Harris did not sway Honduras’ new president, Xiomara Castro, who will send Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina to Los Angeles in her place.
On Monday, the administration confirmed that Cuba was not invited. Guaidó was likely to have a video call with Biden this week, sources told the Herald.
Mexico steals the show
Heading to the summit, Biden administration officials repeatedly said undemocratic regimes would likely be excluded, as their leaders were not elected in free and fair elections, a requirement for participation in these meetings, according to the Inter-American Charter, a documented subscribed by member states of the OAS.
But just weeks before the June gathering, the populist leftist president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and leaders of other countries including Argentina, Bolivia and several Caribbean nations threatened to boycott the summit over the exclusion of the three dictatorships. And some Caribbean nations also wanted to sideline Guaidó, as they have developed close ties with the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela because of the South American nation’s Petrocaribe oil program.
Former Mexican diplomat and analyst Brenda Stefan called López Obrador’s maneuver “an ambush” for Biden at a time of great tension due to the war in Ukraine and increasing challenges for the region.
Adding to the administration’s troubles, there were also reports that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of former President Donald Trump, was also considering skipping the event.
While most leaders eventually decided to participate, López Obrador, who has developed close ties with Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, insisted on including the Caribbean island. That, in turn, forced the White House to delay the final invitation list until the last minute as it scrambled to accommodate Mexico’s demand, to avoid the optics of a summit focused on migration without the presence of the United States’ key partner on the issue.
In a preview of U.S. priorities for the summit, Juan González, senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council, told reporters that cooperation with Mexico on migration was strong and would not be affected by any decision on attendance. But he made clear that “the President of the United States very personally wants the President of Mexico there.”
González also said deliberations about an invitation to Guaidó were also tied to demands by other participating countries that he did not name.
“I’m not going to talk about the considerations with regard to invitations except to just underscore that there are governments [that] have different views on some of these topics, and we engage and consult with them,” he said during a call with reporters Wednesday. “And ultimately, the host prerogative is important, but we also want to facilitate a broad hemispheric discussion and make sure that we’re integrating all of the views of the members of the Organization of American States.”
“Venezuela in the context of the summit is a distraction,” he later said in an interview with the Colombian TV station NTN24 on Thursday.
After much debate, most Caribbean Community leaders are expected to attend the summit despite a plea by St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves to have his fellow prime ministers and presidents in the region boycott the gathering.
The decision to attend, said Antigua’s Browne, was based on “recent concessions on Cuba and Venezuela extended by the U.S.” The Biden administration recently ease some sanctions on both countries.
What’s on the Summit’s agenda?
Latin America and the Caribbean were already experiencing low economic growth and increasing disparities when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the region’s unprepared health systems, causing 1,7 million deaths. Hurricanes, deforestation and other major climate disasters have triggered mass migration, from Haiti in particular, as have violence, corruption and human rights deterioration. And the consolidation of authoritarian regimes, on top of the election of populist leaders from the left and the right, is changing the political dynamics in the hemisphere.
Against that backdrop, analysts believe the summit offers a unique opportunity for the United States “to present a true partnership for regional recovery, to work to ensure that the next pandemic wave is less terrible and to stand firmly and resolutely for democracy,” said Eric Farnsworth, the vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas during a recent Senate hearing.
Much of the high-level talks will focus on migration at a time a record number of migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Central American nations, are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Heads of state are expected to sign a regional declaration on migration.
U.S. officials have said that the plan involves increasing economic support for countries hosting migrants or used as transit points, expanding legal paths for migrants, and “responsibility-sharing” in managing the unprecedented number of people on the move across the hemisphere. But the declaration would be non-binding, and it is not known how far each government would go in expanding legal paths for the migrants to stay in their countries.
President Biden is also expected to launch an effort to strengthen the region’s health systems and bolster supply chains to prepare for future pandemics, González said. The official touted the U.S. economic agenda for the event as “ambitious” but provided few details beyond stating that it will “build upon” existing trade agreements to help address “issues of equity and equality, supporting the global energy transition, the adoption of technology.”
Vice President Kamala Harris will also lead a climate and energy initiative alongside representatives from Caribbean nations.
Haiti’s ongoing political instability, which is driving a mass exodus of Haitians, is a primary concern for countries throughout the region, and U.S. officials will hold talks with interim Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry while at the summit.
While the U.S. has promised security assistance to Haiti’s police, the country continues to struggle with gang-led violence and kidnappings. On the eve of the gathering, the United Nations said that its political office in Port-au-Prince had registered 200 kidnappings just in May, and an armed gang clash that started in late April had led to the deaths of at least 188 people and the displacement of 17,000.
The hemisphere’s leaders will also adopt shared political commitments tackling “democratic governance, health and resilience, the clean energy transition, our green future, and digital transformation,” Assistant Secretary of State Brian A. Nichols told reporters.
At the center of the effort is a plan to reaffirm the region’s commitment to the Inter-American Democratic Charter and support the work of electoral observation missions, Nichols said.
That could prove challenging after the threats of boycott over the exclusion of the non-democratic governments in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The issue will not likely go away as Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernández, is expected to protest the exclusions during the event.
During a press briefing on Friday, analysts with Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington D.C., said that the road to the summit highlighted the lack of consensus in the region about what democracy is and that alternative narratives promoted by foreign adversaries like China and Russia are taking root.
“The issue that some countries are not taking democracy seriously is what worries me,” said Santiago Canton, the director of the Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program at the Inter-American Dialogue. “Anything that comes out of this summit pushing for democracy, whether it is related to trade, anti-corruption, elections, whatever comes from the summit on democracy and human rights with the right approach — which is not the one that China and Russia have — would be more than welcome.”
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(Miami Herald staff writer Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report.)
