Whether or not the boy­cott threat­ened by some coun­tries takes ef­fect, the Ninth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, due to be con­vened in Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia, next month, will be a defin­ing mo­ment in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Unit­ed States and Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The gath­er­ing, usu­al­ly a dis­play of Unit­ed States dom­i­nance in hemi­spher­ic geopol­i­tics, may be any­thing but that, as a grow­ing num­ber of heads of state say they might not even show up for the June 6-10 meet­ing. A rift is grow­ing over a plan by the sum­mit hosts to ex­clude three non-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic regimes—Cu­ba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Yet to be con­firmed re­ports that Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guaidó might be in­vit­ed to rep­re­sent that na­tion in­stead of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro sparked threats of a boy­cott from sev­er­al Caribbean na­tions.

Al­though Cari­com has not yet giv­en a de­fin­i­tive po­si­tion on the is­sue, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Gas­ton Browne has al­ready bro­ken away from the pack, an­nounc­ing ear­li­er this week that he is stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Venezuela and Cu­ba and will boy­cott the Sum­mit.

When he was asked about the is­sue at Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said Cari­com is try­ing to come to a con­sen­sus po­si­tion. He added that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion is that the Sum­mit should be all-in­clu­sive “be­cause the Amer­i­c­as is all of us.”

The spot­light on re­la­tions be­tween the US and its neigh­bours to the south has in­ten­si­fied now that most coun­tries in the re­gion have opt­ed to oc­cu­py the mid­dle ground be­tween that na­tion and the oth­er glob­al su­per­pow­er, Chi­na. These na­tions are now less like­ly to fol­low the US lead on a range of so­cioe­co­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal is­sues.

Cu­ba—and more re­cent­ly Venezuela—have been points of con­tention that of­ten over­shad­ow oth­er crit­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing the hemi­sphere, which is a pity giv­en the many press­ing chal­lenges to be ad­dressed, such as eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the ef­fects of cli­mate change.

There was hope for a strength­en­ing of the hemi­spher­ic al­liance af­ter the Barack Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion be­gan to pur­sue diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Cu­ba. Af­ter be­ing banned from the first six Sum­mits, Cu­ba was in­vit­ed to the gath­er­ing host­ed in Pana­ma in 2015. That oc­ca­sion in­clud­ed the his­toric mo­ment when Oba­ma and Raúl Cas­tro shook hands.

But as the US pre­pares to host the gath­er­ing for on­ly the sec­ond time in its his­to­ry, Cu­ba-US ten­sions have in­creased and the Joe Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has not re­versed its pre­de­ces­sor’s pol­i­cy of not recog­nis­ing the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

So, there is not much op­ti­mism that progress will be made in achiev­ing the Sum­mit’s theme, Build­ing a Sus­tain­able, Re­silient, and Eq­ui­table Fu­ture.

It will be un­for­tu­nate if the 2022 edi­tion of this hemi­sphere-wide gath­er­ing, which has been held every three years since the in­au­gur­al event in Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, in 1994, is de­fined by widen­ing rifts be­tween the ide­o­log­i­cal­ly di­verse na­tions of North, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

It would be bet­ter to work past these threats of bans and boy­cotts and look for so­lu­tions to the prob­lems af­fect­ing the re­gion.