JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

The Americas divided

by

1152 days ago
20220513

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored