A feared mass leftist boycott of the Summit of the Americas — which began on Monday in Los Angeles — never materialized as the socialist leaders of Argentina, Chile, and Peru all left Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on his own to boycott in defense of the region’s dictatorships.
The summit brings together the countries in the Organization of American States (OAS), whose charter demands that members uphold democratic values. The OAS Inter-American Democratic Charter bars dictatorships from participating in organization meetings, including the Summit of the Americas. Despite this, Cuba – a 63-year-old communist dictatorship – began attending the Summit of the Americas with President Barack Obama’s blessing in 2015. Cuban agents engaged in mob violence against pro-democracy dissidents at both Summits of the Americas that the Castro regime has been invited to.
The administration of President Joe Biden explicitly uninvited the socialist and communist dictatorships of Nicaragua and Venezuela to this year’s summit. Biden failed to take a definitive stance on Cuba, instead simply not sending a formal invite to the regime. The White House did invite pro-democracy dissidents to the summit, but the Castro regime banned them from leaving the island.
Multiple leftist leaders expressed displeasure with the lack of invite to Cuba and threatened to boycott, including Presidents Alberto Fernández of Argentina, Gabriel Boric of Chile, and Luis Arce of Bolivia. The rumors of potential boycotts led to speculation that other leftist leaders — such as President Pedro Castillo of Peru and Xiomara Castro of Honduras — would join in. Bizarrely, conservative Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro also threatened to boycott the summit for unclear reasons not related to defending the dictatorships, which he consistently condemns on the international stage.
Ultimately, only Arce and López Obrador in Latin America boycotted the event to support the violent Marxist dictatorships of the hemisphere. Over 20 world leaders, including those of Caribbean states, will be attending. Two other Latin American presidents are not attending: Alejandro Giammatei of Guatemala and Luis Lacalle Pou of Uruguay. Giammatei’s office claimed his absence was strictly the product of a scheduling conflict – not a boycott – while Lacalle Pou, a conservative, tested positive for Chinese coronavirus shortly before his scheduled departure.
Fernández, Boric, and Castillo are all reportedly en route to the conference – Boric arrived on Monday morning after visiting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, expected to attend the summit, as well. Xiomara Castro is not attending the event but sending representation and categorically denying that her absence is a political boycott.
“Honduras will be present at the Ninth Summit of the Americas,” the Honduran Foreign Relations Ministry emphasized on Twitter.
Bolsonaro also confirmed his attendance while hinting that Biden is senile in remarks last week.
Others present will include Colombian President Iván Duque, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, and Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez, Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves Robles – all right-wing or center-right leaders – and President Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic and Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo, both center-leftists.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador — a former leftist ousted from the country’s top left-wing party after multiple public disagreements with leadership — has ignored the event entirely.
López Obrador, an admirer of Fidel Castro, delivered the most vocal condemnation of ostracizing dictatorships in a press conference on Monday dedicated largely to expressing disgust with Cuban-Americans as an ethnic group. The president announced that he would not attend the Los Angeles summit because Cuban-Americans — who he blamed in their entirety for his absence — were “acting with hate” and dominating American politics at the expense of the repressive Castro regime.
“I have a very good relationship with President Biden, he is a good man,” López Obrador said. “In this case, I feel that there are a lot of pressures on the part of the Republicans and, above all, from some leaders of the Republican Party and also in the Democrat Party that have to do with the Cuban community in Florida and in the United States, who have a lot of influence.”
“From my point of view [they] are acting with hate,” López Obrador said of the entire ethnic group, later accusing Cuban-Americans of committing “genocide” against Cubans and complaining that Cuban-Americans have outsized political influence in the United States.
“Our Cuban brothers in Florida, in the United States, how many are there – 4 million? How many Mexicans are in the United States? 40 million! But they have a great influence and they are untouchable,” the Mexican president complained.
In response to global disgust with widespread human rights violations in Cuba, including the imprisoning of children for their political beliefs and door-to-door police raids against suspected protesters, López Obrador asked, “so what?”
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