Lexico will not participate in the Summit of the Americas. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexican president, made the announcement on Monday, as the summit opens the same day in Los Angeles. This decision is motivated by the exclusion of certain countries by the United States, namely Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. “I’m not going to the summit because we don’t invite all the countries of America. I believe in the need to change the policy that has been imposed for centuries: exclusion,” the president of Mexico, one of the United States’ main partners in the region, told reporters. He had been threatening for weeks not to go to this summit if the United States excluded Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, as the Biden administration had implied.
These three countries will not be invited because “the United States continues to have reservations about the lack of democratic space and respect for human rights” in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, the Agency confirmed on Monday. France-Presse a White House official. “I very much regret this situation, but I do not accept that anyone puts himself above other countries. I do not accept hegemony, neither from China, nor from Russia, nor from any country”, detailed the Mexican president.
A project bringing together “all of America”
Very popular in his country, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has indicated that he could meet President Joe Biden at the White House in July, with whom he claims to get along very well. “I want to talk with him about the integration of all of America,” said the Mexican president, citing the example of the European Union. Mexico, which shares 3,200 kilometers of border with the United States, sends 80% of its exports to its large northern neighbor under a North American free trade agreement that also includes Canada.
The summit must also look at climate change, Covid-19 and “the fight for freedom and democracy”, the White House said. On the occasion of the summit, Washington wants to show the muscles against China, which is advancing its pawns in an area long considered by the Americans as their backyard.
Towards an agreement on immigration?
On the occasion of the summit, President Biden hopes to conclude a regional cooperation agreement on a politically explosive subject, and which has earned him violent criticism from the Republican opposition: immigration. The number of people seeking to enter the United States after fleeing poverty and violence in Central America and Haiti is on the rise. Thousands of migrants are concentrating on Mexico’s northern border, hoping to cross into the United States.
At the same time, a “caravan” of several thousand migrants set off Monday in southern Mexico with the intention of reaching the United States. The group, made up of men, women and children from Central America and Venezuela, set off in the rain from Tapachula on the Guatemalan border towards the border with the United States more than 3,000 kilometers further North.
“We tell the heads of state of the countries meeting today at the Summit of the Americas that migrant women and children, that migrant families, are not currencies” for “ideological and political interests “, told Agence France-Presse Luis Garcia, of the NGO Dignificacion Humana, which accompanies the migrants.