Heads of State of the countries that form the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), in Havana, this Friday. MIRAFLORES PALACE (via REUTERS)
The controversial Summit of the Americas convened by the administration of US President Joe Biden paradoxically did not begin in the city of Los Angeles, but in Havana.
Ten days before the hemispheric meeting organized by Washington, the Cuban capital has hosted this Friday a presidential meeting of the ten nations that make up ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America).
Become spokespersons for the reparation of the countries that the US has tried to exclude from the meeting due to their democratic deficits —Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua—, they have finally doubled Washington's diplomatic arm by marking the conclave's agenda.
No one talks anymore about the contents that were intended to be debated at the Summit of the Americas.
The question has been almost reduced to whether it should be inclusive, and accept countries that the US does not tolerate and considers dictatorships, or admit exclusions as normal, as it has been until now.
The protest of numerous governments, including important allies of Washington, such as Mexico or Argentina, have turned a summit that was intended to be an opportunity to gain weight and influence in the region into a nightmare for the host.
The one who has said it most clearly in Havana has been the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro: a large part of Latin America, with different speeches and degrees, has rebelled against the United States, and that should be celebrated.
"The voice of the continent resonates," Maduro assured triumphantly, noting that "it has been worth the struggle for years to raise the flags of dignity for Latin America and the Caribbean."
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has reiterated this Friday that, if there are exclusions, he will not attend the appointment.
The Bolivian president, Luis Arce, has given the same opinion in Havana: “The arbitrary decision of the United States to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela under the excuse that their governments do not respect the democratic charter, has only managed to weaken the institutionality of the forum ”.
Maduro has also thanked the pronouncements of the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, against the vetoes.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who on Wednesday refused to participate in the meeting even though he was finally invited, stated in his inaugural speech that the United States "neither politically nor morally" has the authority to decide who to invite and who not to.
The president has accused Washington of "undemocratic" practices for being unable to ensure "a plural space" in the hemisphere and "disrespecting differences."
It was known that the final declaration of the ALBA Summit (an organization founded by the late Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro in 2004, and currently made up of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Granada, San Cristóbal and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Saint Lucia) was going to be an anti-imperialist party, and so it happened.
The document, first of all, denounces "the claims of imperialist domination over the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean to keep the region divided according to its hegemonic interests."
The ALBA countries then rejected "the arbitrary, ideological and politically motivated exclusion" of Havana, Managua and Caracas from "the so-called Summit of the Americas", which will take place between June 6 and 10 in the city American Los Angeles.
This "unilateral decision" constitutes, in his opinion, "a serious historical setback in hemispheric relations that offends the Latin American and Caribbean peoples."
For this reason, they support "the right of all the countries of the continent to be invited and participate in said event on equal terms," emphasizing that the host country "has no right to impose exclusions or conditions that violate its sovereignty and independence."
In a key paragraph, "they support and appreciate the brave and dignified position assumed by governments, social actors, organizations and sister peoples of our continent, who have strongly and in various ways rejected the exclusions from the Los Angeles meeting."
Few thought, inside and outside the United States, that the veto against Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela could provoke a reaction like the one that has been seen and that has distorted the Summit of the Americas to the point of turning those who wanted to be excluded into the protagonists of an unprecedented plant in front of Washington.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América newsletter and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region.
