The debates and uncertainties prior to the ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles have exposed the powerful roots of visions inherited from the Cold War in governments throughout the continent.
The Joe Biden administration erratically decided not to follow the line of total inclusion in that forum, supported by President Barack Obama.
The governments of the Bolivarian Alliance, for their part, have unleashed pressure for months, which oscillates between denouncing the exclusion of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, disqualifying the forum and calling for a boycott of the Los Angeles meeting.
The pressure of the Bolivarians, some of whom propose the dismantling of the OAS and voluntarily remain outside that mechanism, has been directed, above all, at governments of the Latin American left, such as Mexico, Argentina and, to a lesser extent, , the Peruvian and the Chilean, which do form part of the inter-American institutional framework.
The clash between the inter-Americanism characteristic of the last three decades, which coincided with the generalization of the democratic form of government, and the anti-imperialism typical of the Cold War, defended by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, has returned to reinstall itself in the region.
The decision of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to condition his presence in Los Angeles, to the inclusion of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, was the result of these parallel tensions: the exclusion promoted by the United States and the boycott encouraged by the Bolivarian bloc.
The threat of a soulless summit, with the absence of a central figure of inter-Americanism such as the Mexican president, provoked a special diplomatic mission from the United States, led by experienced former senator Christopher Dodd, who managed to get both President Jair Boslonaro and the most Caribbean and Central American governments will reconsider his absence.
Despite Dodd's management and the announcement of flexibility measures by the United States with Venezuela and Cuba, the result of previous bilateral negotiations and not of Amlo's position, the Mexican president maintained his conditioning.
This line of action has domestic and geopolitical explanations, since the gesture is interpreted as "solidarity" with the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, non-democratic regimes that, however, have significant support among the bases of Morena, the ruling party in Mexico.
The Bolivarian pressure to which we refer, and which includes all ALBA's diplomatic and intelligence work with the Mexican and Argentine governments and with forums more prone to inter-Americanism such as CELAC and the Puebla Group, is yielding results.
Not only does AMLO maintain uncertainty about his presence in Los Angeles, but that bloc has already held a meeting in Havana, in which the presidents of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Bolivia participated, which rejected the Los Angeles Summit as "retrogression". in hemispheric relations” for his “arbitrary, ideological and politically motivated exclusion.”
In his highly ideological speech in Havana, Daniel Ortega, who has just been re-elected for the fourth time, with most of his government's opponents in jail, anticipated any position of the Summit of the Americas on the Russian invasion of Ukraine , with a message of support for the Kremlin.
Those attending the counter-summit in Havana, including Bolivian President Luis Arce, who has not proposed leaving the OAS, questioned any distinction between democratic and authoritarian regimes in the hemisphere and welcomed the position of President López Obrador, whom they attribute not only the same indistinction but the same geopolitical orientation.
The Bolivarian revenge includes, finally, a final chapter, which will be an alternative summit, parallel to that of the heads of state attending Los Angeles, convened by CELAC, whose temporary presidency is held by the Argentine government of Alberto Fernández.
At that other summit we will hear the replies of the old Latin American anti-imperialism to the new diplomatic inter-Americanism promoted by the majority of the governments of the region.
The discursive nucleus of that reply will be the presentation of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua as victims of the empire.
The rhetorical victimization is based on Washington's traditional punitive policies against those governments and on obvious diplomatic errors, such as the exclusion from the Los Angeles meeting.
But this victimization allows these regimes to successfully advance in the objective of making their own authoritarianism invisible, put into practice not only with the systematic repression of peaceful opponents but also with re-election, the control of civil society, the muzzling of public opinion and the geopoliticism with which they conduct their international relations.
From a conceptual point of view, the Bolivarian revenge is aimed at undoing the differences between democratic and authoritarian regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Differences that, in effect, should not govern inter-American forums such as the Summit of the Americas, more functional while more inclusive and realistic, since any denunciation of authoritarian behavior, in the presence of the leaders themselves questioned, is always more effective.
But differences, after all, that also drag with them the old dispute between inter-Americanism and anti-imperialism that globalization seemed to have settled decades ago.
Rafael Rojas
is a historian and essayist, author among other titles of
Minimal History of the Cuban Revolution
and
The Tree of Revolutions
, both in Turner.
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