Despite the radiant sun of Los Angeles, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has spent the whole week putting a brave face on bad weather.
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, stood him up, and yet at the opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas he repeatedly appeared on the giant screen of the Microsoft Theater.
In the plenary sessions, while Biden called for unity, criticism from his guests rained down on him.
Despite this, at dinner last Thursday, at the idyllic Getty Villa in Malibu, Biden preferred to continue seeing the bottle half full.
"We have some disagreements, but we agree on the essentials," he said in his short welcome before he served a delicate salad, a Pacific halibut with vegetables and honey from the White House and a sweet dessert of lemon, vanilla, cream whipped cream and berries.
At dinner, Biden recalled telling President Barack Obama that "everything in politics is personal," in the sense that getting to know each other better makes a difference.
But during the days of the Summit, she has barely shown complicity with Iván Duque, almost outgoing president of Colombia, whom she had by her side in various events during the three days they shared in California.
Many other leaders have marked distances.
With Jair Bolsonaro, the coldness marked the first bilateral meeting with Brazil since Biden arrived at the White House.
A day later, before the cameras for the family photo, both appeared laughing.
Many wondered what the joke would have been because the Brazilian does not speak English.
After the stormy presidency of Donald Trump, who built walls and broke down bridges with many Latin American countries, Biden had the opportunity to strengthen ties with the region.
“To this same Summit, four years ago, the president of the United States did not go because he did not consider it important.
Now in Los Angeles there are the president, the vice president, the leader of the House of Representatives, the secretary of state, other members of the Cabinet ... We are present, ”said Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who was a vice presidential candidate on Friday. with Hillary Clinton.
The Summit of the Americas usually brings together the heads of state and government from all over the Americas approximately every three years.
This edition, the ninth, was on the horizon as the perfect showcase to heal relationships.
“I think that Trump abused relations with some of these countries a lot, damaging them in ways that are difficult to describe, but this meeting can help restore those ties,” said Congressman of Latino origin Joaquín Castro.
In the memory was the first of the summits, held in Miami in 1994 with Bill Clinton as host and the only thing missing was Cuba.
However, the organization of the event, partly due to clumsiness, this time became a diplomatic nightmare and the focus was on a list of guests that was not completely clear until the same week of the event.
The State Department made strenuous efforts to avoid a fiasco.
He managed to convince Bolsonaro by offering him a bilateral meeting that seemed cold and that later the Brazilian president, who was in great harmony with Donald Trump, described as fantastic.
He also attracted Alberto Fernández in exchange for a visit to the White House next month, which has not prevented the Argentine president from being very harsh with Biden and questioning "the right of admission" as the prerogative of the host of the Summit.
But the efforts were in vain to attract López Obrador.
Biden assured this week before the rest of the presidents: "No matter what happens in the world, the Americas will always be a priority for the United States of America."
The truth, however, is that Washington has been very aware of the war in Ukraine and Asian politics and has lost weight and influence in a region in which populist, leftist or anti-democratic governments abound.
At the end of the Summit, Biden can showcase a handful of mostly generic agreements and a statement on migration that 20 of the participants have joined.
Proposals for economic cooperation, plans to strengthen the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank), health training programs and aid for the environment are among those agreements.
“It is a step in the right direction, but we will have to wait for the next summit to measure our progress.
There should be clearer principles on the treatment of migrants and on prohibiting family separation and avoiding long periods of detention.
This is just the beginning,” added Congressman Castro, part
of the Democrats' Latino
caucus .
The US government is now playing, in the implementation of these proposals, the opportunity to regain weight and influence in a region of which it is the natural leader.
"We continue to be the greatest power to organize a hemispheric response to shared challenges on the issue of the pandemic, food insecurity or climate change issues," Juan González, director for the Western Hemisphere of the Council of Homeland Security and Biden's senior adviser for Latin America.
That is true, but it is also true that the list of presidents who have excused their attendance at the Summit due to the veto against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, plus the criticisms made by some of the attendees, are interpreted as a certain challenge to that leadership. .
But the vetoes, the boycotts and the division between countries also cast doubt on the relevance of the Summit to promote true regional cooperation.
"Despite the controversies, Latin America emerges more united from this Summit," said Gabriel Boric, president of Chile.
But it seems more like a well-intentioned phrase than a fact.
The declaration on migration, despite being signed by only 20 of the countries participating in the Summit, is perhaps the most important result of this week.
Formally, it is signed by heads of state, including the absent López Obrador.
It is accompanied by a series of concrete commitments to regularize immigrants, welcome refugees and temporary migration quotas that are partly new and partly a repackaging of previous announcements.
Biden, internally criticized by the Republicans, who accuse him of being soft on immigration issues, has managed to get the declaration to include a reference to facilitating the return of undocumented immigrants in exchange for funding for other countries of destination, commitments to host refugees and to open avenues for regularization, legal immigration and that of temporary workers.
But that is not going to loosen the pressure of an unprecedented migration crisis in the short term.
The question is whether the agreement really translates into that "shared responsibility" that the declaration proclaims.
In Biden's words: “This is just the beginning.
There is much more work to be done, to say the obvious.”
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